Photos of a by-gone era of San Francisco's Playland At the Beach

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Enjoy!

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/parenting/detail?entry_id=86849

 

[Curt]

Long gone are those days, I visited the Cliff house museum as a child in the late 50's only to return in the 70's to find it all gone. It had a history of burning down but was always rebuilt. The arcade is on a pier in Fisherman's Wharf, the mummies are in collections and the bed, clothes and artifacts of Tom Thumb and his wife are who knows where. It made a lifetime impression on me.

The Pike in Long Beach is long gone to as are other places of public history.

 

[Trask]

Thank you very much for posting this. As a 9 year old in 1960 I moved (with family, of course) from NJ to Los Altos/Mountain View on the Peninsula, and a couple years later my cousins moved from Long Island to San Francisco, near Golden Gate Park. When we'd go up to visit, the four of us kids would go to Sutro's and Playland -- what parents today would let kids 10 and 11 wander around the City alone these days? I loved the Fun House - the wooden slide with burlap sacks to sit on, or the rotating table you'd sit on and try to stay on as it accelerated. I know that all things must pass, but it saddens me that the kind of innocent fun we had then seems gone these days.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I'm glad both of you enjoyed the photos. The magic of photography is that it brings back memories or transport you back to another time.

 

[Jeff Kubach]

Even though I was never there, I did enjoy the pictures!

Jeff