(Roving correspondent/photographer Kristen Tobiason finds that Funland — downtown arcade that inspired a Wallflowers song of the same name — has been plowed under: “This swarthy beast consumed the whole lower Broadway strip. Another boring-ass hotel. I miss Funland and all its classic wooden pinball machines.” Wallflowers singer Dave Rinck offers a requiem.)
This is not universally recognized, but the decline of arcade games reflects the soul-sucking changes that have taken place in modern life. Back in the day, arcade games had real physical moving parts, like pinball machines and Skee-ball. Then they invented computer games, and people started going to arcades to stare at computer screens.
Nowadays, kids play home video games on their TV sets, and I believe there aren’t really arcades anymore. This happened simultaneously with the computerization of the movie and music industries. Someday kids won’t even know what an arcade or a cinema even is — and as to music, well, we all know how that’s going. …
- Listen to “Funland” by the Wallflowers!
The best pinball machine ever was called Fireball. It had a grooved red rubber disk in the center that would spin at high speed at certain times in the game. When the ball passed over the disc, it was thrown in a random direction across the playing area (also at high speed). Man, that was exciting! You never knew which way it’d go! Also, besides pinball, you could arm-wrestle a robot.
How could anyone not love Funland? I mean, a “land of fun” — it’s a no-brainer. But of course like all things in life, Funland also had its dark side. The down-and-out winos and decrepit sailors of pre-gentrification downtown San Diego inevitably ended up on the same stretch of Broadway where Funland was located.
Now I suppose those types of people have gone the way of the arcade and the cinema (and the way the guitar is going unfortunately). But back in the day, it made a big impression on us young Wallflowers to see all that glamorous glitzy gaming going on, in the middle of that sea of surrealistic homeless bummery. We cruised down the neon of Broadway late at night taking it all in, just young wide-eyed and impressionable kids, forming our opinions — down on the street where the faces shine.
There’s a song by Richard Hell called “Downtown at Dawn.” I guess it’d be about all this.
— David Rinck
Wallflowers MP3s:
The Wallflowers play “Funland”: Listen now!
The Wallflowers play “Rubber Room”: Listen now!
The Wallflowers play “Paradise on Fourth Avenue”: Listen now!
The Wallflowers play “Survive the Jungle”: Listen now!
The Wallflowers play “Raw Power”: Listen now!
i spent lots of time in and around funland. met some of san diego’s koolist freaks. as a matter of fact i apprenticed as a tattoo artista there under the watchful eye of john eddy. those were dangerous and sleepless times. i was young and way over my head in that element. i was lucky they thought i was funny and didn’t take me seriously. i was not a criminal. a scofflaw and a fool maybe? jessy james i were’nt. shame on the city planners for letting go of the unique WWII charm of our downtown.
Wow! Funland! A great place for runaways to meet. I spent sometime hang’n round that place.
I have not lived in San Diego for a little over 20 years. Sometimes I find my mind wondering and I end up at Funland.
Thats one thing about San Diego that bothers me, they tear down most of the cool shit.
Lower Broadway was a colorful place…it was four or five blocks of tattoo shops and stripper bars with lots of sailors walking around. It was all torn down some time in the 80s, I dont remember what year…sometime after the Horton Plaza mall was built.
I think Cindy Lee Berryhill has an album that shows the Funland arcade on the cover, but I dont know the name of it… I was just looking for it on google but didnt find it.
Hanging out at Funland was a highlight -- my memories more vivid of the clunk and clatter of those pinball machines than shows I went to. Playing pinball (or airhockey) has been a way to decompress -- I still don’t feel comfortable in crowds and have spent many a show at the Casbah in the back room playing the games. I started dating Tommy and hanging with the Wallflowers when I was 16. Arcades were a legitimate place to do long-term loitering. It was a Wallflower thing to do. We’d all cruise downtown or out east to the Aztec Room on motor bikes, spend some quarters and then get coffee or dessert at Topsy’s or Nappy’s. David had a Triumph I think. Tommy a Honda and Paul, this rinkydink Trailblazer trailing behind. We road like gangsters, no helmets. Those were fun times. And now they are gone. It’s worth crying about you know? I cry everytime I try and play one of these new video games cuz they’re too complicated for my brain to figure out. Raised on Atari 🙂
My kids are devoted XBox players, but no trip to the city is complete without a trip to Musee Macanique. It used to be at the Cliff House, but now it is right smack in the middle of Fisherman’s Wharf. All the pinball, old-tyme penny arcade games and even Atari favs you could want. They have an old mechanical bowling game that my oldest can’t get enough of. The next time you’re in SF you should check it out. They also love the big, loud, dark arcade in the Sony Metreon (although I am less enamored). The arcade is not completely dead, although nothing compares to memories of Funland.
