I feel very lucky that as a kid in the late '60s I got to experience Playland. My friends and I loved the Fun House most of all and we went there often; but by the '70s we were a bit older and it was no longer "cool," so when Playland closed in '72 it didn't make me nearly as sad as it should have.
The Bold ItalicSan Francisco had amusement parks for roughly 80 years straight, from Woodward's Gardens in the 1890s to Playland-at-the-Beach closing in 1972. Since then, nothing. We have gone nearly half a century without a single coaster on the skyline, and somehow we act like this is normal.