When nostalgia is our enemy: Is it time for a Cliff House reinvention? FacebookTwitterEmail The Cliff House sign is taken down on the last day of 2020.Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle 2020 When thinking about the Cliff House right now, as it permanently closes and landlords contemplate the next move, it evokes a previous crisis on the western shores of San Francisco. There was once a roller coaster, a wooden sister to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk’s Giant Dipper, down the hill from Lands End on Ocean Beach. This was at Playland-at-the-Beach, a legit amusement park within San Francisco city limits, which popularized the It’s-It, hosted some of the best dancing in the city’s history, and housed Laughing Sal, the best nightmare-in-a-good-way attraction maybe in the entire world.