Can I borrow “Free Ball When Lit” for a book title? Love it.
Cyndi: Musee Macanique isn’t at Cliff House anymore? bummer. they had a game called “Opium Den”.
For Dave Ellison:
I’m looking at this and the thought immediately comes to mind that Cindy Lee Berryhill was the yin to Tom Waits yang.
I’m totally bummed I never went to Funland- or even knew it existed. Wait- I take that back. I remember driving past it but never stopped there.
We had the Chicken’s Roost in Mission Beach, which was probably a cheap imitation at best.
Cindy, I didn’t know they moved the Musee Mecanique! I used to go to that place all the time when I visited SF. Good to know that they didn’t just shut it down. This really shows the superior city management skills of SF planners over SD planners. In SD they’d have just built some sort of Westin Hotel on top of that place, and a bunch of little fat kids in expensive sports shoes that light up when they step down would be licking fake ice cream cones on top of the ashes of the place. Bravo to SF.
Kristen, ahhh sigh – those really were the proverbial “different times”. Now they also have helmet laws, so what we did then is actually illegal now.
Matt: “I still really like generating music by mechanical means” Is there any other way? But Garageband is great for recording! Dave Ellison turned me onto it. Check it out, just don’t forget to connect your (real) guitar to it!
I accept that I am now no longer on the “cutting edge”. I am officially dated. Enough innovation for one life, give me a guitar and a pinball machine anytime over Gameboy and a MIDI (whatever that stands for).
BTW Cindy Lee sure has a nice mid driff. Hmmmm I sure didn’t notice that back in the day…
My brother and I used to ditch Sunday School and go over to J C Penney’s and play pinball (they had an arcade there!) with our donation money.We also sought out pinball games when on family vacations.Sears in Hillcrest was another wallflowers hang out, no pinball, only video(we liked those too!). Who remembers the video/pinball arcade in mission hills next to the ballroom on Washington Street(both have been razed now).Kristen,The Honda Trail 90 was never rinky dink. At least it had full sized wheels (unlike scooters(sorry scooter people, as crazy as motorcycles are as a form of transport, scooters are about a thousand times crazier)) , but yeah the failure of the wallflowers as a biker gang probably did have something to do with the wide variance in equipment. At the low end of the spectrum was the humble trail 90. Mike Buckley had a Trail 110. We made up a fake bike crew. Jokes ! Gee Dave… you really didn’t notice Cindy Lee’s nice midriff back then… I sure did.
Oh , this is king of relevant too. Check out Bleepfiend! Very cool electronic label. Focusing on stuff recorded on casette. Nothing recorded on software released here. And it’s all free !
http://www.bleepfiend.co.uk/bleepfiend/about.html
I like the Bleepfield guys’ attitude, Paul:
“The music on offer was recorded in a time before the Internet made it possible to upload, share and promote work to a wider audience. This is music that never had a chance to be heard by anyone outside the artist’s immediate circle of friends. But still it exists…its forgotten potential locked in the ferric particles of dusty cassette tapes.”
And I too appreciated Cindy Lee’s abs. There’s probably a survivors’ group we could form. 🙂
I used to ride the bus downtown as a kid and walk all over. In the 70s it was still frozen in the 40s and 50s. I used to love to ride in the glass elevator at the El Cortez Hotel (remember their amazing neon sign?) I remember Montgomery Ward’s big downtown store still had an elevator operator who called out the floors and their goods. I remember being wary at Horton Plaza because of all the winos hanging out. I remember Funland very well, with all the sailors hanging out. The Greyhound bus depot was also a fascinating place for me then. My goal was always the beautiful train station, where I would sit and watch the trains. Then I walked to the harbor to ride the glass elevator in the Holiday Inn and look at the view.
