1970s-80s - People In Blackpool, Part 3

Another selection of Blackpool folk and visitors enjoying Blackpool in the days before mobile phones.

We are back to good old black and white photos for today and again it will include a mix of topics, though quite a few will feature the Pleasure Beach. We'll kick off with one of the attendants on the North Pier talking to two ladies sunning themselves on the side benches. One of them at least is riveted by what he is saying and his job at this time (in the early 1980s) allows him to enjoy smoking his briar pipe whilst working.

The sound of a fairground organ, squeals of children and the hum of many people squeezing past one another along the pathways of the Pleasure Beach. The carousel of gallopers was a feature of the Pleasure Beach south of Watson Road for a few years from the late 1970s.

There's a couple of photos this time in response to requests. The first request was for any shots I might have of the Steeplechase ride in action.

These two photos were taken in 1982. The vast majority of my photos from this year were taken in black and white. I could process the films myself whereas colour films had to be taken to a chemist or photographic shop for developing and printing (D&P as it was known). This cost a considerable amount of money and it was far cheaper to put black plastic sheets over the bathroom window and process my own black and white films. Photography is free now, once you have bought the camera or phone. It was once quite an expensive hobby.

The other request was for any shots of Blackpool's donkeys and their operators. I don't have many of these I'm afraid. But this was one that I took off the deck of Central Pier. The tide was still on its way out and very little of the beach has been uncovered as yet. The structure at the top centre is one of the legs supporting the old lifeboat house. The sand still wet and dark to the seaward side of the walking donkeys.

The sea was so close to the beach in fact that people were playing in it at the side of the pier's arcade. These four young girls were shrieking and splashing away at each other and having a great time.

The Rock Shoppe. Rock was such a large part of going to the seaside when I was small. It was almost unthinkable not to have a stick of it. I remember going at least once during a week's holiday to watch it being made, though this seems to be a Great Yarmouth more than a Blackpool memory for me. We lived in Rochdale at the time and Blackpool was a fairly regular (if not as often as I'd like) trip whilst Great Yarmouth was a car-testing long run to a place where locals spoke with a strange accent.

As a boy it was fascinating to watch the letters being formed and then the rock being stretched until the massive column, too large to hug, was stretched to the thickness of a stick of rock, snipped into the right length by one of the rollers who used their whole forearms to roll the rock so that it kept its round shape and didn't flatten whilst it cooled.

The forecourt of the Hounds Hill Shopping Centre became a favourite spot for buskers in its early days. Here Dorothy Perkins occupies the spot currently taken by the Disney Store. The glass-roofed forecourt was free of stalls and units at that point.

And on the same day, these were to be found at the entrance to Hounds Hill from Adelaide Street. They were quite good - a trio playing folk instrumentals with guitar, accordion and a dulcimer.

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1970s-2000s - People In Blackpool, Part 2

A couple of the photos from this bunch of candid shots of people in Blackpool come right up into the current century. Most of them were taken on the Pleasure Beach this time but there are a couple which weren't, so let's start with one of them...

I just absolutely love this one. The year is 1979 and the lady is in the middle of processing in her mind the skimpy nature of the girl's shorts. She falters and then can't resist looking back to confirm what she thought she saw!

On the Pleasure Beach and from the same year. For several years this set of Gallopers was to be found on the park south of Watson Road.

Whoops, I've been clocked! But what was it they were all so intent on gathering around? Answers on a postcard to...

By 1995 The Big One was the big draw on the Pleasure Beach. Opened the previous year, the ride followed Pleasure Beach traditions in setting a number of records: on its opening date it was the tallest and the steepest roller coaster in the world. It was the fastest in Europe, second fastest in the world and was the longest in the UK.

Ah, the old faithful! Sir Hiram Maxim's Flying Machine. It was a bit of a disappointment to him as he had originally wanted the public to experience the sensation of flight and his original intention was to fit controls to let riders raise and lower the carriages. The fairground trade (several of these rides existed), no doubt wary of the potential for riders plunging into the ground, vetoed this and he thought the end result little better than a "glorified merry-go-round!"

Whilst undoubtedly a great viewing spot for watching the Grand National coasters race for the finish line, the window looking over the track as the cars dipped beneath the paving to rise again to the station was at its best late in the afternoons or early evenings. Before that on sunny days you had to contend with the shadows of the row of buildings containing toilet blocks, popcorn and sideshow stalls etc.

The trick was to expose for the shadows. After all of these articles no one yet has admitted to spotting themselves... Don't be shy folks!

We are all the way through time up to 2006 for the last two shots (including the second one of the Grand National). This is the Roller Coaster emerging from its station and banking left to join the chain lift for the pull to the summit.

