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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Blackpool Pleasure Beach 1974

The last few negatives to go through the scanner have been from 1974 and were taken on Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

It's fascinating going through the old negatives for several reasons. One because they show a world that has gone now.

Many of the rides and architecture shown on these photos have disappeared, or were soon to disappear like the round globe on top of the Big Dipper shown here. Others were destined to disappear twenty years later, like the Log Flume.

Access to rides for photographers seemed easier then - before the shops and businesses of Ocean Boulevard were built, there was an open sight line onto the front of the southern half of the park overlooking the Log Flume and Big Dipper.

This was the Tom Sawyer ride - a gentle ride on a raft that followed a pre-determined path on the lake underneath the Log Flume.

What could be more romantic than gliding along between the concrete pillars and getting dripped on whenever you went under the Log Flume track?

The photos are also interesting for the people. The fashions of the day, the fact that so many of the photos are aimed at pretty girls (I was only 20 and single at the time!) and the fact that you can now look back and think "how did people manage before mobile phones, computers, texting, Rubik's Cube...?"

And it's worth thinking about the habits and what more modern habits have cost. The pretty girl behind the counter sells a small bag of popcorn. These days she would hand you a bucket full. But look at the size of most of the people in these photos - and not just the pretty young girls! In 1974 if you wanted a cup of coffee you bought a cup of coffee. Not a mug. Certainly not a pint or more. These days when fast food operators ask "Do you want to go large with that?" they unwittingly are asking the exact correct question. Not "Do you want that to go large?" but "Do you want to go large with that?" It's a strange world.

Many of the rides featured in the photos still exist on Blackpool Pleasure Beach. They date back a long way in fact. The Big Dipper was built in 1924. The Grand National of 1936 was always my personal favourite ride, even after the Big One was built. The Derby Racer, shown here was a simple large-scale carousel, but fast enough that the centrifugal force meant you had to have strength in your knees to stop you flying off the outside horses! I wonder which of the two young gentlemen she favoured... Surely that's one of the Osmonds on the right...? Who??? Yes, alright, I'm getting on in age you know...

And did you know that the Pleasure Beach used to build its own dodgem cars? They had workshops where the cars were designed and moulded out of fibreglass... Dodgems were at first flimsy things. The idea was to dodge other cars, hence the name. The early examples in the 1920s had little or no protection for the rider but the ride changed over time so that the main aim by the 1950s was to continually ram other cars. Happy days.

And none of these people were worrying about what their friends were doing or wanting to phone them - which would have meant finding a public telephone box and hoping they were at home - and were blissfully unaware of what an email was never mind a text.

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Storm Clouds in Positano

Monday 22 August 2005. A rainbow morning! As we set off from the hotel to walk into Sorrento to catch the boat to Positano on the other side of the peninsular, a rainbow stood out clear and bright over the rooftops.

"That's a good sign!" we thought but changed our minds a little when the boat turned out to have been cancelled due to an approaching storm. We looked out over the Bay of Naples, resplendent in bright sunshine, not a cloud in the sky.

"But..." No buts. The boat was definitely not going and he firmly gave us our money back. We decided we would walk up to the bus station and catch a bus there instead. In retrospect this was brave. Actually...in retrospect it was downright stupid but anyway, we reached the bus station and found a couple of Irish girls who were going the same place and we congratulated ourselves and each other on being the only ones waiting.

Half an hour later the place was crawling with people. Hardly any tourists, they were all locals and they were all determined to be on the bus first. The bus, labelled a Sita bus was about half full before I could force a way in, usher Fran and Mum under my arm and then turn to grab the hand of one of the Irish girls and pull her in through the crowd. She in turn was pulling her mate.

"Aw, t'anks fer that!" she gasped. We had managed to get seats but by now the bus was absolutely full and the girls and around far-too-many other people were standing in the aisle. The bus set off and across the mountains via numerous hairpin bends that the driver took with contemptuous disdain without hardly slowing. The locals were obviously all used to the people standing suddenly sitting on their knees, but it was a new experience for us.