I guess I always was into old places with some history.
It’s good that they “preserved” the Musee Mechanique by moving some of it to the tourist trap Fisherman’s Wharf / Pier 39. San Francisco does a pretty good job preserving things from the Art Deco era and before, but they have little desire to preserve mid-century buildings. There is no powerful historic preservation group here like the L.A. Conservancy (and the L.A. ModCom). I’ve seen most of my favorite old googie coffee shops, historic restaurants, etc. disappear.
I wasn’t dissin’ your wheels Paul -- the back of your Trailblazer was my transpo in many situations for which I am grateful. But memories of you riding it gives me a chuckle…. Remember playing pinball at the Sears Arcade? Tommy, Paul and I all lived with Paul’s brother Danny two blocks away from Topsy’s -- which was in a nice proximity to Sears and also Comic Kingdom which is where I first met PatndaHat, and also Mike Buckley. Danny Howland is one of the most talented, creative people I’ve ever met. It was through him that I was exposed to the true genius of Devo, the Residents, Firesign Theater and the Church of the Subgenius. He set up art experiments around the apartment -- a robot chained to a chair watching television, subliminal subgenius bathroom messages -- he changed the toothpaste packaging to say “Resident” instead of “Pepsodent” in the same font and everything!! And this is aeons before graphic design met Adobe.
You know, I just remembered that Funland was kind of a “headshop” too. You could buy weapons and confederate flags when you weren’t playing pinball. whacky! I remember getting a switchblade that was really a comb.
The Musee is now by the “crab selling” part of Fisherman’s Wharf on pier 45. It’s tucked away back in the corner, but still gets a fair amount of traffic because of the submarine behind it. Here’s the link to their website.
The boys get so tired of hearing me squeal and tell them that this was my FAVORITE game when I was a kid. They even have Pong.
Whoops…Paul, you mentioned Sears. I missed that. white type on black background effects my eyeballs. They did have one pinball there. I remember playing it -- unless that was a dream I had. And yep, the Mission Hills arcade is where we first met Denise and Zoe. They had a triple level Haunted House pinball machine that was addictive.
The first gift shop my dad owned was at the El Cortez Hotel (1979?), and when there I explored the place. It was an amazing hotel, with old time opulence to spare. He still owned the shop for a while when Maurice Cerrillo and his religious organization took over. About 5 years ago the hotel was converted into condos, and from what I’ve heard much litigation has ensued. I guess the plumbing (among other things) was not squared away.
>>The boys get so tired of hearing me squeal and tell them that this was my FAVORITE game when I was a kid. They even have Pong.
Cyndie: Two major, formative video-game periods in my young life:
1. In eighth grade, my friends and I haunted the spankin’-new University Town Center mall. Besides sneaking into R-rated movies and experiencing my first-ever food court, a prime attraction was a snazzy department-store demo version of Breakout (probably Super Breakout, per Wikipedia, since this woulda been 1977/’78). We’d sometimes take buses down from Encinitas (about 2.5 hours with transfers!) just to stake out that game for the afternoon.
2. In the same mini-strip mall as the 7-11 on Santa Fe Drive where Max Brown met the Ramones, there was a little arcade that had Space Invaders. I think this must’ve been 1980 because “The Wall” was playing a lot over the hours and hours I spent feeding quarters into that machine. I think friends joined me on occasion, but it was mostly a solitary obsession … and the endorphin rush I derived from my increasing skillz was unmistakably addictive in nature. After a couple of months, I suddenly realized how much money I was pouring into this and quit cold turkey — and for a little while there it was really hard to keep my feet from carrying me back into that little arcade!
Matthew: I hung out at Yellow Brick Road in UTC too- watching cute older boys get high scores on video games was the hallmark of my adolescence.
Matt said: “In eighth grade, my friends and I haunted the spankin’-new University Town Center mall. Besides sneaking into R-rated movies and experiencing my first-ever food court”
Man, that reminds me that nothing was cooler than going to the cafe at (Woolworths?) in (Mission Valley?), sitting up at the counter on one of those red spinning stools mounted on a stainless steel pole, Getting a fat Cheeseburger and fries with a rootbeer float. I think we were really lucky to catch those leftovers from the fifties and sixties. In Ramona when I was a kid there was a Rexall drug with a soda fountain. I always dug that too.
