Exhaustively researched and lovingly produced,
author Chris Merritt's twenty-year labor of love is a testament to the charming history of Knott's, and how it grew from a homespun roadside attraction to major destination theme park.
To commemorate the book's release on April 18th 2010, a few hundred tickets were sold for a whole day's worth of great historical events at the park -- a book signing, tours of Ghost Town and Grand Ave., as well as a two-hour slide presentation on the park's history curated by Merritt (which was absolutely phenomenal).
When I arrived in the morning I was lucky enough to run into my friends Greg MacLaurin and Keith Rector, who in turn had Imagineering legend
Bob Gurr in tow with them. The four of us toured the park all afternoon, riding classics like the Calico Mine Ride and Timber Mountain Log Flume together (and for the latter, we were joined by the always charming
Charles Phoenix).
Amongst the turnout for the event were a slew of theme park royalty --
Tony Baxter (who wrote the forward to Chris' book),
Rolly and Chris Crump (designers of Knott’s Bear-y Tales),
Eddie Sotto (designer of the Wacky Soap Box Racers), John Waite (earliest designer of Knott's Halloween Haunt ), Rick Campbell (art director for Knott's Roaring 20's area), and Dean Davisson (head of Knott’s Public Relations from 1958-1976). I was a little surprised that I didn't see my pal Robin Hall, who did a lot of design work at Knott's in the 1980s & 90s -- be sure to
check out his Flickr to see some amazing designs that never came to be.
The evening ended with a wonderful panel discussion, with plenty of anecdotes and stories from the park's long history. Knott's was as much a part of my Southern California upbringing as Disneyland and Universal Studios -- I have fond memories of panning for gold, the Haunted Shack, and riding Knott's Bear-y Tales about a dozen times on my eighth birthday. So while there have been many books already written about Disneyland, there are
precious few for Knott's. Kudos to Chris for creating such a wonderful tribute, and for hosting a truly memorable day.
Click the pic to see my
huge set of photos from the event; you can also read more about the legendary designers involved over at the
OC Register.
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Spent the day Saturday with Dave ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
djmrswhite for one of our semi-regular fancy-shopping days. This time out, we went for fancy lunch at Joan's on Third and fancy shopping at some cool boutiques near there on Third, then drove to Beverly Hills to see really fancy things at Missoni, Hermés, and Barney's New York. Because we're fancy.
