Nik Wallenda follows up Niagara Falls stunt with stroll over Atlantic City beach

TALK TO high-wire daredevil Nik Wallenda and you can't help but think of the iconic line from "The Treasure of Sierra Madre." Except you hear Wallenda saying, "A tether? I don't need no stinkin' tether."

Thursday at 3 p.m., Wallenda, who last month thrilled a worldwide audience with his tightrope stroll above Niagara Falls, will commence a 1,300-foot walk 100 feet above the Atlantic City beach between the Atlantic Club and Tropicana casinos.

As far as he's concerned, what's most important isn't what he'll be doing but how he'll be doing it: without the kind of safety device ABC-TV forced him to use during the Niagara Falls event. "In the history of my family's career, we've never worn a tether," said the 33-year-old scion of the famous aerialist family.

He was taking a break in his preparations for "Beyond the Falls: Nik Wallenda & The Wallenda Family Experience," a new thrill show that runs Aug. 12 through Sept. 22 at Tropicana.

The problem, he explained, is that he finds using a harness akin to an American motorist suddenly having to drive a car with the steering wheel on the right side of the cabin. Besides, he added, "I am trained to respond and catch the wire [if there's a problem]. I would have never trusted that tether."

While walking on an impossibly thin wire 100 feet or more in the air (a final height had not yet been determined when he spoke to the People Paper), Wallenda acknowledged that from his perspective, "there's no difference between 2 feet and 1,000. Anything over 60 or 70 feet is impressive." Rather, it's the prevailing meteorological conditions that are his concern. Which is why "I've trained in 90-miles-an-hour winds," he said.

As for practicing out on the beach, Wallenda claimed that isn't in his game plan. "If you fall, you're dead," he reasoned. "You just do it." But, he added, because he's been training "since I was 2 years old," he isn't particularly concerned for his safety.

One would assume Wallenda, a seventh-generation performer (it's his mother Delilah, who's the Wallenda; his father is Terry Troffer) had no choice but to enter the family business. But he briefly flirted with a different career.

"I thought about going to medical school and being a pediatrician when I was 18," he admitted. "But then I did some performances and realized this is what I wanted to do."

Wallenda's high-wire walk above the beach begins at the Atlantic Club, Boardwalk at Boston Avenue, and ends at Tropicana Atlantic City, Boardwalk at Brighton Avenue. Admission is free.