VIDEO: A Brief Visit With El Cerrito's "Sinister Sal"

She was a woman you couldn’t forget, even if you wanted too.

Some called her “demonic.”

Laffing Sal — the gap-toothed, freckle-faced gal who wore a perpetual smile and greeted visitors to San Francisco’s Playland at the Beach until it closed in 1972 — had what may be the most unforgettable laugh in the Bay Area, perhaps in America.

It was a cackling, boisterous, mildly maniacal and insinuatingly sinister laugh, and it was penetrating — like a tattoo needle etching itself into memory.

She "provided nightmare material for countless children," wrote Lubna Takruri in a San Francisco Chronicle essay.

So visitors to El Cerrito’s shouldn’t be surprised to find a version of Sal — called “Sinister Sal” — looming and laughing in a large case to their right just after entering the front door.

In this video, Frank Biafore, the Fabulous Fun Facilitator at El Cerrito’s unique homage to the beloved amusement park that once sat at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, explains Sinister Sal’s history and her place in the Sal sisterhood now residing at Playland-Not-at-the-Beach.

 “Playland-Not-at-the-Beach is the only place on the planet that we know of that has TWO Laughing Sals,” the facility’s Web site says.

Laffing Sal wasn’t unique to Playland. As the Not-Playland Web site notes, “There were over 250 original Laughing Sals.” Made of papier mâché by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company of Germantown, PA, they were scattered in amusement parks across America.

 There were more than one Sal at the original Playland, but their current whereabouts remains a matter of some dispute. The Musee Mechanique in San Francisco lays claim to having a Playland Sal made in the early 1930s, though Playland-Not-at-the-Beach says it is “of mysterious origin.” Another Playland Sal can be found at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, though the authenticity of her head has been challenged.

Special thanks to Emily Henry for help with the video.