Grownup Party! August 26, 1950

A few years ago, I found a small group of slides, labeled "Nancy's Birthday - August 26, 1950"; They were so fun and full of vintage party goodness that I thought you might get a kick out of them too.

In this first one, guests are lounging in a wood-paneled living room; since the rest of the photos seem to take place at a club or restaurant, this might be where everyone met for pre-party cocktails. Or post-party cocktails, since that one lady appears to be asleep! Maybe she always closes her eyes before the flash fires. Check out the strapless red dress on that one woman... very glamorous.

Now they've moved to another location. Van Johnson is getting a smooch from June Allyson;  a  waiter takes a short cigarette break while chatting with the bartender. 

There was plenty of smoking and drinking going on, just like in "Mad Men". Notice the tiny television on the wall in the upper right corner. I wish I knew where these pictures were taken; they have a "back east" vibe to them, but it's hard to say.

Schaefer Beer makes me think of the New York World's Fair. The fella on our left is having a great time!

On an entirely different note, I have been playing around with my new Epson scanner. It's pretty advanced compared to my old one, and I'm slowly learning some new tricks. The scanner has the ability to detect dust and scratches by doing a separate infrared pass; the screen grab below shows all of the dust and other junk marked in red (I normally give slides a quick blast of compressed air and wipe each side with a soft brush, but I didn't do that for this example).

When I tell the scanner to eliminate the flaws, it takes just a few seconds! It's kind of miraculous. I did brighten it up a bit, but other than that, I spent no time tediously cloning out dirt and fuzz. Once in a while the software does some weird things to certain edges, but overall I have found this feature to be a big timesaver. When I think of all the hours I've spent over the years cleaning up dusty slides....!

I hope you have enjoyed today's party.

Beautiful Tomorrowland, September 1971

I love this first photo of the Mark III Monorail sitting at the station, while a turquoise Peoplemover train slowly trundles by; Santa Fe was still sponsoring things in '71 - now that I think about it, I wonder why they didn't insist on having their logo on the Peoplemover? I know that calling it a "train" might be stretching things, but still.

The park really looks lovely from this angle, with plenty of landscaping, making Tomorrowland look like a place you want to be, instead of sterile and bleak.

Here's another beauty! A climber is on the Matterhorn, Skyway buckets pass overhead, and we get more Monorail and Peoplemover goodness. I sure would love to step into this September, 1971 photo and explore!

Frontier Village Postcards!

Here is the fifth installment of scans featuring vintage postcards from the collection of Ken Martinez! Today's subject - Frontier Village - is one that interests me a lot, although I didn't know anything about it until years after it had closed. As always, Ken has provided lots of great info:

Frontier Village, San Jose, California

Frontier Village was a western themed amusement park located in San Jose, California. It opened on October 21, 1961. It was one of several local parks that dotted the an Francisco Bay Area along with Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, Santa's Village, and Children's Fairyland in Oakland. Like the other three parks, it was a place I spent time at during my childhood.

Probably the most iconic image of Frontier Village was the main entrance to the park which consisted of two wooden frontier blockhouses. Here visitors would pass the block houses, cross a bridge over a lagoon and venture onto Central Square. In the distance is the Frontier Village train station.

Here's the Frontier Village Victorian train station in Central Square. It's one of the first buildings seen after entering Frontier Village. From Central Square visitors would venture further and enter Main Street.

The first building visitors saw entering Main Street was the Silver Dollar Saloon. Many of the buildings on Main Street were two-story with the upper story comprising of offices for park personnel. Also on Main Street were the General Store, Marshal's Office and Jail, Arcade and Last National Bank.

In front of the Frontier Village Marshal's Office on Main Street we have the marshal greeting a young cowpoke. Located in this building were Lost and Found and First Aid. Here visitors could also buy tickets or report any problems. There were several men that played the role of Frontier Village Marshal throughout the park's history.

