Even if it wasn’t a foggy end of August in San Francisco when I took most of my pictures for this set, I couldn’t have captured the colors of these vintage pictures. Some of them look like Peter Max creations!
An untrue blue Cliff House in 1947 from the website Everyday Life in the Western United States:
Quick, where was this taken? You have ten seconds………. If you can zoom in you’ll make out the street sign where the cable car is turning off from as Hyde Street, and if you know the cable car system, you may think of Hyde and Washington Streets. Actually the undated picture is at Pine and Hyde Streets, and has to have been taken before 1954. This was along the Jones – O’Farrell- Hyde Line that was discontinued during that year. You could board one of the cars at Jones or O’Farrell Street where the cable cars would move along Jones Street turning west at Pine Street and then north onto Hyde Street. What a lovely view of the Tenderloin that would offer today! The cars had front and back benches for passengers like the California Street Line. Here’s some interesting history from the Market Street Railway, where the vintage picture is from. The cable car warning sign is because when the cars turned east off of Hyde Street here, they traveled against one-way traffic for two blocks before turning south onto Jones Street.
The Palace Hotel on Market Street is not red like in this old travel poster, and never was, but I couldn’t resist dimming it red to see what it would look like. I like it!
A few more people and a lot more sunshine on Ocean Beach, south of the Cliff House, in the 1960’s than on Labor Day Weekend, 2018. There seldom are crowds on Ocean Beach, like in the vintage picture, since Playland-at-the-Beach was demolished in 1972. (Charles Cushman)
Another bluer than blue photo from Everyday Life in the Western United States of the City Hall in 1947: These were taken looking east from Franklin Street; I couldn’t get a perfect lineup because of construction work on Franklin.
The intersection of Geary Blvd. and Powell Street from Union Square during the 1940’s:
Another wonderful vintage picture looking north along Grant Avenue from Sacramento Street in Chinatown during 1957: (Everyday Life in the Western United States)
There was probably never a more colorful period in San Francisco history than the 1967 “Summer of Love”, and certainly no more suitable of a candidate for the queen of the Summer of Love than Janis Joplin, seen here at the Palace of Fine Arts.
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 