The Morning Midway and Don Marcks: On the Auction Block, Another Great Model Circus Faces Uncertain Future as Playland-Not-At-The-Beach Folds

 This Monday, Labor Day, will mark the last day of operation for Playland-Not-At-The-Beach, the brainchild of the late Richard Tuck, who wanted to celebrate San Francisco's old ocean side amusement park.  He rented a space on San Pablo Avenue in El Ceritto, CA the town where the late Don Marcks lived, and where Don founded and published his weekly Circus Report.  After suffering many years of ill-health during which he tirelessly kept the presses rolling, Don died in 2003.

When, in my boyhood,  I first came upon a few of Don's colorful wagons on flat cars in the window of Western Auto, in Santa Rosa, that one moment made an instant circus fan of me. Soon after, I was building my own first crude models.

The Marcks Circus went to Tuck's Playland   The museum itself came with other offerings, and new ones have been added.  Among them,  The World of Charles Dickens, Santa's Village, and The Genius of Walt Disney.  Few artifacts, if any, from Playland have been added, so it hardly dominated the proceedings, which marked possibly the museum's greatest drawback. And everything was packed, however finely, into a small space with narrow passageways.  I've been there two or three times.  The last, a couple of yeas back, on a morning, when I was the only visitor.  By the time I left, there may have been two others.

Playland is a victim of new building owners wanting to sell the space for condos.  When I spoke briefly by phone with Playland's owner Frank Biafore, he was sketchy about what would happen to the circus.  He had tried to find a substitute location for the museum at affordable rates.  This being the Bay Area, impossible.

I have since discovered on the website that it will be auctioned off on September 15, at 10am.  The Marcks circus collection is listed in sections, big top to dressing tent, etc. each "valued" at between $4,000 and $6.000, the big top, from $5,000 to $7,000.   Strange that Biafore he did not mention this to me.

How many wonderful model circuses out there end up in virtual oblivion? 

I shutter to think what may befall Don's wonderful work.  Of course, I would love to see it in some nearby location.  Baring that, I can think of a city of varied amusements named Las Vegas, because I can think of two people in it who might be the perfect buyers. Bill?  Jan?