Here we have one of the Frontier Village's costumed characters "Tumbleweed" posing in the opening of the Lost Dutchman's Mine. Other characters included Theodore the Bear and the fluorescent green gorilla "Kaktus Kong". I'm still on the lookout for any ephemera of postcards showing the elusive gorilla.

The "Lost Dutchman's Mine" was manufactured by Arrow Development Company. A conventional black light dark ride, it would carry riders through a subterranean world aboard "ore cart" vehicles. If you look close enough you can see the bus bar track that powered and guided the vehicles through the cavern, passed waterfalls, glowing stalactites and bubbling pots.

The Lost Dutchman's Mine also called Lost Frontier Mine had a haunted theme so it was filled with several skeleton miners including the one shown here who would ignite the box or TNT creating an "explosion" and flash of bright light startling riders in the "ore carts".

Frontier Village closed forever on September 28, 1980. There were plans to expand the park in the late 1970's, but competition from the new Marriott's Great America theme park which opened in 1976 and local neighborhood resistance ensured its demise. Hope you enjoyed your visit to Frontier Village.

Information Source material:

Frontier Village (Images of America) copyright 2013 by Bob Johnson

Frontier Village www.frontiervillage.net

It makes me sad that this charming park is now history; when my niece and nephew were little (and lived in San Jose), we certainly would have visited Frontier Village many times! Oh well.

THANK YOU, Ken Martinez, for sharing more of your vintage postcards, and for all of your research! I truly appreciate it.

Flower Market, August 1971

Here's a lovely photo of the long-lived Flower Market on West Center Street (I believe it was first seen in 1958) - just look at those dazzling fake blossoms! I've always wondered how well they sold; apparently well enough to keep them there for almost two decades. I'd rather look at the artificial flowers as opposed to plush dolls or ODV carts, but I'm weird. You could even buy a plastic apple, orange, or banana; this is probably where the Swiss Family Robinson shopped for produce. 

According to some websites, the Flower Market moved from West Center Street to East Center Street in 1977. And yet... this photo (from 1971, like the previous one) shows that there were flowers for sale on East Center Street much earlier (there's the Hallmark store). I also noticed that this side of the street was already covered in brick pavers - something that I didn't think was used until decades later. 

Continued Photos From Huck!

Today I have even more photos, thanks to the generosity of GDB friend Huck Caton. All of these relate to the famous cast member canoe races (a Disneyland tradition that dates all the way back to 1963). I thought that the parks didn't do the races anymore, but a quick Google search showed me the error of my ways. Besides building team morale, the races are just plain fun.

Huck says that this first photo shows the Bell canoe team (they worked at "America the Beautiful", if you recall), posing in Bear Country just before they completely humiliated the "Fantasyland North" team!

Here's the Bell team as they prepare to head out into the river. They look calm and confident. The blue-shirts in the background are the Fantasyland North team.

Huck says that this very cool photo is of a "canoe timing run", but I forgot to ask him why it was done. A warmup? Did it help decide which teams raced against each other? Did is loosen the water molecules, making for a faster final race?

This one is blurry, but I included it because girls.

After the slaughter, the victorious team took time out for another photo. Their smiles say it all.

Many thanks to Huck for sharing his personal photos with us! The next batch is wacky, I'll tell ya what.

Town Square 1960 Rescan

I may have already mentioned that I finally got a new scanner (who has time to remember such things?). After a day of doing my part to build a better America, I went through an old box of previously-scanned slides to see if any of them looked like they might be improved with a new scan. In my opinion, the answer was "yes".

Here's a scan from a photo from the 1950s; it had turned very pink; my first attempt at color-correction (from 2006) was OK... some of the blues and yellows came back a bit, but there was still some overall pink tones, and the contrast was off.

So... here is my attempt at a rescan with new corrections. Same dpi (2400) - it's still not "perfect" but it does look crisper, and you'd hardly know that the original was so very pink. Looking at it as I write this, I still think it could do with a bit more "brightening", but I don't want to overdo it... I want to preserve as much detail  in the light areas as I can. While the new scanner's software is nice, I know that my Photoshop skills have improved a lot since 2006, as well. (Is this too much "inside baseball"?)

