Boomer’s – San Diego, CA – A Couple of Putts

Played on November 4, 2018

Reviewed by the Pink Putter

Update – It was set to permanently close in June of 2020 but it appears that the group that originally opened the family fun center in the 1970s are purchased the property and hoping to re-open fall 2020.

After a lovely weekend in San Francisco visiting with my sister Emily, I took a quick flight down to San Diego, where I would be for the rest of the week to attend the International Society of Caricature Artists (ISCA) annual convention. I arrived late on Sunday morning and had put out an informal call on the ISCA Members Facebook Group to see if anyone wanted to join me that afternoon for a round of mini golf at Boomer’s on Clairemont Mesa Blvd. I was so happy to be joined by 8 other amazing caricature artists, many of whom I was just meeting for the first time! Our group included myself, Patrick Martinez, Sergio Vargas, Caleb Hitchcock, Eunsil Chang, Mike Klen, Thomas Counts, Chuck Bennis, and Chang Lu Chih.

Boomer’s has two courses, one a Wild West theme and the other a Storybook Land theme. I had found out about Storybook Land earlier this fall while I was doing some extensive searching through the photo archives of John Margolies, who documented roadside Americana across the country during the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Here are some of his original photos of the Storybook Land course from 1985.

Rating

Birdie – We opted to play Storybook Land, as I wanted to compare Margolies’ photos from the 80’s to what is there today. This was a classic west coast-style course, much like that of Camelot Golfland, Golf N Stuff and Adventure Golf in Colorado. These courses are made distinctive by their dropped concrete putting surfaces, classic gameplay tropes, colorful lights that line the greens and fantasy architectural obstacles like the Old Lady’s shoe, gingerbread houses, and castles. Storybook Land definitely felt like a trip back in time. The paint and colored turf were well faded from the California sun. The gameplay was fairly straightforward. Most putts relied on angles and slopes and only a few of the holes actually integrated the theming directly into the gameplay. A lot of the theming just helped to set the scene and feel of the course. Unfortunately, multiple players lost their balls in the pipe of the barn-themed hole, so we had to skip playing it.

I thought it’d be fun to make our game into a light-hearted competition, so I had the 9 of us divide into 3 teams of three. Each team competed for the lowest score to win one of our “Mini Golf is for Everyone” stickers. Our team (myself, Mike Klen and Thomas Counts) won! I offered to buy a drink for the single player with the lowest score, which was Mike Klen who tied with me for the low score of the day.