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60s Flashback: Rainbow-Colored Party Bus With Riders On Roof Stopped By Police On NJ Highway

Police couldn't believe their eyes. Cruising along westbound Route 4 in Paramus was a converted school bus with several people riding on the roof.

Party bus from Brooklyn stopped on Route 208 in Fair Lawn.

Party bus from Brooklyn stopped on Route 208 in Fair Lawn.

Photo Credit: Boyd A. Loving
How they made it more than halfway through busy Bergen County before authorities noticed is anyone's guess.

How they made it more than halfway through busy Bergen County before authorities noticed is anyone's guess.

Photo Credit: Boyd A. Loving
Among the questions this begs: Who would ride on the roof of a bus when the sun is highest in the sky during a scorcher of a heat wave?

Among the questions this begs: Who would ride on the roof of a bus when the sun is highest in the sky during a scorcher of a heat wave?

Photo Credit: Boyd A. Loving
They said they were headed from Brooklyn to Mountain Creek in Vernon Township.

They said they were headed from Brooklyn to Mountain Creek in Vernon Township.

Photo Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Amazing, really.

Amazing, really.

Photo Credit: CONTRIBUTED

Draped in flowers and sashes, the ramshackle Sixties time machine had makeshift scaffolding, a ladder in back, and a traffic cone wrapped in colorful fabric in front to resemble a unicorn's horn.

The side was painted in rainbow stripes, the front fender in pink.

Atop the party bus was an easy chair, a cooler and a clutch of riders.

The customers might've considered it groovy, but the fuzz didn't dig it at all.

Turns out the group was headed from Brooklyn to the Mountain Creek Waterpark in Sussex County, Fair Lawn Police Sgt. Brian Metzler said.

That's roughly a 2½-hour ride, minimum.

How they made it more than halfway through busy Bergen County before authorities noticed is anyone's guess.

The same goes for why anyone would sit in the noontime sun on a day when the heat index pushed into triple digits -- or, of course, why anyone would risk roof-riding in the first place.

A reader reported seeing them on the West Side Highway in Manhattan 40 minutes before it passed through Paramus.

Paramus police radioed ahead to their colleagues in Fair Lawn, who stopped the jalopy on northbound Route 208.

The minibus owner/operator received a summons for riding on an area of a vehicle not intended for passengers, said Metzler, the Fair Lawn sergeant.

Police also told them not to do it again, he said.

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