The details in the photo are fun, particularly this bouquet of lovely young ladies in their dresses. And the Bekins wagon is cool too.

I'm sure I've seen it before, but I sure didn't recall this horse's head on the façade.

I thought I was done, but then I noticed that the window of the apartment above the Firehouse was open... I can't help thinking Walt Disney was up there at that very moment, perhaps enjoying a bowl of chili! Out of all of my Firehouse slides, I have only one other that shows that window open. 

It also appears that the bell overhead is being rung, probably by some freckle-faced Quasimodo down below - I'll bet that racket got old in a hurry.

I hope you enjoyed today's rescan!

Unrejected Instamatics!

I'm getting down to the bottom of the barrel of my scans of vintage Instamatic negatives (given to me by my friend "Mr. X"). There are still some beauties remaining (which I will be doling out in future posts), but there are six or seven images that I very nearly deleted due to various problems. However, I couldn't bring myself to trash them. SO... here they are, lovably flawed, like so many of the best things in life.

Knowing of Mr. X's love of the Disneyland Railroad, I can only assume that he wanted to capture the sight of the passenger train as it waited at Frontierland Station. Unfortunately it's a bit blurry, and a bit askew; but I love seeing the Columbia and the Old Mill, not to mention the construction walls (decorated with attraction posters) for New Orleans Square. 

This view of Main Street Station gets some points for being taken from one of the Horse Drawn Streetcars, but there's not much else to love about it. You can see that it is late afternoon; it won't be long until all of the lights on Main Street are turned on. The Santa Fe sign over the doorway is neat.

This one really was in danger of being rejected! But I suppose it is still kind of interesting, by virtue of being unlike most photos of the Monorail. The sky is violet, and the lamps have been lit. I need to look at other vintage photos of the area, because I'm not entirely sure what sign is being supported on those metal legs. Any ideas?

There are still a few unrejected Instamatics to come.

Chrysler's Turbine Car - New York World's Fair

The 1964 New York World's Fair's "Transportation Zone" had three extra-special exhibits - everybody who is cool remembers the amazing "Futurama" at the General Motors pavilion, and Ford's "Magic Skyway" (created by Walt Disney and his Imagineers). But Chrysler had a pavilion too, and it was pretty great! I feel like I could have spent half a day (or more) just at those three pavilions. If you are building a time machine in your garage, please make a note of that.

So what's with the photo of the car? Why, it's is a fabulous TURBINE CAR from Chrysler! No pistons cranking away here; instead there was a turbine turning at 44,500 revolutions per minute. It supposedly sounded like a large vacuum cleaner. According to Wikipedia, 55 units were built between 1962 and 1964, with a body designed by Ghia of Turin, Italy. 

The engine could run on anything from peanut oil to tequila to Chanel No. 5 - just don't put leaded gasoline in it (which would leave damaging deposits). The turbine car ran incredibly smoothly, and was mechanically very reliable - there were rumors that the exhaust was so hot that it would melt asphalt, but that was untrue. The cars had power windows, bucket seats, and a dash lit by electroluminescent panels. Due to their carefully hand-built nature, they would have cost over $380,000 in 2015 dollars! Presumably that cost would have gone way way down if they had ever gone into regular production.

Unfortunately, the turbine car concept never caught on, in spite of the fact that it felt like "tomorrow's transportation - today". Once Chrysler's test program ended, they destroyed 46 of the cars (ouch!). Of the nine remaining cars, six had their engines removed, and the lifeless corpses were donated to museums. Of the three remaining operational examples, one is in a museum, while the other two are in private hands. Jay Leno has one as part of his incredible car collection! I'm sure that after this post goes up, he will call me and invite me to go for a ride. I am sitting by my phone as you read this.

