These are comparison pictures of snapshots that I took in the early to mid 1980s. Most of the pictures I shot around San Francisco back then were slides, but these are scans of prints that I took and they don’t transfer to computers as clearly as slides do, but they’re not bad. We’ll start at the Ferry Building, and like Alfred Hitchcock, we’ll head “north by northwest”.
South of the Ferry Building, around 1984: I was standing in the shadow of the Embarcadero Freeway. Looks like I got here close to the same time as I did thirty six years ago. They’re doing some work on the south wing of the Ferry Building lately, but I haven’t had a chance to find out what that’s all about yet.
The Embarcadero just south of Levi Plaza around 1985: Although the old Belt Line Trains were long gone by then, the tracks still ran down the Embarcadero all the way to China Basin. The Embarcadero Freeway, where it stopped at Broadway, is in the center. One of the buildings the Exploratorium is housed in now is on the far left.
Pier 33, on the left, on a rainy day: I’m not sure when I took this picture; some of those cars look newer than the 1980’s. Might have been in the 1990’s; neither one of those decades seems that long ago to me! I remember the Peer Inn Restaurant, though; it was where the restaurant with the pink awning is now.
I had to do a little detective work to locate where I took these two photos. They were taken around 1985. I wasn’t even sure if I took them on the same day, but Hyde Street coming down Russian Hill in the second picture was my guideline. They were both taken from the second deck of the old ferryboat the Eureka at the Historical Hyde Street Pier. I was able to find the same spot I took my old pictures from on a visit to the Eureka last Saturday; maybe the first time I’ve been on board that old ferryboat since then. The top one, of course, is looking toward Telegraph Hill, the bottom one is Russian Hill, with a close up of Hyde Street where the cable cars plunge down from the top of the hill.
I took the top picture in 1985; some vistas don’t change much with the passing of time.
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 