Two kinds of rain

To me, there are two kinds of rain in San Francisco; the romantic rain that you walk around in and wish that you were in love again, and the kind that just freezes your butt off. I took these over the past two weekends and got a little of both.

It was a little friendlier setting when I took my picture on the northeast corner of Mason and California Streets on Nob Hill than that spooky looking long ago picture! That’s the Fairmont Hotel on the left in both pictures. (California State Library)

Here’s another interesting picture at California and Powell Streets as a cable car begins its drop into Chinatown. The old Crest Garage is still there today, although, it is no longer that name.

http://opensfhistory.org/Display/wnp14.3213.jpg

It’s slippery navigating your way down Nob Hill in the rain when you’re wearing four year old sneakers! My photo was actually taken where the bottom of the hill on the left is in the old picture at Bush and Powell Streets. I took my picture before I found the vintage one, and I liked it so a found this close comparison from the OpenSFHistory website.

A cable car at Bush and Powell Streets on a sunnier day in what looks like the early 1950’s: Those people hanging on the front end of the cable car in my picture look miserable!

I can’t get a date on this wonderful old picture of a parade on Market Street between Stockton Street and Grant Avenue, but it looks like the 1920’s. The crowned building in the background of the vintage picture was the San Francisco Call Newspaper Building. Sam Spade went into this building in the novel ‘The Maltese Falcon’ to find out when the ship that would bring the falcon to him was to arrive. The building survived the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, but the crown was removed in the late 1930’s, and it was remodeled to look more like the Daily Planet Building from ‘Superman’ or something. Now called the Central Tower, it’s the white and brown building at the center right of my picture. The Humboldt Building, built just after the earthquake, can be seen on the right in both pictures.

Powell Street at Ellis in the 1950’s from a San Francisco Call Bulletin photo in the San Francisco History Center: Look at the crowd heading toward Union Square in my picture for the first weekend of Christmas shopping!