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The Frolics Salisbury Beach
by Keith of Retro PlanetI know this is more of a New England topic but I found these old pictures of
“The Center” in Salisbury Beach and could not resist. My Father took these
probably in the 1950’s.
The Center at Salisbury Beach in Salisbury MA was
the place to be. Me and my friends spent many a weekend down the beach.
The Frolic’s was the typical summer venue, thousands of artists were featured there over 40 plus years. Everyone from Frank Sinatra to Aerosmith.
The Center isn’t quite what it used to be, the Wooden Coaster and the beautiful Carousel are gone, but it is still a good place to play pinball at Joe’s Playland and grab a slice at Tripoli Pizza.
If you have any memories of Salisbury Beach or the
Frolics please share them here.
Posted
Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 5:48 pm EST by Keith
Read more in New England Memories
August 28th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
I have soooo many memories of “The Center”. It was THE place to go as a kid with my family during the summer. My mother was a big beach fan and thus, took us to the shore every weekend starting right after school got out through Labor Day. It seems like we always ended the day at “The Center”.
My favs at the time were all the great smelling food stands, lined up one right after the other. Sometimes you would just stroll up and down the walk trying to decide what you wanted to eat and who had the best. My preferences; Pizza and Meatpies from Tripolis and Fried Onion Rings and Clams (bellies and all) from Footes. There were other places too that had ice cream, candy, Penuche fudge, and the infamous salt water taffy, of which, you always had to bring a box home for Memere and Pepere.
The other tantalizing draw of “The Center” for most youngsters were the carnival rides. Growing up in Salem we always had Canobie Lake Park for rides, but the ones at “The Center” were different. They were more exciting. The lights and sounds were brighter and louder. Or maybe it was the scent of the ocean, sand and the greasy smell of fried onion rings all mixed together that made everything more exotic. My first ride on a roller coaster was at “The Center”. My mother and my Pepere took me on the big wooden coaster. I remember I sat with my mother and my Pepere sat in front of us. The ride to the top was fun and scary at the same time. Once we crossed over the top, OMG, I thought I was going to die. But I remember right before I closed my eyes, while I was just starting to screem, my Pepere lost his hat. I saw it fly over my head and saw my Pepere’s arm reach up to try and grab it. The rest of the ride was a blur. I know I did not like the ride one bit. I was almost in tears once the ride was over and I remember my Pepere laughing so hard at losing his hat. I don’t remember how long it took for me to go on a roller coaster again as I enjoy them now.
My favorite ride at “The Center” was the Himalaya. It was a hitch of metallic purple colored cars attached into a circle that spun around and tilted slightly and had a little dip here and there. They played really loud sixties music and had hot ride attendants in cool shirts that would jump on and off the ride while it was in motion. It had a guy in what was suppose to look like a glass radio booth shouting out for everyone to “sit tight as we go backwards really, really, really fast”. He even had a radio announcer voice. The music would blare and a siren would sound off in the background and the whirl of the ride would leave you giggling for it never to end. I rode this ride over and over again throughout my youth and early teen years. Did I mention the attendants were really hot?
There also was a plethora of carnival games. None of which I ever won a prize at. Although, I was really good at SkeeBall. I just don’t remember ever cashing in those thousands of tickets I collected…
Once I was older, I frequented “The Center” for other reasons. The lure of the music coming through the open doors of the bars was a temptation that I could not resist. The legal age for alcohol consumption was 18 when I grew up. I would drive down with a car load of friends for an evening of partying in one of the seedy watering holes. The Tic Toc Club, 5 O’Clock Lounge, The Frolics and one on the corner of the rotary whose name escapes me.
I don’t remember when I stopped going to “The Center”. It seems like it was around the time I was around 19 or 20. As I grew older, I noticed that it wasn’t really a great place to hang out. It wasn’t the cleanest. It was kinda sketchy. I have never even taken my kids there. We always went to Canobie or Water Country and of course don’t forget Disneyworld.
I recently went back to “The Center” with a good friend. We both love the beach and had always gone to “The Center” with our families and friends growing up. When reminiscing, we had decided that we would go back one day, stroll up and down the walk, trying to choose what vendor had the best pizza or meatpie or fried onion rings. It definately was not the same. It’s like a ghost town. No more carnival rides. Some of the clubs have been replaced by condos and still more are advertised to be built. There are more “biker bars” than I remember along the back. I guess all good things must come to an end…
But, the pizza and meatpies at Tripolis are still the best.
September 12th, 2007 at 9:34 am
Hello, nice post. Bookmark it.
