I'd like to introduce you to a wonderful place known as the Safari Amusement Park, home of the gas powered bumper car.
If you don't know what's in there, I've got seven syllables for you: Miniature Golf. Uh, omp.
Miniature golf is today's focus, and the Safari Amusement Park's fabled course has maintained its infamy for many decades in this terrible town I call home. In fact, no arguments can be made that anything save for the price of playing has had any modifications over the past 400 years. Odd statues depicting ferocious animals have grown dilapidated; the ones that weren't pounded by graffiti were simply decomposing into rusty piles of filth ever more by the second. The course itself is gritty, dirty -- not completely unusual for an old mini golf course, but as you'll see, I think this one packs a unique kinda charm worth talking about. Read between the lines: it's decorated with a lion statue which has had a literal asshole previously carved into it, likely by some teenaged hooligan named Snake who just haaad to show off. Maybe the same Snake from The Facts of Life. As is always the case with such intriguing mysteries, details are sketchy.
A barbed wire fence protects the course during nightfall, and serves as a great poetic potion for those in need of the right line.
I've gotta say somethin', gotta git it off my chest... Fell in love at a gollllf course...with a barbed wire fence.
Believe it or not, this place doesn't use hand stamps.
Rounds were about six bucks each per person, including the rental of a really slimy club and a pastel-colored golf ball that's been in contact with enough animal feces to start a relationship with it. As an aside, I'm firmly positive that the people running the Safari Amusement Park are none other than those wacky middle-aged redheaded twin brothers who were all the rage in such early '90s thrillers as Gremlins 2 and Terminator 2. Anything with a "2," because they're two too. To (too) be honest, the owners were pretty rude overall. I rate their gregariousness F.
I was familiar enough with Safari's work to know that I had to keep expectations low, but wow...definitely not a candidate for the front page of Mini Golf Monthly, and I bet that magazine really exists. In truth, part of the charm of miniature golf lies in how goofy, out of touch and even dingy the courses are. It's fun to play on crappy miniature golf courses. Otherwise the conversations are all pars and birdies. Uh, omp.
Come, share in our experiences. Trek to the safari and golf with nature, however decrepit. Alls you need is an Abe and a George. Add fifty cents more if you want a club that hasn't previously been broken in half and loosely taped back together. And another quarter for a blowjob.
I kid, the place ain't that bad. It's just scary is all.
Article continued below advertisement: Visit our sponsors to support the site!
After being handed our scorecards, and pencils stolen from a nearby country club, we were off to the 1st hole. The sign told us where to go, and also scared the fuck out of us because of the blood smeared all over it. And a plantless potted plant is one big annoying oxymoronically way to caketop the picture shown above.
Our first mission seemed easy enough -- it's one of those holes where you have to gently hit the ball up the sides of a steep hill, maintaining a perfect balance between soft and HARD so the ball doesn't ricochet either back to you or into one of the many piles of raccoon shit littering the course. None of us had much of a problem with it. Most of us scored in three strokes or under, only slightly lacking the universal touch necessary for us to pay a tailor for five "Three Strokes Club" windbreakers.
Sadly, most of the holes on the course were half-filled with water, like the one shown above. Nevermind the fact that it hadn't heavily rained here in weeks -- doing well in this game was a ragtag bunch of bittersweet victories, because every landed ball took us one step closer to another round of "hey let's put our hands in this and hope it's not piss." I'd seen several pairs of throwaway rubber gloves in Safari's parking lot, and only now do I realize why. This godforsaken place actually had regulars; people who'd been around long enough to know the merits of throwaway rubber gloves. My fingers still have hives.
Best of all, some of the holes were perfectly dry. We'd hop up and down every time the ball landed in a "safe hole," only to dig our hands down into the most disgusting kind of mud I've ever encountered. This stuff had way more baby worms per capita than any other mud in the world. It was black as black could be, slimy and malevolent, potentially lethal. Swarming with baby worms. The amount of tar-like shit that set up shop under our fingernails made us all look third world. Right, like a group of third worlders on their first visit here would actually waste time at Safari Mini Golf. I've seen their future, and it's in the bedsheet section of Neiman Marcus.
For a name that sounds to have been picked on a blindfolded point to a random word in the dictionary, Safari really embraced their company title with an unusual gamut of ceramic, really old and deranged animal statues. Some were full-sized, others were miniature like the course -- a select few were double, even triple the size of their more living cousins. This hippo, for example, was nearly as large a nearby baby tiger.
This hole would've worked out a lot better if the secret bonus tunnel wasn't too filled with trash to allow for ball passage. We had to grab a new one from the owners, who acted like it's the first time anyone ever told such a story. Come on, it's not that hard of a shot. I bet there's dozens of balls in there, being hoarded by rats for their upcoming invasion using tiny-sized catapults.
I wonder what happens when somebody tries to steal one of their golf balls. Do sirens go off? I bet one of the owners' relatives pops out of the ceramic hippo and yells, "I've been watching you this whole time!" They probably go through tons of ceramic hippos -- I've never seen pastel-colored golf balls sold in any store. We're talking valuable shit here. I guess they haven't installed a camera security system because it'd be annoying having to call in all the crack deals made on the course.
You know who that monkey reminds me of? Amy, from Congo. We should've brought a Power Glove.
You know who that kid, standing off in the shadowy left reminds me of? One of the GRAY GORILLAS.
Precision is an unnecessary skill in Safari Golf, since the astroturf is in much too poor shape to worry about guiding the ball. Thing totally has a mind of its own when it's out there, bumping around like a pinball on all the assorted tears, scuffs and bumps gracing the holy green carpet. The ball only stops moving when it's in the hole or after it rolls all the way to the southernmost wall, leading to many arguments with fellow players over whether moving the ball one inch from the wall for the second shot should count as a stroke in itself.
