As to Lakeside Park, you might want to search ‘YouTube’ for a video named ‘Flying Turns’ – it shows a great clip of the ‘Flying Turns’ coaster ride in 1930, as well as a few views of the park, when it opened at Lakeside that year (the first such opening of this very nationally-popular ride then at any amusement park). It’s set to ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ by Benny Goodman, too. The guys loved this ride so much because the women had to sit between their legs (quite ‘risque’ by 1930 public standards)! Lakeside was, as was Franke’s Forest Park, located off N. Main Street, originally a ‘trolley park’, built with the privately-owned streetcar lines so their patrons could take a streetcar/trolley to its terminus and enoy a fun day at the park. This line also accessed the Veterans Military Home nearby. I think one of the MTA trolley lines still follows the streetcar’s path in Dayton.
As to the Mayfair Theater, I remember it well on E. Fifth St. downtown – not a ‘classy’ place or area to be in. One of my Beavercreek HS teachers (Harold Solomon, I think his name was, a kind of a ‘New Age’ thinker then)in the early 1960’s (maybe 1961) took several of us students to see the show there one evening (parents thought it was a school outing) and as I remember, the ‘star’ performers were ‘Busty Russell’ and ‘Chesty Morganna’ – one of them, rumored to have size 73 DD’s, could take her breasts and fling them under her arms and over her shoulders! Quite an experience for teenagers back then!
As to Lakeside Park, you might want to search ‘YouTube’ for a video named ‘Flying Turns’ – it shows a great clip of the ‘Flying Turns’ coaster ride in 1930, as well as a few views of the park, when it opened at Lakeside that year (the first such opening of this very nationally-popular ride then at any amusement park). It’s set to ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ by Benny Goodman, too. The guys loved this ride so much because the women had to sit between their legs (quite ‘risque’ by 1930 public standards)! Lakeside was, as was Franke’s Forest Park, located off N. Main Street, originally a ‘trolley park’, built with the privately-owned streetcar lines so their patrons could take a streetcar/trolley to its terminus and enoy a fun day at the park. This line also accessed the Veterans Military Home nearby. I think one of the MTA trolley lines still follows the streetcar’s path in Dayton.
As to the Mayfair Theater, I remember it well on E. Fifth St. downtown – not a ‘classy’ place or area to be in. One of my Beavercreek HS teachers (Harold Solomon, I think his name was, a kind of a ‘New Age’ thinker then)in the early 1960’s (maybe 1961) took several of us students to see the show there one evening (parents thought it was a school outing) and as I remember, the ‘star’ performers were ‘Busty Russell’ and ‘Chesty Morganna’ – one of them, rumored to have size 73 DD’s, could take her breasts and fling them under her arms and over her shoulders! Quite an experience for teenagers back then!