Friday, July 19, 2013

From Eric Beheim #9

Posted by Buckles at 7/19/2013 06:00:00 AM

3 comments:

Dennis said...

That is quite a distance between spectators and the arena. I wonder why.

19 July, 2013 09:33
Buckles said...

As I recall, it was a baseball park. We showed there with Rudy Bros. in 1959 right after I returned home from the Army.
A groundskeeper told me that this was the last place the Ringling show used the aluminum outdoor uprights and showed me inside the parked semi-trailer they had stored.
I mentioned this to Chappie when he was trying to scrounge up artifacts for the Ringling Park and he flew out there but came back empty handed.

19 July, 2013 10:56
Eric said...

Actually, this lot was located on an open field across from what used to be the Naval Hospital. (The towers to the hospital's main entrance can be seen in the background.) Today this location is a combination grassy area/paved parking lot. Buckles, you're probably thinking of Balboa Stadium, which was located just to the south and across the street from this location. The Shriners sometimes presented their annual circus in Balboa Stadium and maybe Ringling appeared there, too. Ringling also did outdoor performances in Westgate Park, San Diego’s former baseball stadium, which was located in Mission Valley in the northeast corner of what is now the Fashion Valley Mall. I believe that Westgate Park was the very last outdoor venue that Ringling appeared in, and that is why the special outdoor rigging was stored there permanently. The San Diego Sports Arena opened late in 1966, so Ringling would have begun appearing there in 1967.
On a different subject, Buckles once posted a photo showing the Ringling show appearing in the Hollywood Bowl in 1957. In this photo, the famous Hollywood Bowl shell is nowhere to be seen, leading to questions as to where it was. Just recently, I read that the shell was built on wheels so that it could be rolled off to one side to clear the stage. The weight of the shell eventually crushed the wheels into the tracks they ran on and the shell has not been moved for many years.

20 July, 2013 00:15

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