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HistorySmith: Tales of California and San Francisco
Category:
History
Publisher: Linden Publishing
ISBN-10: 1884995675
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 288
Copyright: Nov 1, 2010
ISBN-13: 9781884995675
San Francisco’s Playland at the Beach: The Early Years is the first definitive photographic record of one of America’s most historical amusement parks. Illustrated with 250 rare photographs (including many never-before-seen photos from the collections of Playland luminaries Arthur Looff, John Friedle and George Whitney), the book documents Playland’s history from its earliest construction though its heyday in the 1920s–1940s. This is a complete photograph history of the construction of Playland and its signature attractions, including the Big Dipper, Shoot the Chutes, the Hippodrome Merry-Go-Round, the Red Bug cars, Topsy’s Roost and more — a richly illustrated time-machine fun ride through Playland’s glory days.
San Francisco's Playland at the Beach: The Early Years
James R. Smith
Playland at the Beach and its predecessor, Chutes at the Beach offered a magical place, a place that is revered in the hearts of San Franciscans and all who visited. Playland wasn’t just another amusement park – it had an identity that encompassed socialization, dining, playing, strolling and sight-seeing that was purely San Francisco. The Hippodrome enclosing San Francisco’s famed carousel now located at the Zeum in the Yerba Buena Gardens offered the park’s first ride.
Envisioned in 1913 and named Chutes at the Beach in 1919 by John Friedle and Arthur Looff, the park became Playland at the Beach in 1929 under the leadership of George and Leo Whitney. The park was always a work in progress, striving to offer its patrons the latest attractions and rides. Surviving the Great Depression, World War II and the growth of the city in the fifties and sixties, it couldn’t hold up to the encroaching theme parks and increasing need for housing.
Over 250 photographs spanning the time period from 1919 until 1935 with a few exceptions provide views not seen for generations. The majority of the photographs included in San Francisco's Playland at the Beach: The Early Years were extracted from a 400 photograph album purchased from the estate of Laurence “Laurie” Hollings, artist, illustrator and creator of rides for Playland at the Beach, Disneyland and his own Frontier Village, San Jose, CA and Legend City, Phoenix-Tempe, AZ.
Visitors to the park will recall the Big Dipper Roller Coaster and the Shoot the Chutes water ride. DodgEm, later called the Dodger, gave drivers an opportunity to express their aggressions in bumper cars on a steel floor. The Fun House is remembered for the six-story giant slide and the air blasts that lifted the occasional unwary skirt. The smells and taste of a Pie Shop blackberry pie, Topsy’s chicken and a Bull Pupp enchilada all added to the Playland experience. The staccato of the four shooting galleries, the rumble of the wooden roller coaster and its passengers’ screams, the orchestrion playing marching tunes at the Merry-Go-Round and the bells ringing out wins in the arcades all remain in their memories but none is recalled more often than the raucous laughter of Laffing Sal, standing in her window above the Fun House, rocking to and fro. All this was accompanied by the barking of sea lions, the crescendo of the crashing waves as the Pacific Ocean spilled onto Ocean Beach and the laughter of people having fun.
The wrecker’s ball quickly took the park down after its final closing at the end of Labor Day, 1972. San Francisco's Playland at the Beach: The Early Years brings those all back to life in a richly illustrated walk through that beloved amusement park.
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