Toby: I’m thinking the Chicken’s Roost must have been where Sean and I spent most of summer ’80 or ’81. We’d take the bus from Casa de Oro and get all the Readers from the 7-11 and tear the coupons for 2 free tokens and a free bag of popcorn out of them, then return the Readers and spend the rest of the day playing Crazy Climber and eating popcorn. They hated us. I think we had to start timing it around shift changes.
Dave Rinck: There is still no helmet law in Arizona, which I love. Now if I could just get someone to turn down the heat (110 plus). I’m not fond of the idea of eating it in shorts and flip-flops and a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. Come to think of it, this is probably the exact same thing I was wearing 25 years ago at that arcade in Mission Beach. I’ve come full-circle!
Toby: I think that was called Newberrys in Mission Valley. I remember the smell of popcorn when I think of that place.
We used to ditch school and ride our bikes down to the Chickens Roost and hang out for hours. There was a pinball machine that would give you two credits if you unplugged it and plugged it back in. At the time Belmont Park was shut down and boarded up, except for the Roost and the Plunge. When I was in Junior High my friend John Cannas and I used to get a six pack and climb the roller coaster- it seemed wicked high and was totally falling apart and termite ridden. I wish I’d had the foresight and equipment to take some pictures up there. I go to Mission Beach now and I don’t even recognize it. It’s like they bussed out most of the creepy lowlifes and painted over the filth.
I think Buford’s has gone the way of the dodo. A wondeful place in Ocean Beach that had candy and pinball. As I remember, they were open all night, which was handy since I was up all night a lot of the time in those days.
I was also a denizen of UTC. When my mom was flush, we’d go ice skating, to the arcade and then she’d give us each $5 for the food court. I would spend all of mine getting cheese on a stick, so molten hot inside that it would leave a blister on the end of your tongue that you could nurse for days, reliving the molten cheesey goodness that caused it.
>>as a benefit to the knights of the asphalt they have a collection of all the early video games, from asteroids to starcastle, all for free!
BOogie: That’s pretty damn cool! In the fields of NY online media, it seems like any startup worth its salt has at least one vintage video game.
The Google offices have a whole big room with beanbag chairs and Foosball and some old arcade games — of course, they also have Razor scooters that people can grab on a whim to zip along the halls; a Lego play area; and free gourmet dining, haircuts and dry-cleaning, IIRC. (Why ever leave the office? It’s kind of like a truck stop for hyperactive hipster software nerds!) 🙂
“The delicious hours between dessert and dawn”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24962788@N08/
I don’t know how this survived 20 years. Buford says… enjoy!
Woolworth’s, as I remember, was in Fashion Valley. It was next to J.C. Penney, and I bought quite a few inexpensive Christmas presents for my family members there as a youngster. There was a snack bar, where one could buy chicken wings which had been “slow roasting” for several weeks, popcorn and hot dogs. There was a sitdown cafe that was accessible through a doorway once you were inside the store. I used to rubberneck at the pet department downstairs, which was near the record department, where I remember buying a few singles in the mid-seventies. I think I bought my first record there: Stevie Wonder’s “You Haven’t Done Nothing.” The pet department was pretty tragic--one could buy a mite-ridden parakeet or a hamster with patches of fur missing if hard pressed for companionship. Newberry’s, on the other hand, was in Fashion Valley, right next to the key stand where my sister Claudia toiled for about five years. When I was in high school and working at Jack in the Box in Mission Hills, one of my coworkers was also a cook at Newberrys, and he told me that the floor in the kitchen area was always ankle deep in mashed potatoes.
This thread has gotten me thinking about how much I miss seventies San Diego. From 1976 on, I lived in the Bankers Hill/Hillcrest area. We used to skateboard to the Royal Food Market on First Avenue, which we lovingly called Chinaman’s. The Guild Theater was still open, although I believe it was an adult theater at the time. I used to visit Hammond’s 5 and 10 Cent Store on the corner of Fifth and University at least once a week. Growing up my larger neighborhood was basically inhabited by gays and old people, and we pretty much knew all of the kids for miles. There was a great Mexican Restaurant called Consuelo’s located in the house on second and University which is now a pharmacy. Washington was radically different then as well. The well-covered La Posta was an Orange Julius at one time, El Cuervo was a health food restaurant called Cornucopia, and there was a store called the Basket Case (which sold macrame terrarium holders, plants and, of course, baskets.
