On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Steve from Mendocino
In 1967 I was mostly working on fixing my GPA in anticipation of going to Art Center. This was also the last year of Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica. It was a fun place to photograph, and an opportunity to experience old timey amusement park vibes in the spirit of old Coney Island. Decidedly down at the heels, but a trip to walk around in. My pictures are posted without additional commentary.
Comptche
raven
Pay One Price!
Wag
Do Not Get On should be the photo that encapsulates 2020.
I also love the composition of the Cloverleaf Ballroom photo. Really excellent photos.
Doug
Give us those nice bright colors
Give us those dreams of summer
Make us think all the world’s
A sunny day
Oh yeah!
raven
Inside Dogtown, the Birthplace of America’s Skateboard Culture
Beginning in the early 1970s, an abandoned pier called Pacific Ocean Park (known locally as POP Pier), was converted into an unlikely haven of misfits. As dangerous waves crashed the ruins of the old pier, restless young locals religiously surfed around POP, eventually dubbing it The Cove.
Upon its opening in 1958, the pier embodied the quintessential optimism of 1950s America. Less than 20 years later, the same abandoned meeting point transformed into a decaying reminder for locals – a testament to the changing times and changing mood in Los Angeles. In solidarity with the American ’70s, the west side of LA sprouted again, this time with a wave of rebellion in lieu of optimism.
Elizabelle
Wonderful photos. Pacific Ocean Park. P.O.P. Only existed July 1958 to 1967, when it closed (and rotted, for a few years after that, into the mid 1970s.)
Had never heard of it. Has an informative wiki page. Good links.
Expensive to maintain and done in by developers, who tore up the surrounding streets to put up high rises. Made access to P.O.P. much harder, and doomed it.
Lives on in some movies and TV shows from the 1960s. Competitor to Disneyland. The Doors played there!
From review of a book about P.O.P.: “Its auditorium, Cheetah, hosted important early rock shows, including those by Ritchie Valens, Sam Cooke, The Beach Boys, The Byrds, The Doors, and Pink Floyd.”
Dick Dale covered a song about the place, “Those Memories of You.”
mrmoshpotato
DO NOT GET ON
raven
@Elizabelle:
T.A.M.I. Show
With Zappa in the audience and Terri Garr go-go dancing!
J R in WV
Thanks for this. We have a smaller version still operating in Huntington called Camden Park, at least it was before the Trumpian Plague hit last summer.
Last time I was at Camden Park was with a sister-in-law in social work clinical training, we took a bus load of institutionalized little kids to an amusement park … it was swell~! They had a blast, had never imagined such a thing, it was so otherworldly to these little kids. This was probably 40 years ago? More?
I was pretty apprehensive about the whole thing, but the kids were on their best behavior, eventually we trusted the park to help, there was no way we could keep our eyes directly on all those kids, of course it wasn’t the first bunch of kids they had hosted.
So this brought that memory back to me strongly — thanks for that!
raven
@J R in WV: Have you ever been to Wheeling Downs?
Elizabelle
@raven: Cool. Had never heard of that. Incredible lineup.
raven
@Elizabelle: The Beach Boys would not let them re-release for years. A few years ago they finally signed off and it is incredible. The best James Brown footage ever
and Leslie Gore kills it!
eta The Stones had to follow the King of Soul and Jagger said they were scared shitless!
raven
Lesley Gore – Maybe I Know (T.A.M.I. Show 1964, HD)
HeartlandLiberal
META FWIW, this morning the right sidebar is strung out at bottom of page. FireFox browser, up to date latest, 17″ monitor Dell Inspiron Laptop running Windows 10 Enterprise, also up to date, I recently applied the latest major release upgrade 20H2, and all patches since. This with FireFox set to full screen.
raven
@HeartlandLiberal: This is the LAST thread you’ll get any help from.
Steeplejack
@HeartlandLiberal:
The “right sidebar stuff at the bottom” is usually a sign that FYWP thinks you’re in tablet/phone mode or that you are using a window less than full screen size. Dunno why it would suddenly manifest itself in your setup.
Shot in the dark: maybe get out of Balloon Juice, delete your BJ cookies and fire it up again.
ETA: I am using Firefox 82.0.3 on Windows 10 Pro. (Haven’t upgraded to 83.0 yet.)
raven
@Steeplejack: You had to do that!
Steeplejack
@raven:
Hey, I’m up, and I’ve already had the tactical gear (pants!) on this morning! I’m amped up and need stuff to do.
raven
@Steeplejack: I know, it’s just funny because there are usually not that many comment on the photo posts! (Unless someone goes of on a rock and roll tangent!)
Elizabelle
@raven: Wiki about the TAMI show said Keith Richards later told a few interviewers that the Stones agreeing to follow James Brown was one of the biggest mistakes of their [early] career.
Also that there was a promotional song about the show placing the Stones out of Liverpool. Uh, no. That was that other band.
And I do want to see that 2010 DVD. Or youtube footage; maybe the whole thing is online. Show sounds incredible, indeed.
Steeplejack
@raven:
True. “That’s a pretty bird.”
