Hello! Rife Magazine ceased publishing new work in July 2022.

We've kept the magazine online as an archive and hope you'll still continue to enjoy all of its contributions from the last 8 years.

The Rife Team

The Bristol Waterslide

Jon Aitken didn’t quite manage to get a ticket for the waterslide on Park Street last Sunday, but he did spend the whole day tweeting about it.

Have a read below to find out how the day went – complete with observations that the mainstream media perhaps didn’t pick up on.

Seven hours earlier: I turned up at 9:30am (on a Sunday, people, a Sunday) to watch Luke Jerram himself be the first to slide down his own art work.  

// He survived #bristolslide — Jon Aitken (@jonbehere) May 4, 2014 // ]]>It was time, I thought, to take a different approach to the day.

Over 90k people applied to go on the slide; the longer I stayed the more painful it became that I was never to enjoy it for myself.

Instead, my pain turned to bitterness.

Notice the increasing level of joy at others' failure.

I put the question mark because I definitely heard someone shout 'Steve', though can't be sure if it was aimed at this guy. Congrats anyway, whoever you are.

Look how happy this man is:

Some, however, were not so enthralled by the artwork.

I still don't know who this man is.

I felt so bad for this guy I wasn't even able to form sentences properly.

Another victim:

On a more refined note, some people were debating whether the slide was art or not and its similarities to a previous installation...

But anyway, back to my my inability to hold a camera properly:

More observations as the day went on:

Here's evidence of the guy from The One Show on his second go down the slide. Glad he had such a nice time.

At this point my sadistic side became even more apparent.

If you took a moment to turn away from the slide and look around there was plenty of other stuff going on.

Another installation just up the hill behind the University of Bristol, equally as fun as going on a water slide.

Perhaps the pinnacle of the entire day was seeing these two ladies parting the crowd.

7 hours later and I was a mere shadow of my former self.

Prepare yourselves for the next event I live-tweet by following @RifeMag (I can sense your immediate enthusiasm - thank you.)