Tourism has changed the Golden Gate Bridge Promenade drastically since this 1940’s picture was taken. I think it’s a very romantic picture.
A heartbreaking image of a mother comforting her frightened child on Telegraph Hill looking toward Russian Hill and the Golden Gate just after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire:
San Francisco Police chase Buster Keaton down Powell Street past Washington in a scene similar to a Keystone Kops movie in the 1922 short film ‘Day Dreams’. It’s remarkable to me how well this location compares to today!
Fisherman’s Wharf at dusk in the 1950’s: This one was a “labor of love”; the top photo just might be my favorite San Francisco picture.
Hyde at Greenwich in the 1950’s: I should have waited for a cable car like Fred Lyon did, but I enjoyed the scenery too much.
Another Cushman Collection photo; men at work, at 3rd and Mission in the 1960’s: I like the girls at work in the modern picture too.
“Go ahead, give him a call. He’ll go out with you.”
The Fisherman’s Wharf Lagoon in June of 1940: “Come all ye young sailor men, listen to me; I’ll sing you a song of the fish in the sea!” Behind where Alioto’s is today was the enormous gas tank that stood in Fisherman’s Wharf from the 1930’s to the 1960’s. The old picture is from the Cushman Collection of color photographs at the Indiana University.
Another great picture from the Cushman Collection of color photos from the 1930’s through the 1960’s, this one from 1953.
“Hey Mister, can you help us?”
“I know, your ball rolled down the street and you want me to get it for you, right?”
“Uh, uh! Our friend rolled down the street!”
Hyde at Lombard Streets: To the right and out of the picture is the “Crookedest Street in the World”. When driving in San Francisco, remember, cable cars always have the right of way. By the way, that large house on the corner once belonged to Fanny Osborne Stevenson, the wife of author Robert Louis Stevenson.
This one is right in my backyard! Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland filmed a scene in Downtown Hayward from the 1973 movie ‘Steelyard Blues’. The film was not well received as it was made shortly after Fonda’s controversial visit to North Vietnam that many people resent her for to this day. Here Sutherland spots Fonda on a bus, and chases her down Mission Blvd to the B Street corner, and the same location today.
At a McDonald’s several blocks from AT&T Park, a movie line that, I think safe to say, is of historic significance, was first heard. In the fourth “Dirty Harry” installment ‘Sudden Impact’ from 1983, Clint Eastwood utters the immortal words, “Go ahead, make my day.” while punking down a bad guy. This line was so popular that President Ronald Reagan used it in referring to his veto pen if Congress presented him with any further tax increase bills. However, the restaurant was not a McDonald’s back then. McDonald’s sure spruced up the pole that was behind Clint Eastwood when he entered the restaurant!
After the April 18th 1906 Earthquake, about the only thing left standing on Nob Hill was the entrance to the A. N. Towne mansion on California Street. One year later, on April 18th 1907 when the top photo was taken, the city was rebuilding and the pillars were still there. “Well, we might as well get rid of that doorway now. Throw it out in Golden Gate Park.” Today, it’s the ‘Portals of the Past’ at Lloyd Lake. (Okay, I sneaked one of me in).
The Cliff House in 1957 in what, just might be, the best picture of the Cliff House I’ve seen. I’ve been going out there since my mom and dad first took me there when I was around eight years old, and I still go out there all the time. There seems to be a pattern here!
Barbara Lawrence looks back at the Ferry Building after arriving in San Francisco in the 1949 film ‘Thieves Highway’. From the look on her face, she had a rough boat ride! Behind her is the Southern Pacific Building, built in 1916.
Now, you didn’t think I was going to leave Chinatown out, did you? This rare early 1940’s Kodachrome picture captures Chinatown beautifully! I also got a pretty good line up on this one.
In the 2014 version of Godzilla, (the year 2014, not the 2014th time it was filmed) Godzilla wanders off into the Bay next to the Pier 7 walking pier at the end of the film after demolishing just about all of San Francisco.
This was the scene that got me started on these then and nows. I was watching the 1948 movie ‘The Lady from Shanghai’ a few years back. At the part where Orson Welles escapes from the old Hall of Justice and runs across Kearny Street to Portsmouth Square in the rain, I thought, “I know where that is! I wonder what it looks like now?” There are some fine then and now photographers, and I don’t pretend to be any better, but I don’t think anybody enjoys doing this more than I do. (Good for you if you spotted the 1948 ’99¢ Store’ on the corner of Kearny and Clay Streets)
Mason Street on Nob Hill: (Fred Lyon)
The Fairmont Hotel: (Fred Lyon)
City Lights Books, North Beach: (Phil Palmer)
The Fairmont and the Mark Hopkins Hotel: (Fred Lyon
The stretch of Market Street from Powell to Hyde used to be San Francisco’s “Great White Way”. The building left of the Woolworth’s sign was demolished for Hallidie Plaza. All of the movie palaces are gone now.
