RSS
Home
Musee Mecanique: It ain’t over ‘til the fat lady laughs
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Laffing Sal greets visitors for a mere fifty cents (Photo: Ed Uyeshima)
She sort of looks like Madame Defarge in the French Revolution sequence of Mel Brooks’ “The History of the World, Part I” – except a lot happier and with a much larger bra size. Her name is Laffing Sal, and she greets visitors to the Musée Mécanique located on Pier 45 near Fisherman’s Wharf. She was relocated there from the funhouse that was one of the main attractions at Playland at the Beach by way of the Cliff House in the Outer Sunset district.
Playland at the Beach wheezed its last organ-grinding ditty nearly 36 years ago. It was an amusement park that stretched along
The Thimble Theatre (Photo: Ed Uyeshima)
The place houses around three hundred coin-operated machines. They are mostly from the Playland era, but some are of more recent vintage to please the attention-deprived children (and adults) of the Xbox era. The collection was assembled by late Edward Galland Zelinsky, a fifth-generation San Franciscan who died in 2004. Anyone old enough to know what a penny arcade is will get a wave of baby-boomer nostalgia from what they see - player pianos; marionettes with happy feet; fortune-telling machines; lever-operated figures that dance; a band of Jamaican-dressed German monkeys named the Bimbo Box playing Herb Alpert songs (see the photo below); a toothpick model of an amusement park made by San Quentin inmates; and much more.
Looking through the Cail-o-Scope to enjoy the assets of a boudoir beauty (Photo: Ed Uyeshima)
Most of the machines cost a quarter or two to operate. That’s a bargain considering how that price will allow you to pretend to be a big league ballplayer in a World Series early in the last century. Or a quarter can give a peek through the ancient Cail-o-Scope where scantily-clad beauties (“passed by the New York Censors” at the time, of course) cavort in their boudoirs as the photos flip through a viewfinder. And who doesn’t want their fortune told by a gypsy in a fashionably out-of-period headscarf? There are photo booths and nickelodeons, Pac-Man and skeeball lanes, an arm wrestling challenge machine and a sex appeal tester. Yes, there is plenty there to give your self-esteem a thorough workout. Zelinsky’s son Daniel continues to maintain his father’s collection onsite with tentative plans underway to move the memory-inducing machines back to the Cliff House once further remodeling is completed.
In the meantime, it’s worth navigating through the throngs of tourists at Fisherman’s Wharf past the crab-and-chowder kiosks to seek out the Musée Mécanique. The Pier 45 building is hard to miss since the doorway is covered by Laffing Sal’s eerily welcoming face. Her mouth is the doorway, and she leaves it open from 10AM to 7PM on weekdays and until 8PM on weekends. My one minor complaint about the museum is that I wish there was a greater sense of organization to the placement of the machines and more consistent signage providing the backgrounds of each. Regardless, it’s a treat to insert some coinage to see how the previous generations entertained themselves before the days of Nintendo and Sega.
LOCATION: Pier 45, Shed A, near Fisherman's Wharf and west of Boudin Bread, 415-346-2000. Admission is free…but bring plenty of quarters.
Front entrance of the Musée Mécanique
The Bimbo Box
Inside of the Musée Mécanique (Photo: Ed Uyeshima)
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