October 17th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Hello. I couldn’t help but read about you being a fan of the Himalaya rides. I am too. I’ve never been to Shaheen’s but I do have some photos of the ride given to me by one of my fellow viewers that used to work there. Do you have any Himalaya photos? I sure would love to see them.
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:24 am
Hi Tyrone,
I was glad to see that you read my blog. Once I started writing, the memories just flowed. Unfortunately, that is all I have of the Himalaya, memories. I hope you’re successful finding more pictures.
December 6th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Computer Game News and Reviews…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…
March 9th, 2008 at 7:46 am
Hey Donna,
The bar on the corner was most likely the Kon Tiki!!!!!!! We spent MANY a night in there. On the other side of the street was The Bowery, a real sketchy place but was fun to drop into once in a while. A good stop for a quick tuna sub was Lena’s, right around the corner. But I agree, the lure to “The Center” was the pizza, onion rings, clams an music at the Frolics and the rides at Shaheens.
One of my favorite memories was a 4th of July night driving with 2 friends from Seabrook to the Center in bumper-bumper traffic, shooting off fireworks from the back seat of our friend’s car and just having a blast!
March 16th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
I smiled when I read about the Kon Tiki. I spent many nights there with my friends. We had the best time in that crowded little place; then we’d catch Mac’s Mob at the Peppermint on another night, and the 5 O’Clock club on another night. But we loved Friday nights at the Surf & Turf singing and dancing to Golden Joe (Baker?) doing his Elvis impersonation. The best fun ever. I remember (on a whim - and too many drinks at the Kon Tiki - that we’d take a peek inside the Bowery to see what it was like inside. We were petrified! I knew I wasn’t going to meet my dream man there!
Does anyone remember the guy who used to walk around the Center wearing nothing but a loin cloth and a very even tan? I think he performed at one of
the clubs. I can’t remember his name. Does anyone remember his name?
March 22nd, 2008 at 2:17 pm
I used to spend summers at the beach at Rye, NH in the ’60’s, and my friends & I would hitch hike down to Salisbury Beach….we hung out at the trampolines located on a side street behind the rollercoaster and rode the roller coaster every trip there!
We’d also sneak down on the beach behind the Frolics where you could climb some wooden steps to a door which was usually open and be able to look inside and actually glimpse the shows.
When I got older went to see several shows at the Frolics (Paul Anka, Louis Armstrong, Teresa Brewer, etc) I’ve tried to get interior photos of the Frolics, but no luck….even wrote the Mulcahy’s who owned the place, but they sent a reply saying they “…only had great memories of the place.”
Also went to the Bowery a few times…usually had bands and a comedian and a female bartender with very short platinum hair who worked the bar just as you entered.
Great times!!!
March 27th, 2008 at 11:58 am
David,
Thanks for jogging my memory re: Kon Tiki. What a place! Loud, sketchy and alluring all in one place. Who could ask for anything more!
I too spent many, many nights cruising up and around Hampton Beach Blvd, mostly in boyfriends’ classic cars. That was the bomb. Everyone would check out the car as you drove by. Of course you always had to rev the engine every so often. Kinda like flexing your muscles. It was just as much fun walking up and down the blvd as it was to drive. All the cat calls and whistling (both made and rec’d!!) LOL.
It’s been fun reading all the blog entries on this one. Brings back lots of great memories.
April 11th, 2008 at 4:28 am
The guy in the loin cloth walking around the Center late at night was Sweet Pie. He had a gig at one of the smaller clubs and did his “walk about” before it became fashionable!!!
May 12th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
I too have many fond memories of the Salisbury center.
Some of the most vivid started from the early sixties when I was 6 or 8 and I’d always beg Mom and Dad to let me “Fool The Guesser”. The guy had a stand set up smack dab on the edge of the rotary and he’d try and guess your age, or your birthday or your weight using the hanging chair scale he had. I’d always have him try and guess my weight because I was a “husky” kid and he’d always seem to fail and have to pay up with the dime store prize that dad forked over too much money for. The Guesser never lost any money because the tacky prizes cost way less than the entry fee. I loved it though.
