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GregVanG
Posts:874
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| 05/30/2008 7:33 AM |
 Alert
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Man Sets Up Museum For SF's 'Playland By The Beach'
POSTED: 5:26 pm PDT May 29, 2008
UPDATED: 6:01 pm PDT May 29, 2008
EL CERRITO, Calif. -- For generations of San Franciscans, "Playland By The Beach" represented fun in the sun, or more often, the fog that pervades the western end of the city's Richmond District.
Decades ago the old amusement park closed. Now in the same spot stand condominiums.
But Playland lives on at an unusual new museum that has opened in El Cerrito.
Richard Tuck has created a museum in a building he bought that is devoted to his childhood memories of Playland.
"When I purchased this building 10years ago, I only needed a portion of it for my actual business," Tuck said. "So we permanently reserved all the rest of the building just for fun. Playland to me was a magical place. I was very small at the time. This was the early 1950s."
The Ocean Beach amusement park opened in 1928 and closed in 1972.
Tuck has been a longtime collector of thousands of items from its glory days. He now has a place to put them all.
"We have everything from ride vehicles to two different Laughing Sals, Tuck said. "We've got the original 1911 Sutro clown made of paper mache. The funhouse mirror is another thing that so many people remember."
Among the items at the museum are a hand-carved circus, a Christmas village, a room devoted to sideshows, and a chamber of horrors.
"We want to capture the spirit of 100 years ago when it was an innocent age when people knew how to have fun," Tuck said.
Tuck calls his place "Playland Not At The Beach."
"We figure that the rest of the world is outside our building and once you step inside the door -- you're at Playland Not At The Beach."
The museum celebrates its grand opening this Saturday and Sunday.
Tours are available by appointment. |
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GregVanG
Posts:874
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| 05/30/2008 10:52 PM |
Alert
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Laughing Sal presides over new Playland museum
Carolyn Jones, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, May 30, 2008
Playland not-at-the-Beach is having a grand opening on Sa... The "Tip a Troll" arcade is on display on Thursday, May 2... Board members Zelda Holland and Frank Biafore tour the di... "Laughing Sal" is on display at the entrance on Thursday,... More...
Laughing Sal is cackling once more.
The gap-toothed, red-haired, plaster icon who terrified generations of kids at San Francisco's defunct Playland-at-the-Beach has resurfaced - maniacal laugh and all - in El Cerrito.
Laughing Sal and thousands of other Playland relics are part of a new museum, opening today, that pays tribute to the exhilarating, seedy world of carnivals, circuses, haunted houses, arcades and bygone amusement parks.
The museum, a nonprofit called Playland-Not-at-the-Beach, is part history exhibit and part fun house. Visitors will be able to play 80-year-old pinball machines, watch a century-old penny arcade called "Knotty Peek," and see authentic side-show attractions such as a two-headed duckling, a mermaid and a carp exposed to a bit too much radiation.
"I think all of us wish we lived in a kinder, gentler age," said Richard Tuck, an El Cerrito businessman who started planning the museum eight years ago. "This is someplace we can keep reality out. The great reward has been seeing the joy it brings everyone. I love to see people smile."
The collection grew out of Tuck's personal stash of Playland relics, which he had been storing in his office on San Pablo Avenue. Tuck traces his Playland fascination to childhood, when his parents would make the drive from Petaluma to the 10-acre amusement park on Ocean Beach.
On weekends, friends and local kids would come to Tuck's office to tinker with the collection. Word got out, and people began donating their own Playland relics.
"When the bulldozers came through Playland in 1972, neighbors grabbed stuff from the Dumpsters like they were trophies," Tuck said. "But most of it just stayed in people's garages. Now people are realizing this stuff belongs in a museum."
Eventually Tuck and his fellow Playland aficionados decided to turn the collection into a public museum. Hundreds of volunteers, including, kids, artists, hobbyists and veterans of the original Playland, helped restore the artifacts.
The museum occupies 9,000 square feet in a nondescript former grocery store at San Pablo Avenue and Jefferson Street. Divided into 18 rooms, the museum includes an exhibit on the Sutro Baths, a spectacular 32-foot acrylic mural of Playland, a miniature recreation of San Francisco in 1939, and a tribute to Santa's Village, the Christmas theme park in the Santa Cruz mountains that closed in 1977.
Among the more awe-inspiring exhibits is Circus World, a 300,000-piece, hand-carved miniature circus depicting a day - June 30, 1930 - in the life of the Sells-Floto Circus. El Cerrito typesetter Don Marcks spent 50 years painstakingly researching and carving the diorama. Each elephant took a month, and there are 40 of them, Tuck said.
Born in 1860s
Playland-at-the-Beach dates from the 1860s, when individual concessionaires started opening rides, booths and other seaside attractions near Cabrillo and Balboa streets on the western edge of San Francisco. The Cliff House, Sutro Baths, zoo and buffalo paddock were also part of the panoply that helped draw thousands of visitors to Ocean Beach.
In the 1920s two businessmen began buying the concessions, then known as Chutes at the Beach, intending to transform the area into the biggest amusement park on the West Coast. In 1923, George Whitney took over and changed the name to Playland-at-the-Beach, expanding the park until World War II. In the 1950s, Whitney died, two roller-coasters were demolished and Playland started a long decline.
It was torn down on Labor Day weekend in 1972 and replaced with condominiums. Remnants of Playland have resurfaced at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, Musee Mecanique in San Francisco and other spots. There's no shortage of Laughing Sals - 278 of the unnerving mannequins still exist, mostly former centerpieces at amusement parks throughout the United States.
Labor of love
For El Cerrito teacher Zelda Holland, volunteering to restore the Playland artifacts has been a labor of love. The San Francisco native spent much of her youth hanging out at Playland.
"It's so nostalgic for me. It brings back a lot of memories of boyfriends and ... stuff," she said Thursday, her voice tapering off while folding brochures for the museum's opening day. "It reminds me of my favorite city."
Emeryville artist John Aaron, who worked on the "San Francisco 1939" exhibit, likes the museum's mix of art, history and fun.
"This place is an imagination emporium," he said. "They let the artists just go wild. It's been one of the most fascinating and rewarding projects I've been a part of."
Vintage games
Not everyone is drawn by their memories of Playland. For Beverly Needham, a merchandiser from El Cerrito, the main attraction is the vintage pinball games.
"These old games remind me of hanging out at the Central Pool Hall in Point Richmond in the early 1970s," she said. "They had a pinball machine that had a kicking donkey. I was just drinking Cokes, of course, but that's what I remember. Those were good times."
Muralists Dan Fontes and Ed Cassel spent almost two years completing the 32-foot Playland mural, basing the images on more than 1,400 snapshots. Because most of the photos are black-and-white, they read San Francisco history books, letters and diaries to determine the accurate colors.
"People have a longing for what this represents - a simpler time," Cassel said. "Now there's only little vestiges of Playland left. But without these reminders, people won't understand what it was all about. There's just a bunch of condos there now."
-- For a video from the new Playland-Not-at-the-Beach museum in El Cerrito, go to SFGate.com.
If you go
Playland-Not-at-the-Beach opens at 10 a.m. today. Cost is $5. All the games are free. The museum will be open weekends and by reservation. For information, call (510) 592-3002 or go to www.playland-not-at-the-beach.org. The museum is at 10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. |
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