 So this is Playland and you can see the view here and it encompasses this area with get Fulton This whole area right here was all Playland and of course up there you've got the cliff house and on the other side of that You have the shoot throw baths We have here the the ride shoot the shoots and Initially the park was called shoots at the beach not Playland at the beach It was changed in 1929. It was named after the key ride Let's talk a little bit about the merry-go-round This is a loof merry-go-round. It was built and shipped here in 1906 almost 1906 and the reason is we had an earthquake and Instead because of the quake they sent it to Seattle It went to Luna Park in Seattle where it stayed there until about 1914 the owner Loof family they did not like Seattle. They did not like Luna Park So when San Francisco said they were going to have the Pan Pacific International Expo They said let's relocate back to San Francisco. Anyway Our merry-go-round had a menagerie which means more than just horses. It had other animals Here you can see some of the horses and other animals. I love this Dragon on the front of the Gondola ride or the chariot ride This is Will Schmidt He was a regular at the park. He owned a couple of concessions. He owned the Hammer strike what not he helped to maintain the merry-go-round His son worked the part for a while and and his grandson It was actually a friend of mine Still has a lot of the material from that and he loaned me a lot of material for doing the book Next thing was the Midway Midway is where we used to like to hang out when I was in my teens and it was a place where you could chase girls and see what was going on and Play the games a chance Of course there was the cat rack this thing was really a pain You have all these cats lined up. They were lead weighted on the bottom They had all this fringe around the tops and you're supposed to hit them with a baseball and knock them over You had to knock them all the way off. It was not easy This photo was taken in the late 60s. I wish I had this in color because those pants would have been fantastic I mean boy, I tell you We were peacocks back at that time. I mean that was just amazing San Francisco was a fun place to be This is fascination so fascination was a game a game of chance And so there were lots of games a chance there and in fact play land had what we would call legalized gambling if you looked around you could see here Jameson scotch a little white horse up here And a few other they're all these different prizes. Well, if you won the prize, you didn't take the prize You took the cash the prize was worth so you were playing for money. I don't know if anyone has ever played fascination You can play it today over in El Cerrito at playland not at the beach and Fun place to go. They've recreated a lot of playland. They do have a Number of the fascination Stations and it's a lot of fun. It's it's habit-forming. I'll go over there and play it for hours Had the arcades here they had two different buildings with arcades and A lot of fun again, it was a good place to hang out and then the the firing ranges so that was one of the first things they had at playland back when it was even before it was shoots at the beach it was the Just a series of concessions and it was called Loosely called concessions at the beach and they called in lead galleries in the lead gallery for some of the first attractions there A lot of fun to do I spent a lot of time blowing money on those as well These are the later Remington automatic models, you notice there are no tethers on those things You can turn around and shoot people behind you safety was not a concern people didn't do stupid things back then So you could trust people before that they had the model 1906 Winchester pumps and I actually have one of those and it still works lot of fun Attractions we had all kinds of attractions Anybody ever go to the model car raceways There you go. That was fun so everybody had slot cars back in the 60s and You could race against each other This is in black and white, but this thing was purple gorgeous track A lot of fun And then of course you had skate land Skate land was roller skating Kids from Polly all the way to skate land and this is a Page couple pages out of their yearbook that one of the I was gonna say kids one of the people that went there sent to me but a lot of fun and Then fun tear town so fun tear town was set up for the little Partners and cowgirls where it was a safe place for kids to go This was in the mid to late 60s till it closed in 72 and the park was getting a little bit of a rough element so They they sectioned off a place kind of like Disneyland and there's a good reason for that So George Whitney jr. The son of the owner George Whitney Was employee number seven for Disneyland When Disney came out to California to look at opening a park He visited a number of amusement parks and he came to playland and he saw the playland was operating quite well They were doing extremely well at that time so he wanted to know well, how do you do it and he spent a lot of time there and Hired away George Whitney so or George jr. Rather and just Kids loved it. It was not terribly expensive. I never got to go to a party there. I was too old by the time it opened But I know kids that did and they just thought that was the greatest thing in the whole world This is it before it closed and it was looking a little ratty here, but you can see again it had the Disneyland type Frontier area look to it Cookie Cube was another Attraction that was a what they call a slant house Anybody ever go to the mystery spot down in Santa Cruz? So it's like that everyone up is down sideways, you know, whatever Things that are tall look short It was that kind of a thing what it really wound up being this was put in in the mid 60s mostly was for Kids to go in and smoke dope and get really high and it was really cool They had clubs so top seas roost was a chicken place. It was a place where you know 50 cents you got a half a fried chicken You got cornpone. You got pie and it was very very popular They closed that in 1945 and the reason they did a lot of the African-Americans were coming up for the war and they Felt that okay. This was no longer correct for