Amusing synchronicity that this image has a sign for a Hotel Metropole on the left side of the street. It looks like an advertising billboard.

As it also seems to include the amenity of being an "Auto Inn," I doubt if it refers to the Catalina Island hotel shown in the next Shorpy post.

Ocean Park too had his roller coaster, like the Bayou City Roller seen a few days ago, the Ingersol's Scenic Railroad. Although in the Wikipedia lemma about the Pacific Ocean Park it is said that this roller coaster is one of the six of the pier's original attractions that were incorporated into the new park. As far as my research says, the roller coaster in the POP was not Ingersoll's Scenic Railroad but the 1957 Sea Serpent roller coaster at the same spot.

It seems like the first car is a rental, waiting for customers.

Regarding film vs glass, I should have said "emulsion".

[And you still can! Comments can be edited. - Dave]

Ocean Park was the town between Santa Monica (to the north) and Venice. Both Ocean Park and Venice developed ahead of Santa Monica because they are at sea level while the cliffs, or palisades, separated SM from the beach. There was much political infighting between the three towns. Ocean Park eventually became part of Santa Monica while Venice was annexed into Los Angeles—and went downhill soon after. Had the towns merged themselves together, there would now be a very large autonomous beach city covering the area.

[And it took Richard Diebenkorn to put the place on the map. - Dave]

What a marvelous photo. A perfect representation of the time and place. Kudos to the photographer.

One of the joys of reading the Shorpy comments is going back to look at the picture again ( and again ) to try and find the things other readers caught.
It took me a minute but finally got the popcorn wagon.

And I thought car shows were just an idea of today. Autos are lined up exactly like the ones shown this summer.

Wow, I’ve never seen one of those old-time popcorn wagons in its actual era - only the reproduction ones you see at Disney, etc.

[I'm counting the minutes until someone finds it in the Cretors catalogue. - Dave]

Ha - I seem to have missed that post!

In looking closer, it's not big letters on the hillside; I think it's a "WELCOME" banner stretched across the street, to be read from the other side! "DUH".

A very beautiful and high quality photograph of an interesting street scene. A strange thing though, is that on the far distant hillside, the large letters that spell out "WELCOME" appear backwards, as though the photograph was printed backwards, and yet all of the rest of the signage in this street scene appears normal. Why does the word WELCOME appear backwards???

Great to see some West Coast work.

The photographer used a view camera for this image. He decided to adjust the lens position to get deep focus on only the left side of Pier Avenue, where most of the interest is. The soft focus on the right was a result of that. The films of that era were "slow" and you couldn't always get straight-on deep focus. Camera adjustments were part of the tricks of the trade.

Dude knew his gear.

[There is no "film". This was shot on glass. - Dave]

Do you think he's embarrassed ?