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Playing at the Beach, San Francisco
For 50 years San Francisco had a Coney Island-type amusement park on its Ocean Beach shoreline near the Cliff House. Playland-at-the-Beach, opened in 1921, had a midway, fun house, carnival rides, restaurants, sideshows, a dance hall, a wax museum, and nearly 100 concessions. The park was the destination of choice for the families of the city during the Depression and it flourished in the 1940s with Topsy's dance hall crammed with uniformed soldiers and their girlfriends dancing to swing music performed by the big band, Red Lockwood and his Musical Roosters. The most popular rides were the water chutes, especially Big Dipper, whose cars travelled 3000 feet in just sixty seconds including a thrilling 80 foot drop. But by the '60s the park was looking shopworn and more affluent San Franciscans were travelling south to other parks such as Disneyland. Playland-at-the-Beach finally closed in 1973 and today not trace of it remains at Ocean Beach. But various parts of the park can still be found in numerous museums around San Francisco.
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