80 Fun House Facades

 

‘A fun house is an amusement facility found on amusement park and funfair midways in which patrons encounter and actively interact with various devices designed to surprise, challenge, and amuse the visitor. Unlike thrill rides, funhouses are participatory attractions, where visitors enter and move around under their own power. Incorporating aspects of a playful obstacle course, funhouses seek to distort conventional perceptions and startle people with unstable and unpredictable physical circumstances within an atmosphere of wacky whimsicality.

‘Appearing originally in the early 1900s at Coney Island, the funhouse is so called because in its initial form it was just that: a house or larger building containing a number of amusement devices. At first these were mainly mechanical devices. Some could be described as enlarged, motorized versions of what might be found on a children’s playground.

‘Some fun houses would bring new arrivals through a short series of dark corridors or a mirror maze or a door maze (many identical doors forming squares, only one of which would open outward in each square), often leading onto a small stage where they had to negotiate a series of rocking floors, airjets and other obstacles while people already inside the funhouse could watch and laugh at them. A few places even provided bench seats for the watchers. Once patrons were inside they could stay as long as they wanted, moving from one attraction to another, repeating each one as many times as they chose.

‘Through the first half of the 20th century most amusement parks had this type of fun house, but its free-form design was its undoing. It was labor-intensive, needing an attendant at almost every device, and when people spent two hours in the fun house they weren’t out on the midway buying tickets to other rides and attractions. Traditional fun houses gave way to walk-throughs, where patrons followed a set path all the way through and emerged back on the midway a few minutes later. These preserved some of the traditional fun house features, including various kinds of moving floors, sometimes a revolving barrel and a small slide. They added such things as crooked rooms, where a combination of tilt and optical illusion made it hard to know which way was up, and dark corridors with various popup and jumpout surprises, optical illusions and sound effects.

‘Many traditional fun houses were removed after parks created walk-throughs. Some became dilapidated and were torn down. A few burned down; they were nearly all wood-frame buildings with extensive electrical wiring. Those that remained were all at traditional local amusement parks and died when those parks closed due to competition from new theme parks. No theme park ever created a traditional free-form stay-all-day fun house, but theme parks sometimes developed the walk-through attraction to new, high-tech heights. A few traditional fun houses are still operating in Europe and Australia.’ — collaged

 

Lost City

 

Hell Hole

 

Temple of Mirth

 

Alpen Hotel

 

Fun House

 

Dream of Venus

 

Urgewalt der Giganten

 

Hilarious

 

Helter Skelter

 

Fun House

 

Scaredy Catcher

 

Unknown

 

The Haunted Castle

 

Crazy Theater

 

Whoops

 

Fun House

 

Trauma Towers

 

The Crazy Mirrors

 

Unknown

 

Satan’s Den

 

Juke Box Music Fun House

 

Sydney’s Famous Mirror Maze

 

House of Terror

 

Fun House

 

Magic Circus

 

Alpine Fun House

 

Ferndale House of Mirrors

 

The Laughing Dark Castle

 

Planet Rock ‘n’ Roll

 

Cake Walk

 

Who Me?

 

Canuck Fun House

 

Noah’s Ark & Slide

 

Das Omen

 

Mystery Shack

 

Krazy Cottage

 

Playland

 

New York New York

 

Fun House

 

Mystery Machine

 

Fun House

 

Ecki

 

Fire Department Crazy Garage

 

Nanny Pearl’s Crooked Cottage

 

Laffland

 

Dr. Lehmann Horror Lazarett

 

Outhouse Inn

 

Magical Mirrors

 

The Wizard Awaits You

 

Phantasmagoria

 

Scared Factory

 

Funny Mirrors

 

Haunted Castle

 

Hof Freu Haus

 

Surf Shack

 

Planet Playstation

 

Laugh Land

 

The Barl of Fun

 

Funtime

 

Zavatta

 

Nightmare Mansion

 

Bob Tracey’s Magic Walkthrough

 

Fuzzy’s Lach Saloon

 

Jantsen Fun House

 

Chinatown Oriental Mirror Maze

 

Mr. Bean 4

 

Super Top Dance

 

3D Fun House

 

Slice of Life

 

Unknown

 

Giant Rat

 

Big Bamboo

 

Baron Funfrite’s Castle

 

Hell Hole

 

Unknown

 

Jigg’s Bungalow

 

Butlin’s Crazy House

 

Devils Inn

 

Happy Family

 

Death Valley Funny House

 

