Month: September 2025

I put on my Giants Jersey that a friend gave me over 15 years ago, and went out to Oracle park yesterday during the Giants game. I didn’t get a ticket to go in the park, I just took some pictures in the area, and enjoyed the atmosphere, although it was a disappointing season. (Thumbnail images)

  

This is the portion of San Francisco I took my pictures at, from part of the 1938 David Rumsey aerial composition and Google Maps.

  

The lines to get in at Willie Mays Plaza and the Bay entrances were both long, and I thought the lines in Disneyland were bad!

  

Fans who pay the ridiculous parking fees enter the ballpark crossing over the Lefty O’Doul Bridge, which has changed quite a bit since the 1931 picture was taken. (San Francisco Library Digital Library Archives)

  

A 1922 photo at the southwest corner of 4^th Street and Welsh Street, probably named after a distant relative of mine. No, not 4^th Street! (opensfhistory.org)

  

De Boom Alley, on the right, in 1919 and today: De Boom runs from the northeast to the southwest pertion here at 2^nd Street. So….. you guessed it, this is lower De Boom. (opensfhistory.org)

  

3^rd and King Streets in 1941, looking toward the old Spanish Mission looking Southern Pacific Train Station, from what is now Willie Mays Plaza at Oracle Park: They should have figured out a way to save that building. (UC Berkeley Library Archives)

  

There’s an interesting story behind these pictures. Japan Street ran from Brannan to King Street. The vintage picture was taken just after the Pearl Harbor attack when Japanese sentiment in San Francisco wasn’t running very high. The street is now named Colin P. Kelly Jr. Street. Colin Kelly was a B17 pilot shot down by Japanese planes in the Philippines on December 10, 1941, three days after Pearl Harbor. (San Francisco Library Digital Library Archives)

 

This is a reverse then and now. I took the bottom picture last May during a game I went to at Oracle Park. It’s looking up 2^nd Street to Downtown San Francisco. The vintage picture is looking back down 2^nd Street from Market Street in 1905 toward where the baseball park is now. (San Francisco Library Digital Library Archives)

  

Looking north along 3^rd Street from King Street in 1939. The Gallenkamp’s Building is still around. The dudes in the old photo all look like they’re heading to Oracle Stadium. (San Francisco Library Digital Library Archives)

   

Now, I know that this slang for San Francisco is offensive to some people; Herb Caen wrote a book in the 1950’s titled ‘Don’t Call It Frisco’, and recently, I watched a 1968 episode of ‘ I Spy’ called ‘Tag, You’re it’ where Bill Cosby refers to San Francisco as “Frisco” and when his Secret Service boss says “What?” Cosby politely changes it to “San Francisco”. However, Herb Caen mellowed later in life, and admitted that it wasn’t a bad expression, and it’s better than what some people call San Francisco now. At any rate, it’s in the title of the publication I’m posting about today that was printed five months after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire as a testament to the steel construction in buildings that survived the disaster. Yesterday, I visited some of the “splendid survivors” pictured in the book. Some of the old photos aren’t the clearest, and it’s impossible to get a perfect line up with some of the vintage pictures, but they can still be seen. The vintage pictures are from the UC Berkeley  Library Archives (Thumbnail images)

I started at the Flood Building at Market and Powell Streets; I understand that it’s still owned by the Family that had it built. I’ll include the descriptions of the buildings from the book.

I headed down Market Street to Grant Avenue and doubled back along Geary Street to where the steel frame of the Whittell Building is, the only thing on the building completed when the earthquake struck. The Whittell Building is behind the Britex Fabrics sign in my picture.

I headed back along Geary to Kearny Street and another one of my favorites, the Gothic Mutual Savings Building. The east side of the building is covered up now by an addition, which was probably very practical, but destroyed the aesthetics of the structure. The old Chronicle Building is on the right in both photos.

I looped around the Palace Hotel to New Montgomery, and headed to Mission and 2^nd Streets. The old Wells Fargo Building on the northeast corner of the intersection survived, was rebuilt and extended.

 

My next destination was at Montgomery and California Streets. If I was Carl Nolte, I would have walked to California and Montgomery, but although I’m younger than he is, I have half the energy he does. I headed back to Mission and 3^rd Streets, and caught the Muni #8, heading north along Kearny Street, to the Kohl Building on the northeast corner of the intersection. This was the best shot I could get of this wonderful relic.