If you are at all interested in the turbine car, I strongly recommend watching an episode of Jay's YouTube show, "Jay Leno's Garage" (I watch lots of his videos); it is all about his personal turbine car! It is informative and entertaining - and really, what more could you want out of life?

 

I hope you have enjoyed your visit to the Chrysler Pavilion at the New York World's Fair.

Instamatics!

Delving once more into the ever-shrinking folder of vintage Kodak Instamatics, I chose two fun views that I think you'll enjoy. 

First up is this wonderful shot (taken from a just-launched Skyway bucket) looking westward along the Peoplemover track. The sign in the foreground is awesome as are the Peoplemover trains in their original colors. To our left is "Adventure Thru Inner Space", while "America the Beautiful" is to our right (along with a bit of one of Mary Blair's tile murals). In the distance we can see the Columbia's sails, and the cupola of the Pirates of the Caribbean building. Meanwhile... where the heck is everybody? And how can I go back in time to this exact day and run around Tomorrowland like a complete spazz?

Here's a fun one showing a bobsled as it started its thrilling trip through the Matterhorn. Look at how tiny that tunnel opening is! I am willing to bet cash money that it has been enlarged by several feet in either direction since this photo was taken. Who listens to safety spiels? Not me! As soon as any ride starts, I take off my seat belt and stand up, because it is very important that complete strangers are aware of how cool I am.

Vintage Postcards from Palisades Park!

Today I have another post featuring the vintage postcards from GDB reader & contributor Ken Martinez! See his other posts from this series HERE and HERE. This time we will be looking at a series of cards from Palisades Park in New Jersey - you might know it from the famous (and cheesy)  1962 song by Freddy Cannon. 

As usual, Ken has done all of the grunt work and provided commentary for each card. Here's Ken:

Palisades Amusement Park - Cliffside Park, New Jersey

In today's post are five postcards from the legendary Palisades Amusement Park which was located across the Hudson River from New York City atop the New Jersey Palisades in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. The famous amusement park operated from 1898 to 1971. Like another legendary amusement park, Chicago's Riverview Park, Palisades Amusement Park passed into history by the time the 1970's theme park era strongly made its imprint on the amusement industry.

In this first image is the "Sky Ride", "Cyclone" roller coaster, and waterways of the "Atomic Boat Ride". Way in back is the "Giant Wheel". The direction of this view is towards the Hudson River. I really like the architectural styling and color of this park as presented in this postcard series.

Here's a midway shot with a coaster train rounding the curve of the Cyclone wooden roller coaster which was designed by Herbert Paul Schmeck, who also designed other notable coasters such as Thunderhawk in Dorney Park, the Comet in Hersheypark, and the Wildcat in Lake Compounce. Note the colorful pedestal with the elephant on top.

Here's another colorful shot of the midway with another animal on a pedestal, this time a monkey. The Arabian Nights dark ride is in the distance. Looking at these images and clothing styles, I'm not sure if these postcards are from the 1950's or 1960's. (Note from Major Pepperidge - I am quite sure that these are from the 1960's).

In the center of the park was the dark ride "Arabian Nights - Tunnel of Love". From the sounds of it, it was your typical spook house track ride. During the latter part of the 1960's the ride was remodeled into "Casper's Ghostland" featuring the characters from Famous Studios and Harvey Comics.

I love this wonderful stylized and colorful stand. There appears to be people enjoying drink and refreshment nearby, so it makes me wonder if the colorful kiosk was a refreshment stand. In the background are a Ferris Wheel and Wild Mouse.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this postcard visit to a long gone but not forgotten amusement park from another era. There are ten more postcards from this series which I hope to share with you in the near future.

Information source material:

Palisades Amusement Park History - www.palisadespark.com

Roller Coaster Database - www.rcdb.com

As always, many thanks to Ken for sharing his vintage postcards and for taking the time to write his excellent descriptions. I want to go to the 1960's Palisades Park seen in these images!