El Cerrito Journal

Posted on Fri, Apr. 08, 2005

Playland Museum Growing
By Alan Lopez
STAFF WRITER

EL CERRITO - An old blue bumper car sits on the floor of a San Pablo Avenue office building. It's rusted in some places and the front bumper appears to have fallen off years ago.

And it's just perfect for the amusement park museum Playland Not at the Beach.

The mini-amusement park/museum was started two years ago as a fluke and has grown only more impressive with the help of volunteers.

Located in the back of the nondescript office building, the museum is the dream of El Cerrito resident Richard Tuck. It's coming together slowly through volunteer work, but still needs $75,000 worth of upgrades.

The museum is a "state of mind," said Tuck, an affable middle-aged man with a mustache and short, neatly combed hair. "And I'm the person who happens to have a place for it."

The museum will hearken back to the original Playland at the Beach, which operated from 1921 to 1972 at Ocean Beach in San Francisco.

Nostalgia for the original Playland is strong.

San Pablo resident Marvin Gold enthusiastically regaled the 14 or so volunteers with anecdotes and trivia from his four years of working at the amusement park. He lived a block away and operated rides and games, for $1.50 to $1.75 an hour.

"It amazes me that Richard brought all these people together," said Gold, 51. "And they all have this commonality of a love of Playland."

Tuck started the project about four years ago. He needed an office building for his firm Lander International, a headhunting firm for computer programmers. The space he found, a former grocery store, happened to have a large storage space in the back.

Tuck moved in detailed miniature scenes of circuses and carnivals and brought in old carnival games and other memorabilia. People started dropping things off.

"It became the official repository for memories of Playland for people," he said.

But he was naive. He would have dozens of people come in, not realizing it wasn't allowed under the city's building code.

The problem is that the area is designed as a storage space and needed to be brought up to the standards of a building where a small crowd can assemble, said El Cerrito building official Brian Fenty.

While Tuck has received a number of donations to the museum due to newspaper and television exposure, he's still short about $75,000 needed to do a "big fancy parking lot" necessitating nine trees, 45 shrubs and a ramp for the disabled. Inside, electrical wiring, sound and lighting have been completed.

Volunteers have taken up much of the slack until now. Marin County artists Dan Fontes and Ed Cassel are completing detailed murals on the walls, with a 5-foot-high visage of the famous Playland mascot Laughing Sal mannequin outlined and waiting to be painted.

"Everyone gets to do what they're most passionate about," said Tuck.

Judy Jackson was busy placing original Playland prize and entry tickets in little plastic bags, as gifts for people who donate to the museum.

On a sheet of paper was a list of possible prizes for people who donate. They included T-shirts, baseball hats and a book -- "San Francisco's Ocean Beach" by K. Manning and J. Dickson.

Formerly homeless, Jackson acts as a liaison from the museum to several different homeless and battered women's advocacy organizations in Contra Costa and Alameda counties.

Tuck intends the museum to be free to the public. In particular, he wants people who don't often get a chance to do fun activities -- such as the homeless and at-risk youths -- to gather for games, a free meal and a chance to escape.

Tuck himself had a difficult childhood, which he describes as a whirlwind of step-parents and dysfunction in Petaluma.

"I sort of raised myself," he said. "I'm really just lucky."

So he devoted himself to his studies, graduating early from high school with a 4.0 grade point average, and earned teaching credentials by the time he was 20 years old.

As a child, he escaped by visiting Playland At the Beach whenever he could.

Today, his office combines his whimsical and studious sides. His employees, he said, take it in stride and don't blink when an old bumper car is sitting on the floor.

"We wouldn't have anybody who's not all heart," he said.