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1970s-80s - People In Blackpool, Part 1

I've not quite run out of photos of people on the Pleasure Beach and, there is even the odd one or two included here, but as I've been going through my somewhat large collection of photos looking for people who just happened to get in the way of my camera, I've found a number that remind us there were and are other places to enjoy oneself in Blackpool!

Starting with these two brave girls. I have a feeling that although the sun is shining, this was quite early in the year - the year in question being 1978 - and it was not an altogether warm day for paddling!

This is somewhere around the same year (give or take a couple). Taken from the South Pier as the sun sets over the Irish Sea - a touch of poetry almost crept in there... I must watch out for that and resist the urge!

On Sundays in the summer of 1978 the bandstand in Stanley Park used to feature performances by the odd beat combo... These were different days - dancing was still banned on Sundays. On a Sunday night in the Tower Ballroom the organist would play a concert rather than dancing tunes. You try dancing to the Dam Busters' March to see what I mean... The groups in Stanley Park played slightly religious things like Turn, Turn, Turn to avoid people getting up to shake a leg and being turned into a stone circle on the edge of the boating lake.

Not on the Pleasure Beach but very close to it! The two girls on the hat stall spotted my camera and started calling out to me (I was younger and a touch more streamlined then...) I asked them to put on a hat each and took the photo without thinking that the hats would totally block the overhead lights from touching their faces. Flash guns in those days, on most SLR cameras at least, were something you carried in a shoulder bag and clamped onto the camera when needed. Definitely not something you just flicked up to take a photo on the spot! I'd have been better off with a Kodak Instamatic and a flash cube here!

I'm cheating slightly here, because this is my good lady, the long-suffering Miss Franny making daisy chains for our daughter in Stanley Park, 1983.

Also from 1983 an informal gathering of sun seekers in the Memorial Garden near the Metropole. This would be frowned on now, but I don't think it was seen as such disrespectful behaviour then.

This was a night in either 1986 or 1987 when the Blackpool & Fylde Photographic Society had an evening at the Pleasure Beach to take shots of "People". Some of the shots from that night have already made an appearance in earlier articles and there's another here of fellow member Doris admiring one of the stalls where you rolled table tennis balls down a perspex slope and they then bounced about a bit before going into numbered slots. No matter what I scored I always seemed to come away with either a pencil or a screwdriver...

Another mid 1980s shot. They were totally absorbed in each other and it wasn't too difficult to get a shot without being obtrusive!.

This may have made an appearance already on the blog - or perhaps just on FaceBook where there was a discussion about this Giant Slide which was moved from the Pleasure Beach to the end of the South Pier where it kept people happy between the demise of the Pier's theatre and the installation of the inverted bungee jump and the swing ride that sent riders flying out over the side of the pier. Personally I preferred the theatre...

And this time we'll start where we began, on the beach. And I'll just confess quietly that should have read "end where we began"... - though in fact the statement is true...

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Candids from Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Part 3

Once again we are heading back to the 1970s and 80s to see who was on the Pleasure Beach at that time and to give you an opportunity to spot yourselves if you were there!

Starting with a shot of the Big Dipper, which has a full load of faces for your perusal and delectation... This was shot from the South Station of the Pleasure Beach Express as the coaster came over the crest about to plunge down the curved dip.

I can't remember what this ride was called. It was 1978 and one of the temporary fairground rides used on the southern half of the Pleasure Beach at that time. I was struck by the jumpers in matching colours with the ride.

Oh and talking of being struck... Ahem! Moving on...

I can't bypass the lakeside pavement once again to watch people on the Log Flume.

So a double dose of wet and happy people! (Looks again at the first shot...) Well... wet people anyway...

A couple of shots taken from outside the rink of people on the Dodgem Cars. This was always tricky for the exposure - it was quite dark in there yet the light from the open air outside the rink tended to fool the exposure meter - which in those 1970s days was a separate little piece of equipment in my pocket and not part of the camera until I went berserk in the shop one day and bought a Canon AE1.

There had been a sort of ski-jump ride here and this ride is so new (at the time) that the backdrop is still painted with scenes of people on skis in the mountains.

Here's that ride again with the red and white striped centre. It seems a little crowded in this particular car!

And where would the Pleasure Beach be without its technicians. This chap is repairing a fault on the Mechanical Bull.

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Candids from Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Part 2

Another set of photographs of people captured on Blackpool Pleasure Beach. This time the photographs date from 1978 through to 1988.

Before Ocean Boulevard got in the way, this is a family enjoying the aftermath of the first dip on the Log Flume. The log carriage has just left the safety rail from the dip and the water is foaming as they start to float again. They look as though they enjoyed it, don't they?