I've shared in these arguments, and they're really long and boring.
Hey look, they've even got sand traps! Most of the traps serve more as ashtrays than golf obstacles, but it's nice to see Safari Joe trying so hard. Actually, I've gotta give the course some credit, as no two holes are entirely alike. Each victory is met with a new kind of challenge, and players have to continually step up their game by aiming correctly and by avoiding walking into puddles of badness along the way. Despite the fact that it's falling apart, the course remains cheerful and festive -- even the water-spraying elephant statue, which has no doubt been sprayed by urine thousands of times by now, keeps his smile strong. Safari's story is one of unbreakable spirit. Added bonus: they sell Flintstones Push-Pops.
Anyway, I'd like you to meet my new friends, the Zebras.
Right Zebra: Help! Somebody scraped out my eyes!
Left Zebra: You probably deserved it. You probably looked at something you shouldn't have.
Right Zebra: Shortskirt Shaolin whores. I could not help what was before my eyes!
Left Zebra: I've got gum stuck to eight different parts of me.
Right Zebra: I'm like the guy who got paid 50 bucks to stand around on the set of Prince of Thieves, shouting with Max Factor Clay all over his eyelids.
Left Zebra: I don't get it.
Right Zebra: Have you seen Prince of Thieves?
Left Zebra: Like forty times.
The ominous skull statue is easily the most famous landmark in Safari's entire amusement park, witnessed from every passing car on one of the busiest roads in the city. Now that I've finally seen it up close, the world holds no more wonder.
Underneath the skull: feral young children.
In an effort to make sure the establishment recoups its rented out golf balls, they've instituted a "five stroke penalty" for anyone who doesn't make the last hole. See, you can't retrieve the ball after the last hole -- it goes down a funnel tube in some weird kind of Tiki shack. I'll show you in a bit. Is a five stroke penalty enough to keep the place running under the rule of an easily ruined honor system? Depends on how competitive you're feeling over this obviously life-changing game of miniature golf. I'd rather keep the cool neon golf ball.
Tiger No Eyes is notable for being a crossbred species -- mostly Bengal with a spritz of snow tiger around the tail. All in all, one ugly statue.
The courses grew more wild and twisty, with all sorts of strange obstacles, hills and curves to negotiate our cool neon golf balls around. I stopped keeping track of my score after the sixth hole, then deciding that it'd be more fun to use the scorecard as a canvas to doodle the mutant hybrid tiger over and over again. By the time the game finished, I'd drawn eighty tigers. If you saw how small this piece of paper was, you'd be impressed.
I wish I saved room to doodle the lion with the literal asshole...
Incredibly, the lion's sculpt perfectly reflects the horror he should be feeling with all of the holes that've been drilled into his body. Seems more like blatant property destruction than an act of nature, and this lion's oppressors didn't stop at the head. No, they were going straight for the throat. I mean ass.
We all stopped and gazed, feeling like we'd at once uncovered the perfect postcard portrait for Safari Safari Safari. The drilled-in lion ass says it all. My only regret is that the owners didn't take the chicanery in stride and dub this the honorary 20th hole.
As the game drew near its close, I noticed that if I lived in China some time ago and was born female, my parents probably would've made sure that my feet grew only as long as the golf club head. We all wanted to go home.
The 18th and 19th hole were rather impossibly rolled into one, both tucked away inside this zany raffia shack. Unique in design, we couldn't wait to ply our trade at shooting golf balls into someone's primitive home. After discussing what might be living inside, we narrowed the list down to a family of foxes or that ninja hockey dude from The Running Man. Plain Zero.
Here's how it works: there's three holes hidden inside the house, but the windows are way too dirty to see any of them. Two of the holes are normal ways to end the game, but the third -- oh the third! Hit the ball in the elusive middle hole, and that bright red light atop the shack will go insane while sirens blare, letting everyone on the course know that you just won A FREE GAME! A family several holes ahead of us actually made the shot, and the spectacle was unreal. Loudest sirens ever, strobing red lights and a pack of subterranean clowns who only surface to cheer on the rare souls capable of scoring on the so-called "19th Hole." We weren't so lucky, but solace was found in knowing that we didn't have to play anymore miniature golf. Now I know why so many courses cut the shit off after the 11th or 12th hole -- it gets pretty tiresome. Here's our view of the shack's insides...
Real safaris usually lack windows, but if they had 'em, I bet they'd be just as milky as this. The course owners were just going for a realist touch. That's why the hippos and baby tigers were the same size, and it's why I was able to play mini-golf under a giraffe. People think Disney was painstakingly thorough with their Animal Kingdom? Please. At Safari Golf, even the fake lions have the right tools to defecate.
Our story would end here, pretty pitifully, but remember, it's not just Safari Golf -- it's the Safari Amusement Park. Let's check out some of the other treasures...
Ah ha! There's the famous gas-powered bumper cars. We didn't give these a try, but judging from the looks on the faces of the poor people who did, they're the worst bumper cars on the planet. I can't be entirely sure, but it looks like they just tied mangled chaise lounges on top of pool tubes. Also: the entire bumper car track and surrounding area smelled like oil -- probably an intentional move, since getting high on oil fumes might be the only way to enjoy riding on such historically shitty bumper cars.
There's the game room, featuring a success rate of 50% when it comes to coin-ops that actually work.
So let's see. Mini golf, gas-powered pool tubes and a half-working game room. I think that Safari's next venture should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of business savvy:
The Safari Party Room! Now you can host your birthday party at a gritty mini-golf course. Lord knows how many prayers this place has answered.