us to be Projecting it that way so they went with the Edgewater, which was a dance club great place my dad's best friend and his wife met there and I Was talking to her here just a while back and she talked about how they love to go there and dance If you look in the far side, you can see the bullpup restaurant here as well Which later moved over to this corner the bullpup enchilada was one of my favorites So anyway, that one closed down because again Things have their their lifetime and they put up Barnum's at the beach George Whitney was Compared to PT Barnum and they called him the Barnum of the West so he liked that idea he brought back the top seas idea of little top seas for eats and So again, they were selling chicken, but he brought it with the circus theme and Here's a view of the beach They were still parking stacked out like this have you look here at how low the sand is at this time So that goes in cycles the sand will keep pulling back after a big storm And then when we don't have any storms, it'll start packing in at this time it was the surf club that was in playland and the surf club was a A place that you've rented so you couldn't just go there you had to go for an event So it was more of a venue than it was a club and this was a family dog Chet Helms opened the family dog there at the at the pavilion He negotiated with George jr. To get that and he would put in things like country Joe and the fish That only lasted for about three years and the problem is they were they were competing with other venues and so They finally closed that and then it became the friends and family relations hall and in this case You can see they've got the rock opera Tommy playing over there The rides were a kick. So again, this is the shoot the shoots ride And you can see how tall it was up here Again one of our cars the number seven trolley that went down there That was about 70 foot up to the tall top of the shoots ride and here you can see the the boat coming down So this was a water ride and when that came down there was nothing holding that car in or that boat in It was just down there were some skids here to keep it from flipping off But other than that it was a free fall into the water in earlier shoots rides Some of them actually flipped and this one it couldn't anymore, which was nice, but this was about in 1942-1943 What's funny as you look at the outfits here people are wearing hats. They're wearing coats They're all dressed because people dressed in San Francisco in those days if you're going out You went out dressed. You didn't go out in blue jeans and a t-shirt. It just didn't happen And here they're 1955 they're tearing it down the reason they did was that The word was that parks were making more money off the smaller flat rides than they were the big Keystone rides Whitney said well, it's a lot of money to maintain this thing. It need to be fixed up Let's go ahead and tear it down and put some flat rides in so that's what he did That was actually his first mistake This is the the big dipper had the tallest drop west of the Mississippi Again 70 foot from here to the ground, but it was an 80-foot drop Now how do you get an 80-foot? Well, you see that goes right into the ground. So this went 10 foot under ground So this is it. This is it Fulton and Cabrillo and you can see this thing This is the draw going up and then here's a bunch of people coming down Fun thing about this is notice the lack of seatbelts safety bars anything You could stand up and people did stand up. I Know I have one documented case of somebody standing up. I was a sailor in 1945 He'd been out in the South Pacific fighting the Japanese he survived He was thrilled to death. He and his buddy came to town. They went to play land They met a couple of girls and they were riding with these girls and he was so charged He was so excited so happy. He stood up the whole ride Until he got to this one overhead and his head hit and overhead beam and crushed his skull. So he died And you can see here most the tracks were flat this one was banked a little bit You think oh my god, that looks rickety actually was very well built I've got pictures in my first book play land the early years. It shows the building of this thing That was extremely well built. I would say they don't have them like that anymore except they do There's one in Santa Cruz that is the sister coaster of this one, but it is 33% smaller than this one was so you look at the giant dipper at Santa Cruz. You think wow, it's a big coaster This one was 50% bigger than that and that one is well maintained now that one is in cement and If you look here all these posts went down into the sand and you can see a rot here underneath in 1955 the state said he was starting to rebuild this and the state said okay But you have to put them all in concrete now You can't just put it in dirt or the sand or whatever and you can see the the track going underneath so He said well, I'm not gonna put that kind of money into it and Whitney was getting a little old 1955 and he was towards the end of his life. He was tired. His son was working at Disneyland and he says I'm gonna tear it down So he tore it down 1955 and put more flat rides in that was his mistake number two Then we had the diving belt. This is during World War two. This is about 1945 the first one in San Francisco was at the Golden Gate International Expo on Treasure Island George Whitney was the master of ceremonies and in charge of the amusements out on Treasure Island When you saw that the guy that built it he says okay, you got put you got to put one of these in my park and It was extremely popular what this was it was a diving bell on a pole with wheels that would Drive it down underwater 35 foot down In a big tank that was 45 foot across and it had salt water in it and he actually had sharks in there Once in a while he'd have an octopus whatever they could catch Anyway, the fun part about this was the thing and go down and then it would slowly go back up and people could see all these Fishes well, that wasn't very exciting. So they decided instead of doing that. Let's just release the break and let it pop up like a cork That was great. I mean your stomach I'm gonna ride in that thing and they they they get down