My Dad would always play the Cigarette game where you would plunk down your dime and they would hit the button that would start the alternating lights on the light wheel until it came to a stop on the winning number or color or whatever. If you matched, you won a pack of smokes and if it landed on a bonus light you’d win 2 or more packs…DAD loved winning that game with a “yeehah” shout on his winners and a “Mengia, I was so close”, on his losers. From another stand I still remember the retro clock he once won for my Mother. It was kinda gawdy with all these fake gold vines and leaves with Roman Numerals on the face. We had it up for years until about 1978 when I last remember it. Dad loved the games of chance almost as much as the food. For me it was always a slice at Tripoli’s or a Cotton candy or ice cream at Joe’s playland… Mom and Dad always went for the onion rings and stuff around the corner at Foote’s. My Mother almost always had an ear of corn from Joanne’s I think it was called. Dad couldn’t eat it very well with the false teeth he had at an early age (from falling down the coal shoot as a kid he said).
Always a good time at the center as long as the hard earned money held out.
Though I never ventured on the roller coaster, due to a profound fear of things rickety, (though I love a good coaster ride now), I could share a story often told in my family about the Salisbury Roller Coaster.
One of my uncles when in his twenties and after a night of hard drinking is jolted awake one morning by the screams and roars of the coaster. There he sits behind the wheel of his car firmly wedged underneath the coaster as it goes flashing by. Somehow in a stupor he had managed to drive his way under the coaster but could not figure a way out and so promptly fell asleep until the first ride of the day… My Mother still busts his balls every time the family gets together. The old coaster is gone but remembered every time we round the bend on Rte 110 never too see it again off in the distance
Later on in life I’d venture to the center with friends but that’s a decade or more later with too many memories to retrieve today ….More on that down the line…
June 30th, 2008 at 10:34 am
I just came back from a weekend at Salisbury State Reservation. Going to Salisbury always brings back the great memories of 40 years ago when I was 18. The pizza is still just as good today as it ever was! Tripoli’s. Open year ’round.
The town though, was depressing at best, as I drove from Salisbury to Hampton. Man have things gotten more and more run down. They’ve expanded cottages to be larger, in places where I didn’t think it possible. We had some great times there - but most all the rides are gone now, building exteriors still stand but are just shells, ghosts of what used to be. Condos upon condos all over the place, in the oddest of configurations to face the water. Get your photos now folks for memories of Salisbury - I think it will be gone in the not too distant future. The transients who rent the small cottages for the winter months will be displaced to God knows where, more and more condos will go up, each one higher than the next, unattractively structured but jammed in there to take up every last square foot.
It was fun, while it lasted.
July 4th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Things I remember from vacationing @ Salisbury Beach as a kid in the late 50’s/early 60’s: ice cream on a stick called a Black Moon; Broadway Flying Horses, world’s coolest carousel; the giant clown on the roof; rectangular, greek-style pizza (everybody always yelled for “edges”), Tripoli’s maybe?; half-cob corn on a stick, hot & buttery good; huge, open-front arcades with row upon row of coin-op “clamdigger” machines, loaded with nick-nacks; the Five O’Clock Club, where my folks would drink highballs as I scampered up & down the beach; Haggerty’s Motel, where we stayed every single year, despite my Mom’s annual complaining; “junk shops” where you could buy used paperbacks for 10 cents each, a nickel if they were coverless; a small, old-school funhouse, with crazy morph-mirrors out front, and a life size statue of a polka dot-dressed woman perched over the door, her recorded voice screeching with laughter as her animatronic belly wobbled & shook; endless cartons of hot, aromatic fried clams wolfed down by my dad, while I weedled more change out of him; those funky stuffed caiman alligators, dressed & posed like Cubano musicians; pattering across the street in my trunks first thing in the morning, headed for the beach, the sky big as a galaxy, everything looking, sounding, feeling, smelling like magic to an inland, hill-valley kid like me.
July 7th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Wow Rita….I well remember Mac’s Mob playing at the 5 O’Clock club with very fond memories. They were the BEST! And yes the Tripoli pizza…yummy. This has been a great walk down memory lane….. almost 40 yrs. later….thanks all!
July 7th, 2008 at 8:55 am
P.S. Does anyone know what ever happened to Mac’s Mob?????
August 12th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Rita, the man who walked around with the loin cloth was named “Sweet Pie”. He worked out of the Turf and Surf club. This I know because I grew up right behind the Turf and Surf and Sweet Pie loved my grandmother and was always hanging around on our porch. I spent every summer at the beach. Does anyone remember when they had the wrestling in the field next to the roller coaster? I would carry the wrestling signs in the center and get in free at night. That was the Haystack Calhoun, and Killer Kowalski days. One more thing noone seems to remember. I loved going on the roller coaster and right next to the frolics there was a game you could win a ticket for the roller coaster. You got nine baseballs and you had to get eight in the sixty point hole and one in the ninety. Not many people remember that, do they?Last thing, what about the barrel funhouse and the mirror funhouse. (With the fat lady laughing above the door) And I also miss Roberts surfside arcade and making out under the Frolics.
