Beach Blanket Babylon: Final Finale

The 17,216th – and last – performance of “Beach Blanket Babylon” is scheduled for December 31. Claiming to be the longest-running musical revue anywhere, the show began in the back room of a San Francisco bar in 1974. It quickly became popular and moved to its current location, the Club Fugazi at 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Boulevard (formerly Green Street). The show became a Bay-area institution, lampooning an ever-changing cast of celebrities and politicians, local, national and world. This year’s production features House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), Russian President Vladimir Putin, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the current occupant of the White House.

“Beach Blanket Babylon” attracts locals and tourists, and locals with their out-of-town guests. If you saw last year’s show, that doesn’t mean you’ve seen this year’s. It changes regularly, keeping current with the world’s buffoonery.
The show’s plot, such as it is, follows Snow White on her quest for Prince Charming. She treks around the world, encountering a variety of characters, such as Elvis or Michelle and Barack or Stormy Daniels. The 1981 show even featured in the cast Annette Funicello – star of the movie that inspired the title.

The spectacle is a frenetic series of costume changes and outrageous headgear, culminating in a musical finale that features a fourteen-feet-tall, nine-feet-wide hat displaying the San Francisco skyline, which has also changed dramatically over the course of the show’s run.

Beach Blanket Babylon” is still popular says its producer Schuman Silver, widow of Steve Silver who started the whole thing. “I thought I’d be dead, or something. I never thought I would close the show, ever, in my whole life. But I felt it was time.”

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