Golden Gate Park on a sunny day: It’s as good as it gets: (Vintage photos from the San Francisco History Room)
The Conservatory of Flowers:
The old Band Concourse, one of the original structures from the 1894 Midwinter International Exposition still in the park:
Prayer Book Cross, above Rainbow Falls, an often overlooked gem in the park. You can just see it peeking out between the trees. The hill across what is now John F. Kennedy Drive is too overgrown now to get a good picture from it , so I had to take it from the bottom of the hill.
Spreckels Lake: They’ve smoothed the edge out a lot today, but it doesn’t look as natural anymore.
The Dutch Windmill, and the old Beach Chalet with its wonderful WPA Murals:
The old stone streetcar bridge and the Murphy Windmill across what is now Martin Luther King Junior Drive: This is a very interesting spot to me. Once long ago a streetcar line ran along Lincoln Way and crossed Golden Gate Park over to Playland-at-the-Beach at this spot. A walking trail is now what’s left of where the tracks ran. The bridge was anchored into the hill on the left in the modern picture, and another hill across the drive to the right.
Taylor Street on Russian Hill: If that person parking taps into the car on the passenger side, they’ll all go over like dominos! (Phil Palmer)
The old Humboldt Building from Ellis Street in the 1950’s: (Phil Palmer)
Ah, the scourge of North Beach, the pizza pusher! The old Beatnik hangout, the Tea Room, has been remodeled and is now Maggie McGarry’s. Hope that other fellow in the doorway wasn’t doing what it looks like he was! (Phil Palmer)
Washington Street up from Stockton: Be nice to your sister, kid! I had to, and I didn’t like it anymore than you do! He’d really have to look out for her today with all of the construction that’s going on there.
“Leave us aloooooone!”
“Down these mean streets a man must go.”
3rd Street down toward Market Street during the rebuilding of San Francisco after the 1906 Earthquake: Don’t look back, lady; look what happened to Lot’s wife!
From the Shorpy’s Collection, Gough Street at Lafayette Square: That fellow in the middle looks, kind of, mean!
From the Cushman Collection, Market Street between 3rd and 4th. ‘Flesh and Lace’, that’s a grabber! I think there’s a terrible pun in there somewhere.
Vintage Fred Lyon, Kearny Street, up from Broadway in the 1940’s: No meanness here, just kids acting like adults ought to.
California Street down from Grant Avenue: Well, they all walked away from that one! In fact, they, probably, ran away! The Stauffer Chemical Company was located about where the stairs in the white building across California Street are today.
Fulton at Alamo Square in 1967 during the “Summer of Love”: No meanness, just peace and love, and, okay, maybe a few mind altering drugs.
A Cushman Collection photo at Haight and Masonic during the “Summer of Love” in 1967: That’s right, buddy, peace, love, and the finger! Well, at least the girl in my picture didn’t flip me off!
Another view of Haight and Masonic during the “Summer of Love”: This guy’s not mean, he’s just stupid! It must have been ‘A Lower Element of Love Child Day’.
Columbus and Broadway: ‘Jake’s Cigar Store’; it gets right to the point. I’ll bet Jake was a tough looking guy!
Kids go down these streets too. Sometimes they walk……..
…….. and sometimes they slide!
As far as I know they never came to San Francisco, but life isn’t always where “little cable cars climb halfway to the stars”. Far from San Francisco, and not too long ago, I toured the South and Southwest to do some then and nows on various Bonnie and Clyde locations. Here at Gibsland, Louisiana, is the town that Bonnie and Clyde left on the morning of May 23rd, 1934 to their killing ground. A festival is held every May here commemorating the event of their ambush by Texas Rangers. Thousands of people attend.
Two members of the killing posse reenact what happened at the spot Bonnie and Clyde were shot. Notice how the road still winds away similar to the way it did in 1934.
The ride to nowhere: I was sitting on the passenger side. The ambush spot is at the top of the hill. This would have been Bonnie’s view as they approached their doom.
A police reenactment of where their car came to a stop after the shooting. The posse hid at the top of the hill where the trail goes up in the lower picture, and opened up on Bonnie and Clyde as their car passed by. The area was much more overgrown in 1934.
The posse fired down from where I’m at here on top of the hill.
