Bear on a Bicycle at the Steel Pier, Atlantic City, N.J., 1957

A photo of a dock or a pier for the Vintage Photos Theme Park.

This is a 1957 snapshot of the Steel Pier, an amusement pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Billed as "The Show Place of the Nation," the pier hosted a variety of shows and acts, including a diving horse and a bicycle-riding bear.

When I purchased this photo, however, I didn't realize that it showed a bear and a woman riding bikes on the high platform visible on the left-hand side (mouse over the image to see an enlargement). After I spotted the bear, I still couldn't imagine that you could train an animal like that to climb a ladder and ride a bicycle. But a YouTube clip of the Bicycle-Riding Bear that's part of The Nieroslavski Family at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, N.J.--filmed during summer 1960--provides a glimpse of how the bear performed its act.

Attitudes toward animal acts have changed over the past fifty years, however, and making a bear ride a bicycle seems inhumane and dangerous by today's standards. As far as I've been able to determine, there are no longer any bicycling bears or diving horses in Atlantic City.