South Beach Rides
South Beach Amusement Park was located on Sand Lane, South Beach. Beachland Amusements, colloquially known as The South Beach Rides, was an arcade and kiddie park that operated in Staten Island, New York from 1941-2006. Originally located on the South Beach Boardwalk, it moved to its most recent location on Sand Lane in 1953 after the City of New York banned commercial businesses from operating on the boardwalk. In 1953, the city banned commercial establishments within 400 feet of the Boardwalk, so the owners found a parcel on Sand Lane approximately 401 feet inland. Another Boardwalk refugee parked his kiddie rides across the street.
It boasted a fun house, ferris wheel, bumper cars, arcade and covered eatery. The amusement park held fond memories for many Staten Islanders — such as Pepsi cap day, staying on the Tilt-A-Whirl as long as one could without getting sick, braving the funhouse alone in the car, and trying to get the most tickets in Skee-Ball. Most importantly, Staten Islanders loved taking their kids to the amusement park to make their own memories. Now, those days have passed. Where the amusement park used to stand are now rows of townhouses, various merchants. This is my tribute to this wondrous place in Staten islands history, a place that I know very well. As a child, I remember my mom taking her three kids to this place on many a summer day. I believe we only went on Wedsndays, because that is when you got on any ride for half price with a Pepsi Bottle Cap ( which us kids always collected during the year). The roller coaster was at its highest, maybe 15 feet, but for us kids it seemed to soar into the heavens. I had more plaster of paris figurines and piggy banks (won at skee ball) then I knew what to do with.
I can still hear that hideous laugh of the Old Lady enticing us kids into her Fun House. In there was a hanging snake that would blow air in your face as your car passed by. The the car headlights with the horn blowing always got scared me.
How about the Joe the Baker Pizzas, the parents would sit back on the many park benches while their kids hopped from ride to ride, it was a place and a time when you could leave your kids alone and not worry that they would be harmed.
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Three of the photos below are compliments of George LaCross, please visit his website laffinthedark, there you will be able to go on a tour of the inside of the South Beach Fun House (Just click on "Index to Articles" and follow it down to "Staten Island FunHouse"
http://www.laffinthedark.com/
The following article is from The New York Times by ANDY NEWMAN Published: June 3, 2006
It was the Sunday before Memorial Day. The sun outside was blazing, the breeze through the porticos of Beachland Amusements cool, the air filled with shouts and buzzers and bells: the kickoff of another endless summer on South Beach in Staten Island.
But Beachland's 66th summer is already over. The owners are retiring; the building is sold. Tonight, the arcade will close for good. And if Beachland is not the last of its kind, it is certainly part of a dying breed of family-run arcades in distant corners of New York City.
As the end draws near, three generations of gamers have streamed in, clutching stacks of tickets like Papiermarks in Weimar Germany and redeeming them for goods so precious — or perhaps so worthless — that money cannot buy them.
"Ratchet set, 16,000," reads the entry in the notepad kept behind the glass display case. "Cabbage Patch 3-piece juice set, 2,000. Big talking frog, 500. Big Bird in car, battery operated, 1,800."
Many longtime customers did not need to bring their tickets. Their totals are written down in ledgers that Paul Hajostek, one of the owners, keeps in the back office.
"We still honor them from Day 1," Mr. Hajostek said solemnly. "We don't want nobody walking away saying we cheated them."
It has been an emotional time. "A little kid brought a note yesterday that made me break down," said Virginia Hajostek, Mr. Hajostek's wife of 59 years. In an 8-year-old's careful, unsteady hand were the words "We'll miss you Whac-A-Mole," along with drawings labeled "lady you throw balls into" and "the clowns you hit" and, at the bottom, "We'll never forget you and the arcade."
Fortunately, there has been little time to cry. Mrs. Hajostek, a spiky-haired blonde with a big smile, interrupted herself to proffer a tray of
green rubber grasshoppers, 185 points, to a couple with a young girl. The girl wanted a Transformer pencil sharpener that cost 200. The father held out 191 points. He looked at Mrs. Hajostek imploringly.
"O.K., you can have it," she finally said.
"Bueno," he said, and handed the box to his daughter.
Mrs. Hajostek's parents opened Beachland two blocks away on the South Beach Boardwalk in 1941. Her baby brother Anthony Mancino slept in a crib behind the Rabbit Race.
In 1953, the city banned commercial establishments within 400 feet of the Boardwalk. Mrs. Hajostek's father found a parcel on Sand Lane approximately 401 feet inland. Another Boardwalk refugee parked his kiddie rides across the street.
A few years ago, the kiddie-ride park gave way to town houses. Beachland kept going. "We had no mortgage," said baby brother Anthony, now 64. "We fixed the games ourselves. That's why we survived." The plan was to pass the business on to the children, but in 2004 Mr. Mancino's son died of a heart attack at 38. Then his son-in-law, the next in line, died of cancer. Enough, the Beachland family decided, was enough. On June 13, the auctioneer's gavel will come down like a mallet on a Whac-A-Mole.
Beachland has kept up with the times. Mr. Mancino was skeptical when video games came out, but now they dominate the place. Devotees of Dance Dance Revolution, a game of quick feet and moving arrows, have held tournaments there.
These days, though, there are not many havens left for a machine like Big Bertha, a floppy figure with orange-yarn hair, a flowered tent dress and an insatiable appetite for plastic balls. For each one thrown into her gullet she gains 25 pounds (and spits out a ticket). "I'm not on a diet, so feed me!" she called out to a boy pelting her uvula. "Faster! Feed me faster!"
In the storeroom, past cartons of trick squirt calculators, "Mork & Mindy" Magic Transfer Sets and other prizes that will go forever unclaimed, are
the real relics. The Old Laughing Lady sat in a rickety chair, a flowered hat perched atop her Shelley Winters wig, her wooden feet rotted to stumps in her tarnished golden boots.
Mr. Mancino plugged her in. She threw back her head in mute laughter — the old 78's with her laugh track were in a drawer in the office — and slapped her meaty thighs. Her heavy bosom heaved. "You want to pull the plug on her, Anthony?" Mrs. Hajostek asked. "Her face is starting to crack."
A deathly quiet prevailed in the storeroom. Back out on the game floor it was bedlam as usual. A pair of gangly brothers dashed past the display counter where one of the workers, Melissa Brighina, was counting tickets.
"Stop running stop running stop running!" she called out.
