Beached Mermaids

Dateline Disneyland: 1965-1967. Young "maidens" were recruited to perform as mermaids in Disneyland's Submarine Lagoon.

Today, this kind of display would generate an intense range of emotions, from fundamentalist furor to guys folding up singles longways and standing at the railing with a bleary-eyed smile.

Can't say things were all that different forty years ago. One story has it that the mermaids were flushed down the drain after one-too-many male guests could not resist the sirens' song and lept into the lagoon. (The less-idyllic account suggests that the intense amount of chlorine used in the water dried out these poor fish-girls. Ewwww.)

Still, standing here in 2008, there's something very innocent and playful about the whole affair. And sexy, too.

Walt, you were a genius!