When the historic battleship USS Iowa was tugged away from Berth 51 in San Pedro to its new permanent home at Berth 87 on Saturday, it carried not only the memory of the thousands of Navy seamen who served aboard the ship, but some of the men themselves. Ninety-two-year-old Bob Dedic was part of the original crew when the ship was commissioned in 1940, and was back again for this final voyage. So were other veterans and active Navy sailors who served on the ship during its 50-year tenure until it was decommissioned in 1990. There were also active Navy and Navy Sea Cadets as young as 14 all spruced up in their dress whites.
Dignitaries on board included Congresswoman Janice Hahn and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, both beaming with pride in bringing the future museum ship to Los Angeles. I can tell you they were beaming, because I was on board too, along with a passel of TV crews, journalists and photographers invited to document and share this last hurrah.
Rescued from mothballs where she had been languishing in the Bay Area, the ship made the full 400 mile voyage to San Pedro under the push-pull of a team of tug boats, arriving in Los Angeles on May 30, 2012. She got a bottom scrubbing to remove any potentially invasive species or contaminants before being cleared for the final tow to her new home.
The volunteer crew from the Pacific Battleship Center cast off the chains and we set underway for the short journey accompanied by the twin brigantines Exy and Irving Johnson, as well as the tall ship the Spirit, sailing only under one sail to keep her speed down to ours. Two LA City Fire Boats at the bow and stern spouted water streams to martial arrangements of Anchors Away and Oh Shenandoah (an off choice, I thought) creative a festive spirit as we pulled away from land. A few dozen other sail boats, yachts and motorboats joined in the parade.
Along our path, close to 1000 people had gathered along the waterfront to welcome the USS Iowa to her new home. Our destination was only a mile away, but to add a little grandeur to the event, as well as better photo opportunities for us and the news ‘copters above, we paraded up the channel under the Vincent Thomas Bridge, where we paused briefly before resuming our tow in the reverse direction.
Technical difficulties docking meant that we got to enjoy the marching band and cheering crowd that welcomed us from captive positions on the deck while Randy Newman’s I love LA blared from the ship’s speakers. Due to the delay, the young Sea Cadets never got to present the Color Guard during the truncated award ceremonies as proclamations and awards changed hands. They didn’t seem to mind. Having stood their posts proudly as the ship found its new home, they became part of history, documented by TV and news cameras and yours truly for posterity.
The USS Iowa is open to the public as a museum ship. For information and tickets, visit pacificbattleship.com.
San Francisco is known more for its fog than rain. They do get their share of wet weather, but not as much as you might expect. With an average of 62 days of precipitation per year – most of those falling between November and March – they are well below the national average of 117.
The Musče Mčcanique is a great place to entertain yourself and the kids for a rainy hour or a day depending on how many quarters you’re willing to part with. Even if you’re not a fan of the usual arcade games, you can admire the craftsmanship of the antique mechanical wonders and read up on the history of carnival and beach boardwalk culture.
You can have your fortune told by a wizard or a carnival gypsy, have your palm read by the Mystic Ray or let the Kiss-O-Meter tell you just how hot you are in a range from blah to burning to uncontrollable. For a quarter, the Mystic Ray tells me “You are very prudent, never taking a move without lengthy deliberation
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Most of the mechanical tableaus were much grander and had lots of action going on. A carnival scene has hundreds of moveable parts that come to life with the insertion of a few quarters. The Ferris wheel turns; sideshow characters come to life and jungle animals perform. The Unbelievable Mechanical Farm is even more complex with farm animals, a saw mill, hay barn and dozens of characters doing everything from plowing to shoveling coal, from baling hay to reading the newspaper with lots of folks just sitting around chatting.
Puppets in glass cases dance, sing and ring bells. A whole array of mechanical instruments and music boxes from the turn of the century play a wide variety of tunes – so many in fact that there are three CDs of tunes played on these instruments available in the gift shop or online. Some are straightforward player pianos, others, like the Orchestrion, include a multitude of instruments within a single case.
two opponents against each other operating a precursor to Rock’em Sock’em Robots. In the Marathon Cycle Race, two players race bicycles around a vertical track. In Zelinsky’s own 1989 creation, The Hammer, two people can match strength by trying to use a lever to lift a heavy hammer and ring a bell. An Arm Wrestling machine warns of the mechanical arm’s “superhuman strength” and gives you two tries to best the machine for a quarter. There are also more modern games of agility, speed and ingenuity from a Pirates of the Caribbean pinball machine, to early Atari arcade games and Super Chexx table hockey.
A lot of the machines are too tall for little kids to play easily, but the traditional mechanical horse is always popular and there are step stools around to give the little ones a boost. Some of the machines are definitely PG – especially the giant Laffing Sal and her smaller laughing buddies who have been giving kids nightmares and inspiring horror films for generations.