In the last couple of years of the seventies and the first couple of years of the eighties, Hillcrest was a great place to live. Carl Rusk and I spent many hours walking around at night with nothing to do, hanging around the Chicken Pie Shop, the 24 hour supermarket at Fifth and Robinson, etc. Then along came the Reagan Revolution. Gentrification sucks. The big corporations rolled in, and proceeded to tear down nearly every building that had any character. Blocks of old marble and wood buildings were converted into indistinguishable stucco buildings painted those Horton Plaza milkshake colors. The Gap moved in where Hammonds was located, Starbucks took over the Chicken Pie Shop and Blinchiki became California First Bank.
I meant Newberry’s was in Mission Valley.
I was pretty sure that was a Woolworths.
When my dad’s house in Crest burned down (in that huge wildfire fire in seventy) he moved to West Manor and then Severin Drive in La Mesa, and when he was flush he’d take us to Consuelos. That was always a pretty big deal as we were usually pretty broke. We also would hit a chinese place somewhere right near Anthony’s Fish Grotto, the name escapes me.
Hey Kristen which Nappys did you hang out at the one O.B. or the one on El Cajon blvd?
Oh, Jesus: Nappy’s!
So there was Nappy’s … Sambo’s … Topsy’s … Apparently the genesis of many of these names was benign (e.g., Sambo’s was started by guys named Sam and Bo), but it does seem to add up to this weird run of quasi-racist sobriquets! Makes you go hmmmmm.
Dylan: Both! I grew up in and around OB. But the one on El Cajon Blvd. was the one where I hung out with the Wallflowers.
Matthew: Sambos was the story about the little boy who made the tigers into butter. My family took me to the one on Harbor Drive (by the airport). I loved reading the story that they had over the counter. Gone by the way of Songs of the South-- zippity doo dah zippitiyay…
Kristen: I spent half my childhood in the O.B. Nappys. Nappys ruled, well it kinda sucked but they let us hang out there.
The last Sambo’s was or still is in Santa Barbara….. I was there years ago. I bet it’s still there. It was near the beach.
Paul: Did you ever see how old the candy was at Bufords?
I am pretty sure they were selling more than candy(and I am not talking about the hot dogs).
Buford and his old lady were a trip…. Roy Rogers and Dale Evans on LSD with a smig of Howdy Dowdy.
Does anyone here remember the O.B. SPACE MAN?
Dylan: The “Weird SD” thread is a veritable sideshow of your favorite local freaks! 🙂
Ray: Last I heard Dirk was living in Prague. His illustrious career as a film editor is google-able. I don’t have a current email for him, but somebody will…
Dylan: As I type, I’m looking at a Spaceman painting the man himself gave to my father (a journalist who did a feature on him). His real name was Clint Gary, if I remember right, and he was scary fun to talk to.
Simon! What’s up! Welcome aboard.
I remember the O.B. spaceman. He was like Captain Sticky only more valid- more of a local legend. And then there was the chicken- the chicken was too commercial to be a local legend.
Quote from the reader: “Twenty Years Ago The man lies in a South Bay intermediate-care facility…. His name is Clint Gary, he’s seventy-seven years old, and in Ocean Beach he’s known as the Spaceman of O.B., a nickname since he first moved there in 1963. Six years earlier, while camping in the California high desert, Gary claims to have been visited by the Rillisporean aliens and taken aboard their space ship, where they told him secrets of the universe. After his arrival in Ocean Beach, he spent time on the beach at the foot of Newport Avenue, telling anyone who would listen of his encounter with extraterrestrials.” — CITY LIGHTS: “SPACEMAN,” Thomas K. Arnold, May 1, 1986
Small world:
I actually learned how to tattoo in the little shop right behind that arcade . When I was much younger I used to skate to the bus near my house and take that to the H street station and then meet my friends from I.B. and take the trolly up into downtown .
At the 12th street station there was a liquor store that we would all go into and buy bottles of Robotusin and Nyquil and we would chucg these as we took off into downtown looking for trouble of fun or whatever shit we could dig up .