the bottom You're looking around and a lot of times it was a little murky. You couldn't see a lot and whatnot But it was kind of a leaky thing. It just wasn't Totally watertight. So you'd see water dripping in there and stuff like that and condensation Okay, all of a sudden the operator say oh my gosh. He says one of the portholes is giving way Hang on we got a pop to the surface. He'd pull the break off and you pop to the surface. Your stomach is still way down there I mean people would throw up coming up on that thing. It was fun You know that bullpup inch a lot. It was coming up fast. So a lot of fun So here's Marion With a leopard shark that she's dropping in there and she doesn't handle them She was really good with them. This is her daughter Teresa who's a friend of mine She loaned me all her pictures on the on the ride Here you can see it popping up and Again, here's a soldier here. There's a sailor over here and this again is more towards the the end of the war Another shot of it. This is this is in the second location and Here you can see the heyday ride and the the skylark The Dodger was a fun one. So that was a bumper car ride And by the way, if you like bumper cars one of the cars is actually over at Playland not at the beach So in El Cerrito you can actually sit in it. It's a hands-on type museum and get your picture taken in it So I've been in there and here you can see the various cars This is one of the early ones in the 1940s What I did is I found that I could date these things by the grills Because they only lasted about 10 years and so every 10 years I had to replace them and You notice they'd have different grills in them. So this is one from the 50s They did have kitty areas A lot of these kitty rides wound up at fun tear land so this is a flash Gordon and Dale Arden getting ready to fight another battle in in space and this old plank Ride here where the cars actually went around After the turning down of the Big Dipper They had the world's largest portable roller coaster and this thing was big. I mean it went a long distance It wasn't very high But it was a steel roller coaster They could tear that thing down in one day put it in a truck take it someplace else and you can see that you know it's kind of Sitting on the ground and then going up and down and that thing. I mean to me it was rickety. I wrote it, but it was rickety Here's another view of it and you can see how far out it went here These kids are having a great time But this is a high-miler and this thing gets way up there as you can see these guys hanging up in the middle Of the air. I didn't ride that one. I Don't like heights and you can see again. They're just hanging on You know, there's nothing holding them in Anybody remember Captain Satellite? Yes In those days that they have a lot of accidents with those rides. Yes, they did they did And you know, but people we weren't that sue happy back then. I mean if somebody got hurt Oh, well, I rode the ride. I did some in the only way you got hurt if you did something stupid They only had one time where the thing where the car actually went off the track that was on the Bob's ride and the Guy who owned the park before Whitney actually left the country Because he was afraid he was going to get sued and that's when he turned started turning the park over to George Whitney But for the most part people that got hurt got hurt because they did something stupid. They stood up They climbed out of it. Hey one lady was so excited when she went down the big dipper She actually jumped off and got a compound fracture her leg because she just Skilled to death so okay. Well, that was dumb, but that's what people did stuff like that in those days This was Captain Satellite's helicopter ride. He was on channel 2 KTVU channel 2 had a program there And this was a trainer an actual helicopter trainer. It was not designed as a ride But he would take kids up and then he would pilot the thing and go up and down in this case We had we were it was a windy day He was thinking ah, maybe I better land it and then we got this huge gust and it picked it up and flipped it and Dumped it over One person got a minor injury, but other than that nobody was really hurt. So But he felt pretty bad about it and he apologized on air the next day and Shut down the ride. So that was the end of that This was the best ride in the world of the fly-off plane came out in the 30s and 40s and carried through all the way to the end of the park I used to tell people I could fly that up sling upside down. Everybody says no, you couldn't they don't go upside down What I found was in the 60s They didn't want it to go upside down anymore because it was too hard on the mechanism So they put blocks in them so they couldn't they could only go sideways They couldn't go upside down a really fun ride You could make it, you know, you could take the stick you could go side to side up and down You really felt like you were flying the plane. It was fun. It was a riot Over here you can see the the racing derby diving bell again and the dark mystery dark ride This is the heyday this is one of those rides it it goes in multiple directions So it's going in a circle. It's going up and down if you're subject to Car sickness or anything like that you're gonna really get it on this one Here was the racing derby again and the fun part of this is You really could race on it. It was it was a merry-go-round of sorts as you rocked the horse back and forth And it was going around There was a friction guide down here that with enough friction you could work it up towards the front of this trough And so if you're rocking it hard enough you get up to the front and everybody in your row You're in competition with them to see who could get the furthest ahead. So you could win They had the the rollo plane over here, which this thing Could go every which way so this thing would go around and then when this thing would get up Going a lot then they'd take and rotate this so instead of going up and down and around you're going horizontal around So my friend Marv Gold who works out of playland not at the beach Was one of the operators for this thing and one of his favorite things is if he got You know a couple of smart act smart out kids up there