Back to the 80s

Now that the fog is back in San Francisco and the temperature in most of the Bay Area is back down to the 80s, I thought I’d post some more of my slides from the 1980s.

I know, “Always looking for some kind of lead in, aren’t you, Tim?”

1983: We’ll start at Steuart and Market Streets looking west before all the street vendors came. Behind and above me would have been the Embarcadero Freeway.

1983: The Embarcadero near Harrison Street. That’s the old Hills Brothers Coffee Factory on the right. Pier 24 on the left has been demolished.

Let’s take a closer look at where Pier 24 was. What a perfect location this would have been when the pier was still there for a San Francisco film noir scene; Classy Gene Tierney drives out of Pier 24 in a 1947 Buick. She’s being followed by Dana Andrews who doesn’t know that he’s being followed by John Garfield who himself is being closely watched by Peter Lorre. Meanwhile, Lana Turner has hired Robert Mitchum to follow all four of them! Ah, it would have been a great movie.

1983: The Embarcadero south of the Ferry Building. The old YMCA Building with the pointed roof, the Embarcadero Freeway, and the Ferry Building are in the center. The YMCA Building and the Ferry Building can still be seen from here today. Look close at the billboard on the left in the older picture. Like Cola was as a caffeine free cola marketed by 7Up in 1982. The cola didn’t catch on and it eventually flopped. After that, the word Like hired itself out to Facebook and made a fortune.

1983: Stockton Street from above the Stockton Tunnel looking north. On the opposite side, looking south from the roof of this tunnel, was where Sam Spade in the book The Maltese Falcon “looked down into Stockton Street. An automobile popped out of the tunnel beneath him with a roaring swish, as if it had been blown out, and ran away.” I wonder if Sam Spade ever looked down on Stockton Street from this side.

1983: Powell Street just up from Sutter Street: In 1982 all cable cars in the entire system were shut down for repairs until 1984. It’s hard to imagine San Francisco without cable cars, and it seemed at the time to last almost as long as it took the San Francisco Giants to win a World Series!