My girlfriend at the time was a girl named Julie who she said was also seeing this guy who was in a band called ” men of clay ” she said he was about 40 or something , but he might have been younger and my perception of his age made him seem so much older .
Anyhow we would walk around downtown tripping out on cough suryp and peeking into the tattoo shops looking at the scary bikers and junkies and sailors getting work done . We were all way to young to get a real tattoo at the time but a few of us had poorly done homemade jobs and it always seemed appropriate to have a mean skull or something on you if you were a self appointed scumbag like we were at the time .
Funland was always a destination for my little crew . After walking the length of Broadway we would always end up there because they had super sweet arcade games and cool knives in this long glass counter along the west wall of the shop . Near the end of that counter was the door for the tattoo shop . It was sort of catty-cornered down this step and into a little back room .
The guy who gave me my start wasn’t there at the time
, someone else owned it but we would always stare through the glass only to be shooed away by some large menacing lether clad monster .
From there we would usually work our way back down Broadway and then up 6th and go hangout at a little area in the park called the Fruit Loop . It was a round about type deal one way road that circles around this hill near the southern tip of the park . It was called the fruit loop for fairly obvious reasons . . . it was a gay cruise area .
There were always San Diego punk rock legends hanging out there to see and be seen . Steve Gariss would be drinking a bottle of red wine , and vomit a huge fountain of wine inbetween words and not miss a beat to take a breath . . . Telling us how he was king of the San Diego punk scene and we were just scrub assed little kids not worthy . It was amazing to our ‘Tussin soaked young minds . Then out of nowhere various other punk notables would wander in & out of the little group of us relaxing in the shade . Chriss Negro was almost always there because he didn’t really have anywhere else to be , sometimes Marc Rude and some of the guys from Battalion of Saints would show up to talk deals with Gariss someone else holding court .
It was awe inspiring that these people we would clamor to go see on the weekends were just hanging out in the park like the rest of us enjoying tha weekend .
In later years they would have Anarchy Picnics where we would all hang around and try to organize and discuss things of social importance . The Anarchist Press would have a table preaching communist doctrines and anti democracy , and a few zines would be there representing and selling stickers and copies of the latest issues . Lots of social networking and number taking back then . It was a lot more close knit and intimate for us then , it was like a special club we were all in that no one else knew about and we felt safe from the cops or jocks when we were all in a huge group .
Anyhow . . . Funland . It was sold to my former Mentor Kinsey Bolsen ( sp ) and in 1986 I started hanging around there picking up tips and tricks from the guys working there . I got to chase off bums and drunks , go across the street to the hotel and get burgers , clean stuff ( toilet , vomit on the sidewalk , needles etc ) and in 1987 I started tattooing out of that shop .
Everything after that is fairly boring , I’ve been at it now for almost 20 years with my current employer and because of Funland and tattooing , I have everything in my life I have now .
I can still hear that damn cowboy shoot out game ” DRAW . . . bang , ughhhhh you got me partner ! “
>>Steve Gariss would be drinking a bottle of red wine , and vomit a huge fountain of wine inbetween words and not miss a beat to take a breath . . .
Mike: Stream of consciousness, even!!
Matt it was a stream of something , that’s for sure . He was a scary , magical , nasty , amazing man .
Quick typo cleanup . . . “Anyhow . . . Funland . It was sold to my former Mentor” , check that , it wasn’t the whole arcade that he bought , just the tattoo shop in back .
The old man who owned the arcade got some insider trading info about how the city was going to start buying everyone out and knock everything over . . . he instantly started putting TONS of money into the building .
Paint , new lights , electrical work , redid the floor here & there , lots of revitalization . Well as it turned out the city eventually came along with their offer and lo and behold he busts out his receipts for all this work done and drives the price for the buy out through the roof . It took another year and a 1/2 for them to come to an agreement and he cashed out pretty well from what I was told .
They were tearing the city down all around us while he was wheeling and dealing to bend the city over as hard as he could , it was awesome .
Stobbe,
Holy cow. I met Garris once and he threatened to bite off my ear. Dylan Rogers is my witness. I was 15 and scared shitless, where the hell were my parents? It doesnt matter now.
