Month: December 2023

Elvis isn’t the only one having a ‘Blue Christmas’. This year, after four years, they’re having the Winter Walk again where they block off several streets near Union Square to traffic, and create a carpeted pedestrian area for shoppers and kids. It’s always been green in the past but this year it’s blue. (Thumbnail images)

Looking north on Stockton Street from Geary: Maiden Lane is the alley on the right.

Stockton Street near O’Farrell: It’s nice to see the Macy’s clock is still there.

Looking down Stockton Street from Maiden Lane to Geary and the old I Magnin Building.

Even Maiden Lane gets the blues this Christmas. These two pictures were taken where the long gone Stockton Street entrance to the Union Square Garage used to be.

Rock Hudson helps to turn the cable car around at the Market and Powell turnaround in 1959. I’m old enough to remember when you could climb on the cable cars while they were turning around. If you even touch one on the turntable today, you’ll get yelled at. (opensfhistory.org)

Lana Turner, wearing a coat she’d probably be arrested for nowadays, going into the I Magnin Department Store, now Louis Vuitton, in the 1960 film ‘Portrait in Black’. The last thing Lana would want to see is the police car in my picture; she’s going into Magnin’s to establish an alibi while Anthony Quinn kills her husband. Poor Lana, you’d think she would know that these things don’t work after ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’.

Anthony Quinn on Stockton Street near Geary, looking down toward O’Farrell Street in what looks like a news promotion for the movie ‘Portrait in Black’. (Hollywoodpaper2)

Cary Grant moves through what was supposed to be a war time crowded Fairmont Hotel Lobby in the 1957 film ‘Kiss Them for Me’. It wasn’t that crowded when I was there.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower on Post Street, west of Powell, in 1958: (opensfhistory.org)

‘Mr. San Francisco’ Herb Caen on a cable car at Powell and Market in a Fred Lyon photo from 1953:

Speaking of a police presence in Union Square, Lt. Mike Stone (Karl Malden) and Inspector Steve Keller (Mike Douglas) looking for the bad guys in a 1972 episode of ‘The Streets of San Francisco’. Smash and grabbers beware! You can see the old City of Paris Department Store where the Neiman Marcus is today behind Mike Douglas.

In December of 2020, I posted an article featuring a few pictures from Vintage Everyday and a link to an interesting film clip from vimeo.com featuring portions of a ride along the Powell Street cable car line during the 1970s. Downtown San Francisco was still lonely and quiet when I did my post due to the outbreak of the Covid19 Pandemic earlier that year in March, and the cable car system had been shut down for nine months. I bought some batteries in a Walgreen’s on Powell Street, showed some vintage pictures that I was going to update with current photos to a sales person named Jenny, and dedicated the post to her. I made a pledge to myself that when the cable cars were running again I’d redo the pictures I took that day, but that was still nine more months away. The cable car system was up and running again in August of 2021, and I forgot about my post. This month, I viewed my post again, and realized that I may have taken pictures while riding, waiting for, or just watching pass by, cable cars since service was resumed in the summer of 2021. They’re not perfect match ups, but they were taken at the same spots as my lonely looking pictures from 2020. The photos are, kind of, keeping my pledge. I’ll include a link to my December, 2020 post at the end of this post, and the vimeo.com film is still able to be viewed. (Thumbnail images)

Waiting for a cable to turn around at the Powell and Market Streets turnaround on an evening this week. It was a pretty quiet night, so I didn’t have to wait in line long to catch a car going up Nob Hill.

However, this picture, taken the Saturday after last month’s Black Friday, was a different story; we waited about forty five minutes to board a car that evening. The Burger King is where the Powell Theater behind the cable car was in the 70s photo.

Cable cars are once again rattling past the building where Omar Khayyam’s world famous restaurant used to be. This one is the only update that was an intentional redo. I took it just today to close out the set.

After the cable car reaches Powell and Sutter, the Vimeo film changes to the Taylor and Bay Streets turnaround. In July of this year, one of my visiting relatives from Texas took a picture of us boarding a cable car at this turnaround.

This last September, I took a picture that matches up pretty well of the cable car in the film heading back down Nob Hill along Powell Street on the return trip.

I had the same view on a cable car at Powell and Post approaching Union Square last September that the 1970s photographer had. Below is the link to my December, 2020 post.

Someday I’ll redo these (For Jenny)

I’ve been enjoying taking panorama pictures on my iPhone lately, but they’ve all been horizontally panoramic Last Saturday in Union Square, a girl I know showed me how to take panoramic pictures on an iPhone vertical as well as horizontal. Duh, me, for not knowing! They have a tendency to distort sometimes, as horizontal panoramic photos can do, but moving objects aren’t usually a problem, unless it would be birds. (Thumbnail images)

The Union Square Christmas tree during the 1990s: (Ray Morse / Emperornortontrust.org)

A cable car on California Street chugs past Grant Avenue heading up Nob Hill: (San Francisco Public Library Archives)

An old postcard of the Tribune Building in Oakland: (bookmarksnc.org)

Broadway at 12^th Street in Oakland, from an old postcard: I worked in that building on the right for years when it was a Bank of America. No, it wasn’t a crooked bank. The tower had been added to the building long before I got there.

Whoa, I just barely got the Shell Oil Building on Bush Street in on that picture! I think my iPhone pulled a muscle stretching for that one. (ebay.com)

Wow, cool, the Star of Bethlehem visits San Francisco! Or maybe that was the moon. Actually, this was at the Fairmont Hotel Rooftop Garden last Saturday evening; a peaceful oasis away from the holiday crowd. My panoramic picture was a lot wider, but I cut it up so it would fit better with this image from the National Catholic Reporter that I found later.

And I can’t leave the Ferry Building out. It’s great to see the landmark building again after being covered up for months and months for its building-botox procedure. (vintagecityprints.com