"Jasus! Would ye keep a hold o' me?" begged the Irish girl standing next to me, grabbing my shoulder. I looked up just as the sun shone through the opposite window, turning her top into a glowing orange screen against which the silhouette of an A1, prize-winning, absolutely perkfect breast added its plea for holding onto... I manfully grabbed her forearm and looked the other way. It didn't make any difference, because for the next half hour and at intervals over the next few days I could still see that breast... Men of a certain age, you know...

Eventually we came to Positano. Actually we came to a clifftop about four or five hundred feet above Positano which is where the bus dropped us off.

"Never mind, Mum, we'll be able to get a bus or a taxi up again," we said confidently, setting off down.

We stopped halfway down to rest the knees and had a coffee in a small bar which had a terrace on the cliff side. The Italians make their latte-style coffees with hot milk, without all the froth that our UK coffee shops - no matter how "Italian" they claim to be - insist on ladelling on the top. To me that makes it a cappuccino not a latte. Anyway, don't forget that in Italian latte means milk. If you want one of these then ask for a latte macchiato.

The climb down the steps and narrow streets winding their way towards the sea may have been hard on the knees, but there were plenty of shops to keep Mum and Miss Franny distracted. Many times I turned round to see where they were and had to climb back up before I found them again!

Eventually we reached the bottom and by then there were a few clouds. "We might actually get that storm!" I said brightly.

We had a little wander, finding a row of Martello towers along the coast and then remarking how the sea had started to crash up a bit on the rocks.

We found a little street winding its way back up the hill and went a little way, enjoying the colours and bustle of a market and street of shops.

When we came down again it was getting towards lunchtime so we found a restaurant on the edge of the beach called Chez Black which did superb marguerita pizzas. As we sat there we watched it get darker and darker and darker. "I think we'll head for the bus when we come out!" Fran said. We hadn't seen any buses going up the hill and there was just one taxi on the rank. My Italian isn't up to all that much and it was a struggle before I understood that he wasn't a local taxi but had just dropped off someone after driving them all the way from Rome!

He was therefore very reluctant to let us get into the cab in case local taxi drivers reported him. He wouldn't budge even when we gestured at Mum who was obviously going to struggle to walk up the hill. But in the end we had to.

With frequent stops whilst it got steadily darker and clouds thickened overhead. By the time we were about three quarters of the way up we were tired, never mind Mum. We were starting to get worried about her, although with the frequent stops to catch breath she was doing ok.

We found three girls sitting on the wall at the side of the road taking photos of each other in Spanish. They asked me to take their photo all together so I did and then was handed the next camera, "and mine!", so I did again and then was handed the next camera, "and mine!", so I did it again. By then I'd got into a habit and so I lifted my own camera and said "and mine!" to which they all fell about laughing and posed for this. Nice fun moment.

We had got almost to the very top to join the main road when the rain started. Over the course of the next few steps, thunder crashed, lightning flashed and the rain really started...

Ten minutes later, whilst we were still walking along towards the bus stop, the water that was falling on the mountains above us had started to run down them. The road was two inches deep in running water and the amount of rain falling was ridiculous. We had no coats of course - you can see from the earlier photos how sunny and warm it had been. We found an open door and sheltered in the front hall of a business building for a while, feeling very guilty, but not having been able to make anyone hear us to ask permission. Then finally the rain slackened off and we carried on to find the bus stop.

The bus was absolutely crowded. Thankfully someone gave up their seat for Mum but Fran and I had to stand all the way back, hanging on to the luggage rack as it hurtled around the hairpins. The locals must have really strong backs...!

And finally, the day ended with a perfect sunset over the Bay of Naples, as seen from Sorrento. A cruise ship has left Naples and is sailing past Ischia, on its way back out to the Mediterranean.

