While slides are entertaining — as Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players prove in their fun way — they were once one of the few ways a person could bring home a record of their trip, without having to take and develop dozens of pictures. Roadside attractions and theme parks alike would hire professional photographers to take pictures, give them free reign to get the best angle (and probably when no tourists were around to wander in the shot), so that when tourists visited their attraction, they didn’t have to be distracted by taking photos…the gift shop had plenty to take home, and the tourist can just enjoy themselves. I buy lots slides whenever I find them, mostly for the personal photos of slight historical value, and I have yet to find a slide collection that doesn’t have a large stretch of store-bought slides. I’ve got Knott’s Berry Farm, Washington DC, Disneyland from numerous angles, but today I’ll share with you something a bit more timely: The Tournament of Roses Parade.

The Tournament of Roses parade started in 1890, making the 1964 parade the 75th diamond anniversary for the parade. From looking at the content of the pictures, I believe that this collection is also interspersed with photos of the 1960 parade as well, but the slide frames don’t give much info on their origins. The Parade was first televised in 1947, and color TV had a pretty good foothold by 1964, but these slides would still be a step above anything a person could get without actually going to the parade themselves. Over the years the slides have gone red, a common problem with color negatives of the time (see example at right), but thanks to the magic of a transparency scanner and Photoshop, I got them pretty close to their original colors. Looking back, compared to the modern day Rose parade, there’s things they had back then that we don’t anymore:

Celebration of Nuclear Weapons: So soon we forget that the West Coast is home to much of our military-industrial complex, but today that phrase has a dark shadow over it. In the 60s, though, it was shining proof of the US’ world superiority, it was a source of jobs, community-building, and the bread-and-butter for many baby-boomer’s households growing up. The float on the left celebrates the Polaris missile, a sea-launched nuclear ICBM — the float’s name is the terrifying “Out Of The Blue.”

Ernest Borgnine: Promoting what appears to be McHale’s Navy, Borgnine was the only person listed on this slide, upstaging his fellow star, um, that whats-his-name guy that was always saying, “McHale!” Anyhow, the world is always better with a little Borgnine in it, and I’m sure any parade organizer would agree that Ernest Borgnine can make even a half-hearted parade a winner. Because there was both a TV series and a film, I’m not sure which one this might be for, but this slide is definitely not from the 1960 set.

Mermaids: Oh, I know there’s usually an Ariel somewhere on something Disneified, but women with full-body mermaid tails were quite common back in the day. They didn’t have to be any particular mermaid; they were just an average, everyday mythical creature participating in our festivities. Those were the days.
This is just my humble opinion, though — the Rose Bowl Parade has been the king of decorated floats for decades, and I can’t be one to complain about how it turned out. If you’d like to see more, click here to go view my collection in the Collector’s Quest Community. I’ll be uploading more as I scan, so check back — there’s a lot of them.

The most notable thing about July 4th, besides that whole ‘independence of a nation’ thing, and the subsequent ’let’s blow things up in the sky’ thing, is the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest, legendary home of the hot dog itself. Surely, there is no better way to celebrate the power of America than to make a spectacle of our unabashed gluttony and chronic obesity! We, after all, have the Constitutional Right to heart disease.

Still, year after year, Japanese competitor Takeru Kobayashi takes home the Golden Hot Dog, or whatever they give the winner. Kobayashi’s record was only recently beaten by American eating machine Joey Chestnut at a qualifier event in Arizona, eating 59.5 dogs in just 12 minutes - 6 more hot dogs that Kobayashi’s previous record. Kobayashi had almost backed out of the competition, citing a painful jaw disorder, but only recently decided to compete after all, fighting through the pain and limited jaw mobility for the questionable title of World’s Greatest Wiener Eater. God bless America.

That isn’t all that Coney Island is known for, though. Annually, on the first Saturday of summer, the Mermaid Parade marches around Astroland Park and has been doing so since 1983. Never mind that this is the last summer that Astroland will be operational, to be replaced by ‘Coney Island Park’ in a few years time - the Mermaid Parade endures, and there’s no finer place to see scantily-clad (and sometimes plain ol’ un-clad) mermaids of all varieties! This year’s parade even saw a Mighty Thor, symbolic of Thor Industries, the company that’s tearing down the park to make way for a new one. Of course, the charm of the amusement park lies solely in the uncleaned funnel cake grease traps and the busted lights on the ferris wheels, but Thor Industries doesn’t seem to see that.

Each year since its inception, the Mermaid Parade has created an event poster. While some of these are available on the Coney Island website for purchase, earlier posters can fetch large prices at auction. Coney Island still has copies of their very first Mermaid poster for sale at $100, and more recent posters for $20 each, but those posters that have gone out of print can become pricey, when they can be found at all. Additionally, Parade programs have also proven to be collectible by those looking to scoop up a piece of amusement history. This year also saw the release of a Parade pin by the Hard Rock Cafe, already reaching prices around $15.

Amusement parks have always generated a great number of highly collectible items, though not so much the flammable plush dolls that you might win at the ping pong ball toss. The collectability of amusement parks comes in the form of sideshow posters, postcards, tokens, keychains, plates, paper cups, parts of the rides, and any other souvenir item branded with said amusement park’s name. There are perhaps no more historically notable amusement parks than Coney Island and Astroland, so pay a visit this summer before everything changes dramatically! If nothing else, that funnel cake will stick with you for a while.