Elizabelle
@ Steve in Mendocino: I would be interested in purchasing a few of the prints from this OTR. (Have often felt like that about Bill in G’s work, too.) Please let us know if that is anything you would do.
Not that photographers particularly have to donate out of their proceeds, but I could see jackal support for buying prints, with whatever portion of the price going to animal rescue …
raven
@Elizabelle: Yea the quality of the Gore is much better than the JB. It’s available on blu–ray and well worth it.
WaterGirl
@HeartlandLiberal: The BJ site uses a combination of two things to determine whether you get the regular site with the sidebar on the right or the mobile site, with the sidebar items showing up below.
One is pixels – and on a laptop, you get the mobile site in portrait mode and the regular site in landscape mode.
The other is window size – so if you make your browser window skinny enough, you will get the mobile version, with the sidebar stuff on the bottom.
Is it possible that you have made your BJ window fairly small?
edit: I should add that – twice in the year since the new site has been up – the whole front page has gotten the sidebar at the bottom. That happens when there is something funky in the code of a post on that page. If that’s the case, click to go to page 2 from the front page. If that page is normal, there’s definitely an issue with one of the posts on the front page, and I would ask you to let me know immediately.
mesmer a la carte
Thanks for sharing these Steve. I live a few blocks from where the pier was and regularly surf the break that remains, which is a rock jetty. We now refer to the location as ‘the breakwater’. Not too far away is a testament to the spirit of POP, the Venice skate park which I recommend every one visit if they amble down this way.
MelissaM
These are pretty cool. Also $.19 mile long hotdogs!
mad citizen
Great pics as always. Great colors! The TAMI show is pretty awesome, I have watched it. I think I got the dvd from my library. They have a 2-3 shelves of nice rock/pop music dvds, plus more from other genres (classical, jazz). The Stones were fine, but yes James Brown kills it.
cope
Beautiful colors in these pictures. You really can’t beat film. I’m guessing Kodachrome for these?
Thanks for showing us these even though I’m stuck with an imaginary image of a 19¢ mile long hot dog in my mind.
cope
@Elizabelle: It is quite the show. Not to sound like and old fogey (OK, I am, indeed, an old fogey) but the energy these performers and their acts put into the show is staggering. You just don’t see this raw, exuberant kind of expression much any more.
We have it on our DVR having recorded it from a broadcast on TCM a couple of months ago. Keep an eye out if you have TCM, maybe it will be back. It’s about time to watch it again, maybe when I finish the director’s cut of “Woodstock”.
cope
@Doug: HA…I didn’t connect my first comment to this one until my second time reading through them. Good one.
Betty
Love the pictues, but it sad to see what must have been a fun place for folks so rundown. PA still has several old time amusement parks. Hershey Park is more Dizneyfied, but still has some of the original rides.
Geminid
Thank you for the pictures. They take me back to the early 60’s. My family lived in Santa Monica a few years before my Dad’s job took us to Dayton, OH, and then northern Virginia. I remember “Davy Jones Locker,” a capsule with windows that plunged from pier height several dozen feet to the base of the pier.
My parents were from Wisconsin, and when we moved back east I told friends it would be good to be able see snow again. A Geminidiot even then.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Geminid:
As always, be careful what you wish for!
susanna
@raven: Love this! Thank you.
JanieM
Thanks for these, Steve. Funny how images so colorful can also be so haunting. I especially like the picture of the seats and am imagining when they were filled. Also the tangle of lines and layers in the second pic.
I never went to Pacific Ocean Park, but it brings back memories of Conneaut Lake Park in Pennsylvania, which was a greatly anticipated summer excursion for our extended family when I was a kid. I heard a few years ago that after holding on in some tenuous form for many years, Conneaut Lake Park had finally closed for good. But Wikipedia suggests not, which is cheering.
West of the Rockies
One thing I never could stomach about Santa Monica… all the damn vampires.
Miss Bianca
@raven: Ooh, just ordered that DVD from the library! Sounds awesome!
Steve from Mendocino
@Elizabelle: I don’t sell any of my work, nor do I print anything that’s not going up on my walls (takes up too much room, and the whole thing is a hassle). OTH, I’m not at all possessive about my images. Send me an email at sjenks at mcn dot org, and let me know what you’d like and a link to a folder in google docs where I can upload. I’ll send full size files for you to print yourself, if you’d like. You might have a look around my website to see if there’s something else you’d particularly like. https://www.stevenjenks.com/
JustRuss
I used to work near the Santa Monica Pier, and I’ve never heard of POP. Thanks for sharing these.
Jacel
Wonderful photos. In my childhood I went to Pacific Ocean Park several times on family trips to visit LA relatives. I loved that place even more than Disneyland and our own San Francisco Playland-At-The-Beach. The POP Flight To Mars attraction was quirky and imaginative.
Madame Bupkis
OMG. POP! We weren’t allowed to go because hippies or something.
BigJimSlade
The mile long hot dog is obviously why we never went with the metric system – who wants a hot dog that’s just a kilometer?
Brooklyn Dodger
Night Tide (1961) is a horror-noir film that, if I remember, features the carousel at SM pier and shows what the area looked like at the time. With Dennis Hopper and I think Roger Corman produced.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055230/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_173