Wacky Shack

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Charalampos, Hi. Yes, well, similarly for me in Amsterdam, except I wrote a whole novel and started a second one in those confines. I don’t know if Kearny had that obsession. It doesn’t ring a bell. Each of the Cycle novels had a related scrapbook. For ‘Period’, that little house (which was hollow inside) was the scrapbook, or I mean I put all of the materials inside it loose instead of pasting them in a particular order in a book. It thought that suited the novel’s structure better. The house was gift from a sculptor/friend of mine, Torbjorn Vejvi, whose work I was studying as part of ‘Period’s’ structural research. Love from chilly, clear Paris. ** Harper, Hey, Harper. That seems like a good reason not to quit, speaking as a job-phobic and boring structure-imposed-phobic person myself. Really, if there are two encouragers, that’s pretty good. I don’t know, you sound at least a bit like me in terms of how you’re dealing with and benefiting from the school context, so I’m vibing that you’ll come away enhanced. I guess I did the scrapbooks partly because I always wanted the novels to have a unique, non-conventional form, and working that out using visual things and collaging text/images/etc. helped me free myself from the expectations that ‘the novel’ normally imposes or something? They helped a lot in a number of ways. Doing them just seemed natural at the time. Thanks for asking. What’s on your agenda this week? ** Joe, Aw, thanks a lot, Joe! You must do some kind of related extra-curricular work/art things when you devise your works, no? ** L, Hi! All of the things in that show excluding the complementary works the artist made are, yes, in my archive at Fales Library/NYU. I think you can go look at them if you tell them you’re doing research. If you want to and have any problems, let me know, and I can drop them an email telling them that I give my permission for you to look at them. Thank you! ** James Bennett, Hi, James. Thanks, man. Yeah, they’re at NYU/Fales. Right, yes, I do a lot of parenthesising when I write. They mark troubled lines or phrases as to-be-improved. I work very meticulously with the sentences’/ paragraphs’ rhythms, and a lot of the time the parentheses point out areas where the rhythm of the wordage isn’t right and where I need to go back to them and revise them specifically to correct their rhythm, if that makes sense. I find it very helpful to do that, i.e. set off imperfect details, so I do recommend it if you think it could work for you. I also use brackets ([ ]) when I think something should probably be cut but I’m not sure yet. There is that time to cease inputting fiction and outpour your own, for sure. I know that well. Great luck. I do like Amen Dunes, and thanks a lot for alerting me to his gig. I’ll try to go. Big up. ** Derek McCormack, Hi!!! Ha ha, it’s at Fales Library. You’d need to do a lot interior work because it’s just empty like a mailbox. We’re reading together in the Fall, no? Is that happening? I hope so because I’m already super excited and nervous. Love, me. ** _Black_Acrylic, Your brother is a total hero. And one fit fella to boot. ** Lauren Cook, Hi, Lauren. It’s very nice to meet you. Oh, sure, I’d love to read your book. You can write to me at [email protected]. You can send me a pdf there, or I can give you my mailing address, whichever’s easiest. Thanks! ** Justin, Thank you a lot, J. My weekend was alright. I finished, I think, that short fiction collection I’ve been working on, so that kind of made the days. How was yours? ** Steve, Hi. No, I only did the scrapbooks for the Cycle novels. I stopped making them after that. The East Village cop was very much not gay. He had six kids, as I recall. Gay friendly, obvs. Possible to hear the new song? Assuming you’re up with your parents, I hope everything is going okay. ** Uday, I think they probably wouldn’t have you let in the door when you were 7, but it is Amsterdam, so who knows really. You had a pear! Out of season! How did you manage that trick? The chocolate was okay, looked better than it tasted. I think I’m eating Ethiopian food tonight for the time in ages, and I’m psyched! ** Sarah, Hi, Sarah! It’s so nice to see you! How have you been? Oh, I think there are some zines from my collection at a zine survey show at the Brooklyn Museum, but I don’t know what because they took them straight from my archive. How are you? What’s going on with you? ** adrian, Ciao, or, I guess, bonjour. Congrats on starting the thesis! Sure, I’d be very happy to meet up. When are you coming again? I should be in Paris for the next while. Let me know, and let’s figure it out. The weather here is warmish, which is better than warm to me. A lot of rain, though. My most violent novel? Hm, I guess probably ‘Frisk’. There’s some intense stuff in ‘The Sluts’ too. And in ‘The Marbled Swarm’ if you negotiate the obfuscating style. But maybe ‘Frisk’? I know The Knife better than I know Fever Ray. I should dive more into her own stuff. Okay, I will. Hugs from here. ** SP, Hi! I’ll find that remix, thanks. I do like Horrorcore stuff, yes. I’ve been meaning to dive in more thoroughly. Three Six Mafia, for sure, yes, like that a lot. No, I don’t like Kanye West. Usual reasons. Awesome, thank you, and excellence on the Monday front. ** Brightpath, Hi there. Thank you for coming in here and for the kind words. Oh, wow, thank you for attempting that research. That’s so cool. Yeah, I guess Marvin hasn’t published that presentation. I’m surprised there isn’t a book of his lecture/written work. The other scrapbooks are much less elaborate and user-friendly than the initial one that became ‘Gone’. They’re pretty scrappy, and I think they’re hard to negotiate unless you really know the respective novels and want to dig around inside them, and there aren’t so many people like that. So, I doubt they’ll get published. Maybe excerpts or something at some point? Thank you. How are you? What’s going on with you du jour? ** seb 🦠, Thanks for being inclusive with here in your emergence. There are less interesting things than stale pizza. Things have been okay with me. We’re right at the very end of finishing the film, so good stuff on that front. Hopefully within the next couple or so of weeks. Mm, I think the film is pretty connected with what I’m interested in re: my books. There’s no sexual violence, but, despite my rep in general quarters, that’s not the only thing I write about by any means. I guess I would say I’m accustomed to and sort of at peace with the misconception of my work as a shock fest or whatever. I dislike that a lot, but it has become very obvious that a majority of people are blinded by the difficult area of my work and can’t see deeper than their offendedness and that there is nothing that I or my work can do about that. Sounds like you know of what I speak. You’re still on the stilt bed, nice! Welcome back to the ‘real’ world. ** Bill, Hi. Uh, no plans to resurrect that show that I know of. It toured to Basel, but that was it, I think. Lucky you to have been able to see that Luther Price screening. I’ve been feeling real envy way over here. What are you allergic to that gets triggered in those contexts? You don’t have to say, obviously. ** Okay. Today the blog invites you to mind meld with yours truly i.e. someone who gets very giddy looking at the facades of carnival fun houses. Any chance you can do that? See you tomorrow, in any case.