Mike you are a wealth of historical intrigue and local lore. I will be in Chicago through next Tuesday. Lets get together shortly thereafter.
Drinks and a meal are on me.
I’ll be hungry and thirsty and at your leisure .
Let me know when you get back into town and we can get some back story on each other and a bite and a drink . I’d like you to meet my wife and son so she can get a little insight as to why I’m the silly man I am today !
Mike,
I would love to meet your family. Dylan is also moving back to SD in a few months, we should all get together.
Man, I havnt thought of Scott Sellers in years. Dylan and I can both vouch that he was just about the nicest most loyal friend. I remember he used to but us our nightly Boones Farm.
I lost track of Adam McDonald several years back. Is he still around?
I heard he was around still but had diabetes and his eyesight was failing . I guess he had some procedure done to help out but that’s all I know , even that if 3rd person so I don’t know how accurate it was .
” The fellowship of men who dated Beverly Fitzgerald ” could have our first meeting when Dylan gets back into town . Her parents were crazy that’s for sure nut she was a true class act and a real sweetheart .
As for Scott , I got into more shit with him and more good times than I can count , he would always seem to land on his feet . Last I heard he was a tattooer up in Los Angeles somewhere . He was also in an episode of ” Monster House ” as a carpenter and helped build the tiki shed in someone’s backyard .
While they were building , he double tapped a nail with a pneumatic air gun and the second nail shot back at him and went right through his finger . He just looked at it and laughed , then grabbed a pair of pliers and yanked it right out , duct taped it up and went back to work .
Hey! Check out the photo of Funland back in the day!
Hey Scott Sellers here, just reading about old times. It’s pretty funny to think back about the good old days. Hey Mikey, what about when we lived right down the street of Our Lady Of Peace. Remember that? We had the best food from all the little rich chicks’ folks. Don’t forget about when we lived in the house about the black christmas trees with beer can ornaments. And calling the police saying there was a prowler on our cul-de-sac & waiting in the bushes in the front of the cul-de-sac to smash their heads in. Crazy shit man. Take care. Scott
Shit Scott , good to see you around man . I hope you’re doing good , I do remember all that stuff , those were some of my fondest memories . . . Old Lady of Peace and government cheese .
In all my business travels, I’d never attended a conference in SD until this week. Just settled into the Gaslamp Hilton — and realized I prolly haven’t been in this part of town since … 1988?
If I have any time at all, it will be fascinating to walk by some old haunts …
I was in the Navy in the mid 70’s and used to go to the Funland. Yep even got some ink at the Ace tattoo shop. I remember in the front of the arcade was a cowboy that you could try to out draw. Night I got my ink, wound up hanging out with a couple of H.A.’s. Great night.
I was just looking for anything on tattoo artist Doc Webb ( I have several tattoos from him) and came across this page about Funland. I was stationed on the USS Okinawa LPH-3 from 1980-84 and first went there while in A-school at NTC on Rosecran. Wasn’t yet old enough to go into a bar yet so we hung at places like Funland. Dawn, a few post above this, mentions a drug dealer selling windowpane. I recall a guy who use to roll around on skates, up and down Broadway, selling acid.
I wonder what became of the mechanical cowboy? I stood there for what seemed like hours feeding him tokens while tripping trying to out draw him.
Funland… WOW… I was just a a 20 year old kid at the time I first went in there. I’m 51yo now.
Funland, Funland, Funland! I discovered that place three days after I got stationed there in January 1987 courtesy of the Navy and found a home. I spent a lot of quarters on Spyhunter and always took the top score under the name ZOR. Did air hockey and shot pool but someone kept stealing the 8-balls so we had to substitute. I also purchased a few knives there and I kick myself for not purchasing that Gerber Boot Knife with the blade bent at the handle for easier drawing. Got my first tattoo there when Tiger Jimmy was running the place. Maybe you saw me; tall, white, brown hair, always wore a walkman, carried a pool stick, hung out with Gill, Dragon and Debbie. Anway, I was underway on closing night so I missed the fun. Susan Chilstin, if you are out there reading this, I would like my high school class ring back! Anyway, that’s my vent. Maybe I will talk about the fun at the Gaslamp theatres next time. I had a lot of great memories. Take it easy all, -John-