Euclid Beach Pier

Around the 1st of December (maybe a little earlier) a new Euclid Beach Pier was finished. It has three metal arches designed by Brinsley Tyrrell, who has a number of metal, and forged steel works in public and private. The arches have several vignettes that reproduce what was at the park.  The park began in 1895, and beer was available. Dudley Humphrey ran a popcorn stand, and bought the park in 1901 and made it family friendly, and the beer was gone. The park closed in 1969, it began losing money a few years before amid racial tensions. Euclid Beach is looking much better under Cleveland Metroparks' management.

December on Cleveland's Lake Erie is not always inviting. Sunlight has not been that scarce this month, and it has not been very cold, and this Sunday it was convenient enough to go and see. The metal arches are modelled after the entrance arch on Lakeshore Boulevard (1921), which remained. The bollards were put up after a car hit and damaged one leg of the arch.

There on the far right of the first arch is "Laffing Sal". She was a mechanical automaton that laughed and shook forward. As many roller coasters, carousels, and other attractions she was made by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company. They subcontracted this to Canton Ohio’s Old King Cole Papier Mache Company. As a child encountering it was unpleasant. She was ugly, my Father told me she just looked like a farm woman, and there used to be another moving statue there that was male, and presumably her husband. I have written on this before [click]. She stood on a pedestal behind thin wire, i did not think the wire was strong enough to have stopped her pitching forward (on to me). My dear Father would bring me right in front of her, thinking this would extinguish my trepidations. Her head was made of papier-mâché, and nearly everything made of papier-mâché was not an elegant reproduction. Papier-mâché makes for grotesque carnival figures. She had a blacked out tooth, freckles, and uncombed head of Dorothy Fuldheim red hair. And she had this raucous laugh provided by 78rpm records. She must have disturbed other people too. I did not know her as Sal, but as Haha Baba. I am sure there had to be laughing ladies installed about the country, but this was the only one i knew of. Haha Baba was a better name. English was not our first language. 'Haha' is onomatopoeic, and 'Baba' means woman (and in some of the Slavonic tongues it is considered rude). 

The pier has seating bolted down. Some people think first of theft and vandalism prevention, but it gets windy on the lake.

This circle has been recently sodded. In the past there was sand here, and before that a water fountain, and before that a water swing ride.