August 14th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
I vacationed in Salisbury for two weeks every summer for every year of my childhood and ended up back there for my honeymoon as well. I too remember the Himilaya I loved the way it went backwards so fast. A huge rocket ship roller coaster where you sat in these little cars and went up into the rocket lying on your back with your feet in the air straight to the top it was pitch black in there and the only thing you could see were the stars above until you came out of the top of it then you spiraled around it on a red track until you came to the roller coaster part of the ride . I have to say that ride was my all time favorite and I have searched for pics of it online and have had no luck so far. Also the glass house I never could find my way out of that place. I loved the fun house with the big wooden barrel that was awesome could stay in that for hours. Old Salisbury beach was the best I miss the way it used to be . Oh and yeah the wrestling shows were cool too Kowalski and Calhoon . Ken Patera so exciting to see them there.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
I am an absolute Salisbury Beach History Buff enthusiast!!I remember everything that was there; The Roller Coaster, The Giant Clown Fun House, Lena’s Seafood right next to the latter with it’s giant models of an order of Fried Clams, an order of French Fries and also a giant model of Lena’s legendary Onion Rings. I also have awesome memories of the giant candy apples that were covered with coconut and you could literally smell the Heavenly aroma of Lena’s fried clams and the coconut on the candy apples all through the Center no matter where you were. Priceless are the memories of The Frolics arcade and the laughing lady funhouse. No memory of old Salisbury would be complete without the divine memory of Christy’s juicy and delicious pizza. Also the memory of the old magnificently hand carved Broadway Flying Horses carousel from Coney Island is a major staple of reminiscent joy in my memories of Old Salisbury Beach. Then there was Shaheen’s Fun-O-Rama with all of it’s legendary rides; The Bubble Bounce, The Sky Diver, The Toboggan, The Trabant, The Scrambler, The Fireball-and of course; The Himalaya with its DJ ‘Beach Boy’ mimicking cool crew that were as talented as any acrobats leaping on and off of the Himalaya with as much ease as if they were stepping over a crack in the street accompanied by a incredibly hosting ‘Dick Clark’ voice from the Himalayas’ DJ booth with a repetitious announcement that became as legendary to the old Salisbury Beach Center as the Himalaya itself; ” KEEP THAT BAR DOWN AS WE GO REAL RRREAL FAST!!!!” Standing right next to the Himalaya was another unforgettable legend; The Witch’s Castle-and of course next to that, The Orbit and The Pirate’s Cove. I still reminisce about sno-cones and all of those legendary nostalgic treats from a by-gone era. I will carry these precious memories to my grave and if it’s possible-into the next life. Next to all of those beautiful sacred memories I would like to recite a very famous slogan that was well known to Old Salisbury Beach after a decent hearted prankster had painted it in great big bold white letters adorned with a huge American flag across the side of the giant green water tower one summer so very long ago; GOD BLESS SALISBURY BEACH, C-MANN C-MANN. Beautiful, Beautiful nostalgic memories of a wonderful time in a by-gone era that now exist only in the Twilight Zone.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Rita..man in the Loin cloth was…………SWEET PEA!!!!!!!!!!
November 5th, 2008 at 11:06 am
I just love reminiscing about the old times….
As a child our family spent 3-6 weeks each year down on Railroad Ave in Salisbury…..We NEVER went back to Lawrence to check the mail or anything while we were on vacation……Salisbury truly was the place to be. A little something for everyone….My mother saw Jerry Vale at the Frolics and I remember Chubby Checker appearing there, although I never had the fortune to see any of the shows, I relished in the excitement of those who did. Mac’s Mob was the best….We would go see him every Sunday….They would let all the kids in during the afternoons. I was the oldest in the group. What a blast we had…..singing along and dancing to their music….remember………Have you seen her???? and so many more….I remember one members name was Danny White…..they were all awesome…I too wonder what became of them…..They were named after the gentleman who owned the property where they built the Peppermint Lounge..He has since passed away, but I believe his wife Pat still lives there at the corner…..I can go on and on…..we can never go back but oh what wonderful memories we can cherish for ever and ever….
I did have the good fortune of living in Salisbury for 5 wonderful years…just a couple houses from where we vacationed….my children hold that time there special and so do I.
Thank you for sharing these memories…..
Sandy