On June 7, 1974, Steve Silver produced a small show in the back room of the Savoy Tivoli Restaurant in San Francisco. There were 214 seats crammed into a tiny space. The floor was covered with two tons of sand; a lifeguard tore tickets at the door and sprayed the backs of people's hand with Coppertone®.  For $2.50, audience members got a 45-minute show with four main performers, a chorus line of hula-dancing middle-aged housewives doing card stunts, a band dressed as poodles, one lighting man on top of a lifeguard stand manipulating Folger’s® coffee can lights, and a whole lots of laughs.

The show was to run for six weeks. That was over 30 years ago…

Val Diamond in the Skyline Hat.

© SSPI 2008 Photo credit: Larry Merkle / David Allen

After a brief stint in the fall of 1974 at Club Olympus, the show opened at Club Fugazi where it has been running since.  The show became an expanded version of the Tivoli and Olympus shows, but now included more characters, grander sets, a larger cast, and what was to become a trademark of the show, bigger hats! 

Packed with hilarious spoofs of pop culture, spectacular costumes, outrageously gigantic hats, and one show-stopping number after another, Beach Blanket Babylon has performed over 34 years and continues to dazzle audiences at Club Fugazi in San Francisco’s North Beach. 

In Beach Blanket Babylon, Snow White continues her fast-paced musical journey around the world in search of her “Prince Charming” and along the way encounters a star-studded, ever-changing line-up of hilarious pop-culture characters. 

“San Francisco’s best-known theatrical expression, a phenomenon as zany as its hometown!”  — Los Angeles Times

“Beach Blanket Babylon has become as much a part of San Francisco as the cable cars.
It should be filmed as a TV spectacular!”  — Hollywood Reporter