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The Great Highway where it curves at the Cliff House in San Francisco. In the background, along the highway, can be seen Playland at the Beach, a wonderful old amusement park that dated back to the 1920s. I had a birthday trip there in 1970, my 8th birthday, and we had a ball. Playland had a long wooden burlap-sack slide in the Fun House that was about four stories tall. You'd roar down that thing and unless you made an effort to stop at the bottom you'd crash into the padded stop-wall. Also a large spinning disc, about 25 feet across, that only the one kid in the dead-center would stay on once it spun-up. Air jets in the floor that the guy up high in one corner of the Fun House operated and he'd blast the girls when they walked over one of the jets. Playland was one of those great old FUN places that really no longer exist. It smelled old: mildew, second-hand smoke, greasy cooking smell, cotton candy smell, caramel popcorn smell, graphite from the bumper-cars, etc. Playland was razed in 1972 to make way for ocean-front condos and a Safeway.