Most tourists at Fisherman's Wharf walk right past the clatter coming from the end of Taylor Street. Inside Musée Mécanique at Pier 45 is one of the world's largest privately owned collections of coin-operated mechanical instruments and antique arcade machines. More than 300 of them still work, and admission is free.

A bingo prize and 75 cents

The collection's origin story, written by founder Edward Galland Zelinsky (1922-2004) and posted on the museum's site, begins at the Ellis Theatre on Fillmore Street. When he was about 11, Zelinsky won the intermission bingo game. The grand prize was five quarts of motor oil.

With no car, he sold the oil to his piano teacher for 75 cents and rode the streetcar to Golden Gate Avenue, where dealers sold old slot machines and jukeboxes. For 5 cents he bought a penny skill game. Friends and family fed it pennies, and he used the take to buy more machines.

After World War II he found eight picture machines in a warehouse basement for $10 apiece, and they are still running. He wrote that they first took a penny, then a nickel, a dime and eventually a quarter. In 1946 he bought a Seeburg piano with xylophone and mandolin attachments from the Mills Novelty Company in Oakland for $200. When no repair shop would take it on, he fixed it himself by blowing cigar smoke through the tubes to trace the leaks.

From Playland to Pier 45

The podcast Storied: San Francisco interviewed his son, current owner Dan Zelinsky. He explained that Ed bought the collection of George Whitney, the original San Francisco owner, much of which had lived at Playland at the Beach. The machines then ran at the Cliff House until around 2002. Ed found the Pier 45 spot shortly before he died in 2004.

Ed Zelinsky's own account includes a trade with Whitney over a long lunch: his 1904 Franklin automobile for a steam motorcycle built around 1912 in Sacramento by a man named Gillingwater. The motorcycle is on display at the museum.

What to look for

The most famous resident is Laffing Sal, the cackling animatronic figure from Playland. Dan Zelinsky told the podcast how he acquired her. Look for "Susie the Can-Can Dancer" and "Carnival" too. The museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Food and drink aren't allowed inside, and it doesn't host private parties because the machines are delicate. Bring quarters.