On May 25, 2005, the SF Gate (
visit link) reported the following story:
"Laughing Sal as good as new on Santa Cruz Boardwalk / Standby from long-gone Playland has new dresses, parts and a digitized voice
2005-05-27 04:00:00 PDT Santa Cruz -- Laughing Sal, her ageless cackle now digitized on a computer chip and her ample bosom stuffed with new cam shafts and connecting rods, went back to work Friday.
Age cannot wither her finely tuned job skills.
"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha," said Sal, as no less august a personage than a city councilman pressed a button to bring the old girl back to life in her new glass-enclosed perch next to the garlic fries stand at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.
Sal's job, as of old, is to lure thrill seekers through the portals of an amusement park. For decades, the robotic woman did her work at the old Playland at the Beach in San Francisco. For decades more, after Playland shut down, she bided her time in a warehouse, unplugged and unloved. Then the boardwalk shelled out $50,000 to buy Sal at auction last year and another $50,000 to stake her to some new frocks and moving parts.
"We're glad to have her back in action," said Marq Lipton, vice president of the Boardwalk. "She may be a senior citizen, but she's good as new."
Generations have never been exactly sure what Sal is laughing about, but maybe it's because the Boardwalk paid 277 times her original sale price of $360 to bring her out of retirement and give her a makeover.
For nearly a year, Boardwalk technicians labored to get Sal ready for duty. Fix-it man Mark Hersey tinkered with her transmission, treated her to some new connecting rods and tightened up all her bolts and screws.
"She was a very loose woman when we got her," Hersey said.
Recording engineer Donoven Staab transferred Sal's old tape cassette soundtrack onto a digital chip and tweaked it just a bit.
"I ran it through an anti-hiss filter and a low-pass filter," he said. "She sounds better." Seamstress Crecia Munson scoured half a dozen fabric shops before finding just the right material to reproduce Sal's tattered green dress with lace trimming.
"Most of the lace in the stores is too shiny," Munson said. "I finally found the lace in San Jose."
Sal's first day back at work officially kicked off the Boardwalk's 98th season. From her perch in front of the Neptune's Kingdom arcade and miniature golf hall, Sal can keep an eye on the Boardwalk's newest draw just down the pike, the 125-foot-tall Double Shot drop ride. While standard stuff these days in the amusement park trade, the Double Shot offers what no other California amusement park still has — a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean — to riders bold enough to keep their eyes open.
Also shooting higher at Santa Cruz is the ticket price. This year, an all-day-ride pass costs $27, up $2 from last year. A single ride on the new Double Shot, or on the stately 81-year-old Giant Dipper wooden roller coaster, costs $3.90.
Sal's reappearance does little to settle the long-standing beef with the Musee Mecanique arcade at San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, which has a Laughing Sal, too. Lipton said the Boardwalk's Sal is the "first-string Sal" from Playland and that the Fisherman's Wharf model was a substitute Sal.
"We're confident of the pedigree," Lipton said. "We know her genealogy."
Dan Zelinsky, owner of the Fisherman's Wharf arcade, said he "wholeheartedly disagrees" with the Boardwalk's claim to Laughing Sal's lineage. Zelinsky's Sal has a sign that says she's the Playland original, too.
"Look, Sal was laughing seven days a week, so maybe there was a spare," he said. "Maybe there were two Laughing Sals at Playland. All I know is that our Laughing Sal came from Playland."
"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha," said Sal.
Anyway, a sign in Sal's new display case at the Boardwalk freely concedes that nearly 300 identical Sals were sold over the years by its Philadelphia maker.
For her big debut, Sal was up to her old ways. Her maniacal cackle was frightening the baby stroller set, occasionally to tears, and her repetitive and jerky routine -— a far cry from a Pirate of the Caribbean robot at that other park down south — was not exactly pulling in the teenagers, who had their youthful eyes on the vomit comets and the kewpie dolls booths.
"Sal used to scare me when I was a kid," said Jim Raun-Byberg of Santa Cruz, who stood before her case for an extended visit, longer than he ever did when she was at Playland.
"She was a crazy lady," he said. "She looked so big and sounded so loud. I wasn't comfortable with her back then, but now we've come to terms.""