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Girl On A Balcony

It was the 7th July 2008 and we had left the amphitheatre at Taormina and were walking slowly back into the town in the general direction of our pick up point to rejoin the coach for the trip back to the Island Star.

I hadn't taken many photos as we were heading for the amphitheatre as we were walking in a large group so there were too many people too close. I had known we had some free time later so I could take photos at leisure without having to try to take over the heads of people.

I saw this young girl on a balcony and she made an intruiging subject. She was just leaning against the doorway, smoking a cigarette and watching the people below. What was going through her mind? You can weave almost any kind of story about her and that's what I like about chance sightings like this. Perhaps if by chance she sees this, she can let us know! Or make up your own story!

This is an edit of a much wider view...

1980s Photo Mags

I suppose it was inevitable wasn't it?

I mention finding a load of photography magazines from the 1980s and then get emails wanting to see photos of all the glamourous models...

Well, in answer to the somewhat accusatory missive that came in amongst them, yes I was only 15 when I started to buy Practical Photography, but whilst I certainly didn't skip past photos of topless models, throwing my hands up in disgust, I do have to point out that the photos of the 60s and 70s were a bit more tame than you would find in lads' mags of today!

Even in the 1980s they were hardly what you'd call porno! Cheesecloth was used quite a lot to great effect and there were a few shots along those lines in the mags I came across so I've included a couple here in answer to most of the emails, which were of the begging sort...

Remember not to look when your Gran is in the room.

Belles of the Beach

A couple of people have expressed some surprise that my entry Leo's Lovelies about the French photographer from the 1920s featured a young lady only from the neck up! I mean - this is a family-friendly blog! Anyway I'm sure there are plenty of places elsewhere on the web where young maidens are featured with a little less modesty, ha ha!

But I shall bend a little and feature No.2 in the Cotman Color Series of postcards, entitled "Belles of the Beach" where, just to address a possible imbalance, one model is only featured from the neck down... Ok lads?

Leo's Lovelies

Whilst I'm in a postcard mood...

This is No.139 of a series of postcards, photographed in France sometime around the 1920s. Now Leo did have an eye for a pretty girl, unlike our previous postcard photographer! He was also not averse to the girls removing some clothing, it has to be said... This must be one of those series with which the French were supposed to sidle up to you in the street and say "Would you like to buy some postcards, M'sieur?".

"Get away, filthy postcard seller!" you would cry. But then when the wife wasn't looking, "Mais oui! Combien?"

Photographing the Ladies

Ooh, an email flooded in from an old mate today, Billy, who asked, "Remember all those photos you used to take of gorgeous girls at the Photo Society?"

No, absolutely not, Bill... Ah that's going back a while. I was President of Blackpool & The Fylde Photographic Society in 1987 or 1988, not sure now! It sadly closed during the 1990s I think - hopefully nothing to do with the fact that I'd been a past president!

There were some real characters, and I particularly remember the studio nights where we had a model or two. I got press ganged into finding some of these but honestly folks, none of them were ever students at a college where I've worked! Important fact related to staying in employment! - although I have to admit it has been many years since I did any serious portraiture.

Staff of colleges were a different thing though! So there's a few colleagues in the photo above! Linda (top left) and Bridgette (bottom left) came from Preston College, Carolyn (top right) came from Blackpool College, Christine (top centre) was the daughter of a work colleague from my Cash & Carry days, Fiona (bottom right) was a fellow student when I was on a course and Donna (bottom centre) was a member of the photographic society.

There were a few members who turned into gibbering wrecks almost as soon as they were confronted by a pretty girl and a few girls who responded by immediately getting very nervous! There were some who almost every photo came out a cracker and others who I can't look at now without cringing! My lips are sealed! But of course the ones featured could never look bad! There's only Carolyn that I've seen in the recent past, I hope they are all as lovely! Ok Chuck? Not going to sue or anything...? :-)

Cheers Bill, good to hear from you - no you can't have larger copies...!