A couple of posts ago, I wrote about the imminent demise of the Vaillancourt Fountain. The fountain doesn’t look like it’s going to “go gently into that good night” with the sculptor fighting it each step of the way. He may or may not be successful, but nothing’s going to save Alioto’s Restaurant. It will be demolished soon, and last week’s SF Chronicle has a artist’s rendition of what the spot may look like soon. I’ll have a harder time letting go of Alioto’s than the Vaillancourt Fountain. This little stretch of Taylor Street, north of Jefferson, has always been one of my favorite spots in San Francisco going all the way back to it being one of the area’s of San Francisco used in the the Disneyland Circlevision attraction ‘America the Beautiful’ in Tomorrowland. I looked back over my blog to some of the times I visited Alioto’s Restaurant in a post. (Thumbnail images)

  

The bottom photo is a view of the Fisherman’s Wharf Lagoon from my table upstairs on a birthday lunch in 2016. The top photo is a vintage picture from SF Gate, looking back toward where I was sitting before Alioto’s was remodeled.

  

A cartoon view of Aliotos’s from the children’s classic ‘This is San Francisco’ by Miroslav Sasek:

  

Steve Keller (Michael Douglas) is assigned to be a bodyguard to a call girl played by Janice Rule who has been targeted for murder by one of her “clients” in an episode of ‘The Streets of San Francisco’ TV show. Keller is cold and distant toward her at first, but eventually develops affection for her. Here they pass the Fisherman’s Wharf Boat Lagoon with Alioto’s and #9 Fishermen’s Grotto Restaurants behind them.

  

This little stretch of outdoor seafood shops in front of Alioto’s from the 1930’s was from a vintage picture on the wall of the stairs leading up to Alioto’s Restaurant.

  

Another undated vintage picture on the wall of Alioto’s looking back across Fisherman’s Wharf Lagoon.

  

A twilight picture looking back toward Pier 43 from upstairs Alioto’s: The vintage picture is a 1975 photo by Peter Stratmoen

  

A 1938 shot of where Alioto’s would eventually evolve from in a photo from the UC Berkeley Library Archives: Alioto’s was closed by September of 2023 when Applebee’s Restaurant kindly let me get a comparison picture from their window.

  

However, my all-time favorite picture of Alioto’s Restaurant will always be at twilight from an old 1950s souvenir book.

Different styles, different crowds, different prices, same place: At least, the same place for me because I usually head to the same attractions that I’ve been enjoying since I was a kid. I was nominated by family back east coming out to Disneyland to go down there again for the Labor Day Holiday. It didn’t take much urging, I still love that place, crowds and all. I found a collection of color photographs on the internet taken at Disneyland in 1958. Though they weren’t always the best quality, I decided later that they’d be interesting to do modern updates of. I went back to the internet to find the website and give them the credit for the vintage pictures I downloaded, but I haven’t been able to find it again. They may have all been taken by the same photographer, I’ll update the due honors of the photos source as soon as I find the site again. (Thumbnail images)

  

Sleeping Beauty Castle; probably older than most of the buildings in Downtown San Francisco now, but not showing her age.

  

When you enter the park today you still have two tunnels under the Wald Disney Railroad track to take, left or right. There are more trees in Disneyland today than 1958, and this one at the right tunnel was probably transplanted, if it’s real. Right, Tony?

  

A big difference “where the rubber meets the road” in the Tomorrowland Autopia since 1958.

  

The entrance to Adventureland: I’ve seen older pictures of the park when the crowds were modest, but !this might be the only picture of Disneyland I’ve seen with nobody in it! Oh, wait, there was one person. That must have been a lonely day for him!

    

No lines and much lower prices for fast food back then. What is that, a spy on the right?

  

Fast food diners in 1958 and 2025: That lady with the sunglasses in the vintage picture looks so bored. That’s not allowed in Disneyland!

  

Not sure if the Dumbo’s get as high off the ground in Fantasyland today. They didn’t while I was watching.

There have been a lot of remodeling changes in Fantasyland, like here at Peter Pan’s Flight.

  

Main Street Square and the Train Station: I imagine that’s the same car; I mean, you don’t see a lot of them around.

 

The Tom Sawyer Island dock for the rafts, with Fort Wilderness in the background: The original Fort Wilderness was demolished in 2007 and a smaller one was rebuilt, but is closed to the public now.

  

The Pontoon and Suspension Bridges on Tom Sawyer Island: Not as novel today, I guess.

  

Fishing on a dock at Tom Sawyer Island, with the Mark Twain Riverboat in the background. They actually stocked this portion of the Rivers of America with catfish, bluegill, and trout, and visitors could fish of the Huckleberry Finn Fishing Pier with make-shift fishing poles and worms. The attraction lasted from 1956 to 1965.