The Derby Racer. Forget the coasters and Wild Mouse, I always thought this was one of the true white knuckle rides of the Pleasure Beach. If you are on a horse on the outside edge then, believe me, your knuckles are going to be white with the strain of hanging on against the centrifugal force!

One of the Grand National coaster trains rounds the initial curve after leaving the station. This photograph won a prize in a competition of a regional magazine and set me off on a few years of freelancing photographs to magazines.

I always thought the Tokaydo Express was a bruiser of a ride without being actually all that exciting, but I know that others remember this ride with much more affection.

The soft toy stall on the southern half of the Pleasure Beach in 1981. This side of the Pleasure Beach was still developing at the time. It had been primarily the part of the Pleasure Beach aimed at younger visitors and to some extent remained so, but at this time the Revolution and Steeplechase rides had been built and there were many temporary rides such as were to be found on travelling fairgrounds. In the 1960s there had been a Crazy Golf course on this part of the park. The young lady is standing in a giant orange with a segment cut out!

Punk had come in the mid to late 70s and still lingered but New Wave was the latest thing and these two were ringers for the Human League and Chrissie Hynde!

Punk, after all, had its limitations - she'll never get that hat on...

A lovely photo - I had no idea who would come down the slope of the Helter Skelter, but whoever it was would not have time to see me and react to anything but the joy of the ride!

A leather-jacketed balloon seller with another new phenomena of the time - metallic-effect balloons! By heck, the world was progressing and fast!

I'll finish with this shot from 1988. It shows people on the southern half of the park starting to climb the ramp that takes them to the bridge over Watson Road. The Space Invader ride on the left had opened in 1984. Opposite are a number of retail outlets in stalls under the arches. The Cableway was opened in 1960 and was the first method of crossing between the north and south halves without having to cross Watson Road which dissected the Pleasure Beach. The road was bridged in 1966 and the Cableway lasted until 2000. It afforded some great views of the park for riders and it seems a shame that it was not refurbished or replaced by something similar.

Did anyone manage to spot themselves? No.3 in this series will be in glorious colour, so if you didn't see yourself this time, maybe it's because you refused to show your face to mere black and white film!

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Candids from Blackpool Pleasure Beach 1974

Back in the 1970s and 1980s I took lots of photographs for magazine use and as many magazines stipulated that there should be some "human interest" in the photos they used, that meant I included lots of candid photos of people working and enjoying themselves on the Pleasure Beach.

It was a standard and mainstream subject for photographers. The photography magazines like Amateur Photographer and Practical Photography and a host of others ran regular articles on the best ways to take photos of complete strangers in public and there were competitions for such photos too.

I like the one above because, apart from including a family reacting to the drop of the Log Flume, it also show the spherical finial on the turn of the Big Dipper which was shortly to be replaced with a tear drop shape.

Before the shops of Ocean Boulevard were built there was access right to the side of the old boating lake of the Pleasure Beach, south of Watson Road. It was a great vantage point for taking photos of the Log Flume.

Up on top of the bridge over Watson Road were these cage swings. You did the work yourself, pushing and pulling on the bars to make the cage swing and with a lot of work it was possible to make it perform full 360 degree rotation.

She caught my eye as she is an obviously very pretty girl - if a trifle bored at the lack of a queue of people wanting popcorn!

Come to think of it, many of my photos featured pretty girls... I didn't particularly worry about this at the time - and I'm certainly not going to start now!

All of the photos in this article were taken in 1974 - forty one years ago! These young ladies will be in their fifties or sixties now. I hope they enjoy seeing their younger selves if anyone recognises themselves!

The Pleasure Beach had a double Ferris Wheel at the time. It was rare to see both wheels turning at the same time. If I remember rightly, one turned as though rolling forwards and the other turned as though rolling backwards. A huge clown figure was built on the side as though turning them by hand.

There were several amusement arcades on the Pleasure Beach. One at the north main entrance, one opposite the Wild Mouse, one opposite the River Caves and one on top of the bridge over Watson Road which acted as an exit from the Space Tower. There was another under the Hiram Maxim Flying Machine. I have a feeling though that this photo was taken in the arcade on the South Pier. It shows a teenager playing Air Hockey. These games were fairly new at the time and quite often a small crowd would gather to see the novel sight of the plastic puck hovering on a bed of air blown from tiny holes in the playing surface. Play was fast and frantic. It was common for the puck to fly off the table!

I'll finish this time with riders on The Monster ride. In 1997 the Playstation (now Ice Blast) opened on this site. If anyone recognises themselves, why not leave a comment? None of these photos made the pages of any magazines I'm afraid - but they were fun to take and are fun now to look back on. I'll feature more in future articles.

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