The historical marker placed at the ambush location. Recently, a new marker was installed here to replace the old one that was there when I visited the spot.
The real Bonnie Parker and the Bonnie Parker at the Gibsland Festival: She looks like she wants to shoot me!
The Bonnie and Clyde death car after it was towed into town, and a picture I took of it in Nevada. This IS the real car they were shot in.
Bonnie Parker’s grave in Dallas Texas. The sentiment reads “As the flowers are all made sweeter by the sunshine and the dew, so this old world is made brighter by the lives of folks like you.” Only a loving mother could be that naive. I was on the trail of Bonnie and Clyde again just last Christmas on a visit to Texas. Here’s the link to that post.
Karl Malden, “Papa Cop” and Michael Douglas, “Buddy Boy”, stars of the Streets of San Francisco”:
“Buddy Boy” and “Papa Cop” finish up another day of violating somebody’s civil rights at the old Pier 18. Actually, they were pretty fair in the show. Pier 18 is gone now, but some of the old wooden supports can still be seen.
A bad guy in a obviously 1970’s outfit that was probably made into a couch eventually, walks past the Saints Peter and Paul Church at Washington Square in a Streets of San Francisco episode.
In what was, probably, the most scenic parking lot in San Francisco before they blocked the view with a building, Paul Michael Glaser of television’s ‘Husky and Starch’, I mean, ‘Starsky and Hutch’ gets into fisticuffs with two parking attendants in a ‘Streets of San Francisco’ episode. What you get now in the parking lot is a lovely view of the back of an ugly building.
School children heading up Nob Hill from Chinatown on Jackson Street: I had to be on the other side of the street to get the Bay Bridge in now.
Goldie Hawn and her blind boy friend, played by Edward Albert, pass the City Lights Bookstore in North Beach in the 1972 film ‘Butterflies Are Free’.
O’Farrell Street, west of Powell:
Click on the link below for Muni’s moveable map to the old streetcars running on the F and E Lines.
It’s the last week of summer in what Herb Caen called “the city with no seasons’, and that holds true for this week. The weather has been cloudy and overcast on some days, and warm and sunny on others. I got mostly sunny weather for my visits this week.
East meets East on Grant Avenue and California Street in 1939:
Where O’Farrell Street, Market Street, and Grant Avenue come together in 1910: This is another of the comparisons I enjoy doing where the locations appear to have changed very little. Way down O’Farrell Street where the cameras are facing, St. Mary’s Cathedral can be seen in the modern picture. Pope John Paul II said Mass here on his visit to San Francisco in 1987. 
Most pictures of the Hyde Street cable car line to Aquatic Park are taken looking down from Russian Hill with its dramatic view. This is a rare look back up from the bottom of the hill as two cable cars begin their climb up Hyde. That’s Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in the top photo in a scene from the 1972 film ‘Play It Again, Sam’ 
Everybody makes mistakes. That’s why there are editors; except, they goofed here. In this picture of Union Square from Elizabeth Gray Potters’ 1939 book, ‘The San Francisco Skyline’, that’s not the Mark Hopkins Hotel on the left; it’s the Sir Francis Drake Hotel. Ssshhhh! 
Speaking of mistakes, I spotted one here that really surprised me. Arnold Genthe has been referred to as the father of modern photography. Before the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, Chinatown was a mysterious and forbidden place full of opium dens, brothels, and frequent shanghaiing. When Genthe went in and took his famous pictures he opened the door to the tourist trade that’s there today. The famous picture at the top right, circa 1900, from his book of Chinatown identifies the picture as being at Jackson and Dupont Street, which is now Grant Ave. I’ve even seen images of this photo with Genthe’s writing stating it was taken at Dupont and Jackson. When I took my first then and now photo earlier at Grant and Jackson something didn’t seem right. When you wander around San Francisco for as long as I have been doing you feel things. The cable car coming down Jackson Street made me curious, as well. I checked on every thing I could find about every cable car line that ran in San Francisco and the Jackson Line stopped at Powell and never came down to Dupont. It had to be Sacramento or Clay Street. I contacted a fellow at the Market Street Railway System and he said he’d look into it, and get back to me, which he did the next day. He said it couldn’t have been Jackson Street and must have been Sacramento, which I agree. Arney must have been tired when he labeled his picture that day from walking around Chinatown, and I can appreciate that. Here’s a last week of summer picture of the correct corner at Sacramento and Grant that I took today. The summer crowds have dropped off quite a bit, and in reference to the gift shop, the Warriors will be starting another season soon, and the Giants are still in the hunt for the playoffs next month.
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 