or something like that he would Say okay time for a coffee break and he'd leave him up there and walk away for a couple of minutes As though he was gonna leave and I'd scare him pretty good The other one is the roto jets. This is the same as the Astro ride at Disneyland This thing fell out of World War two and what it was a German company was making Anti-aircraft guns when they lost the war he lost all his business because nobody's gonna buy German anti-aircraft guns and instead he just put a Rocket on the end of the gun barrel They still sell those today octopus ride again You had a couple of cars on the end of one of eight rides and this thing would spin around it would go up and down and just Again, if you're out at the hot house or at the pie shop, you know, we could bring them back up again And the Rocko plane Fun ride these things you could get these to spin all the way around or spin over As you go up the control was inside and the Delta Whirl This one had about four different directions. You could see the the rail here. This is on a pivot here with Charlie wheels going on this rail. So this thing would spin around again, you know, your usual as being amusement park rides to Just take you in all different directions And then the fun house So if you look up here, this is laughing Sal up in the corner You look over here and you see all these white hats. This is during a World War two What all these guys are looking for is they're looking through the window because as you walked into this thing They had holes in the floor So they're hooked up to a compressor and the operator could sit there and pull a lever and blow air up the air hole Any woman walking underneath if she was wearing a skirt it would blow her skirt up They actually got sued for that as well in 1927 some lady sued because she got so embarrassed when it blew her dress up and showed off her knickers She got $50,000 from them. They didn't change it. They said it was worth the money because it brought in the people So and everybody knew that going in so I mean if you if a gal was wearing a skirt. She knew she was at risk Here's laughing Sal So and the question always comes up, you know, well, where is she now and The answer is which one During the period we had four of them Two of them now are still in operation one is at Pier 45 down at down at the Museum Mechanique another one is at At Santa Cruz Beach and boardwalk. That does not have the original head So oh, these are the walking Charlie's to go around a couple of walking Charlie's out at Playland not at the beach now This is this is the human laundry. So as you went into the fun house, you had to go through this thing You can't tell it from this picture, but these things are spinning if you're a short kid like I was you couldn't even see over The top you just had to keep working your way through till you got out This is the joy wheel some people call it the record player and Some people called it the turntable and as it gained speed it would start to throw people off You know, this is wonderful for OSHA. I mean, you know, you think okay. What's the thing doing? It's throwing people off into the wall You can see here the size of it and then you have the walls the walls were padded nobody got hurt I think there I read one in place in an article of some kid that broke his arm and that was all in good fun Okay, broke his arm, you know, he'll heal. It's no big deal It was a fun place here. You have this is the small slide and The big slide was down here and or the giant slide but Just a fun place This is the top of the giant slide and here you can see the gunny sacks you had to ride on You really weren't supposed to take your shoes up there. So you see this kid I think has a socks on instead of shoes. No way were you supposed to have sneakers on? Yeah, I remember you I used to get burn marks from when you're sliding down so fast and your skin hits the wood Oh, yeah on your arms. Yeah, if you if you got your arms down there Definitely you get burn marks on it. It was five stories tall I can't give you the exact length. I don't remember off the top of my head But it was a long ways down. It was a long ride and they had the the barrel of joy So this was a fun one. This thing was turning and You had to walk through it face left stand direct and walk through a lot of people It's trying to walk straight through and of course they'd wind up falling over Another chance to break an arm or something Castle ups and downs This was the walkway that would go up and down and up and down and you'd walk through it So you'd be walking along and then the floor would drop out from under you You know, I mean these things it's stupid, but there were a lot of fun Staggering stairs So you can see here one stair go this way the other stair go that way and you had to walk up it You know it could be done it was a lot of fun and then the laughing mirrors there were actually Two mirror attractions. This is one of them and then there was the house of mirrors downstairs Anybody I remember seeing the lady from Shanghai that took place at At the fun house on the outside on the inside. It was actually in studio You know, they weren't gonna let them bust up all the mirrors inside the fun house But that's the only only movie we have that actually shows Playland as a movie Unfortunately everything comes to an end it got things got a little rough out there and Everybody wanted to make money off the land The last day was Labor Day September 4th, 1972 They close it that day and that was that was the end of it If you go out to Safeway Take a look at it the Tank for the diving bell in fact is underneath it. They tried to pull the tank out. They couldn't do it So instead they just filled it in so the ghost of the diving bell and all those sharks still live under Safeway So they tried to bring it back couldn't do it when Jeremy etz Hogan tore it down. He did it without permits. The board of supervisors says you can't do that the land was developed ten years later by a Mexican sponsored firm who actually built those condos that are there today So anyway, I do have a few books for sale back there if anyone's interested But again, I don't push it if you brought copies. I'm more than happy to sign them. So well, thank you