San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now

In February of this year, I posted some then and nows that I did on a collection of paintings by Dong Kingman, the highly acclaimed and honored Chinese American water color artist and designer who based a lot of his work in San Francisco. These are some more of his paintings from a book he co-authored with Herb Caen entitled, ‘San Francisco – City on Golden Hills’, published in 1967. Some of the paintings were on two pages which accounts for the line down the middle on a few. Kingman died in May of 2000.

California Street on the top of Nob Hill next to Huntington Park: On the right is Grace Cathedral. Work started on the church in 1928, but was not completed until 1964. When Kingman did his painting here the south tower of the church had not been completed yet.

One of Kingman’s oldest paintings, on Washington Street looking north along Grant Avenue in Chinatown, painted in 1938:

I think I like this painting best, the view from Telegraph Hill at Union Street and Calhoun Terrace:

The Greenwich Steps on Telegraph Hill: Not as well know as the Filbert Steps, they’re barely visible from the street today.

This is a strange place for an artist to paint a picture! It’s below where the Bay Bridge anchors into San Francisco near Rincon Hill. When we were teenagers, the old-timers in the area would tell us that if you unscrewed those bolts, the whole thing would come down! They thought we believed them. It’s not true, right?

It’s a whole different view today than when Dong Kingman painted his view from Twin Peaks.

And also a puzzle for me, at times, trying to follow the footsteps of the characters in this 1944 murder mystery that takes place in San Francisco during World War Two. Patrick Quentin, the author of the book, was actually two writers, Richard Wilson Webb, and Hugh Callingham Wheeler. The locations are well identified and easy to find, although the writers took a “literary license” in describing the lay of the land and the names of some of the San Francisco structures. Two of the locations, however, are described very accurately, if somewhat exaggerated, the Stockton Tunnel and the southwest area near San Francisco Zoo.

The mystery opens up on Market Street during the war. The main protagonists in the book, navy officer Peter Duluth and his wife Iris, are looking for a place to stay in crowded wartime San Francisco. The above photo, taken during the war about where the book opens on Market Street near 4th and Stockton Streets, fits the opening paragraph well. As I have in the past with their permission, I’ve used vintage pictures from the fantastic website of http://opensfhistory.org/ of the locations I’m posting about, some of them around the period that the novel was written.

{Sailors, thousands of them, crawled up and down Market Street like a plague of blue locusts. Doubtless they brought color and racy vigor and all the other things sailors are supposed to bring to a scene, but I hadn’t come to San Francisco to see sailors.” / “The sailors, jostling against Iris and me as we beat our way forward, were just another of the things like overcrowded hotels and non-existent taxis that were conspiring against our week-end.}

{We had reached the mouth of Stockton Street. I took her arm and guided her out of Market Street’s sailors into an almost equally dense mass of harassed shoppers.” / “As we started to climb Stockton, I sneezed. I had felt a cold coming on in the train.}

Here is where they turned into Stockton Street in a picture taken in 1947 and now. Although it does incline a little bit, it isn’t much of a hill to “climb”.

{Half way up the block we passed a sign proclaiming a Turkish bath. With wild hopefulness, my wife said: “You don’t supposed Turkish baths rent rooms to mixed couples – I mean, if you explain you’re married?”}

The top picture was taken in 1945, just around the time Peter and Iris passed by here. This is the first block of Stockton Street off of Market. The construction work is due to the Muni Metro extension to Chinatown being completed. Peter mentions the Stockton hill (!) again when he goes back to the Turkish bath later in the book to try to sweat out his cold, probably a good way to get pneumonia! As he leaves the hotel at Union Square that they eventually find, he tells the reader,

{I strode down the hill to the Turkish bath.}

On his way to the bathhouse where he will eventually have his navy uniform stolen to incriminate him in an upcoming murder, he gives a colorful description of San Francisco.

{There’s an elusive something about San Francisco that no other city has. Maybe it’s the flower stalls blossoming on every street corner. Maybe it’s the crazy gradients that make roller-coasters out of the streetcars. Or maybe it’s just the air. But people in San Francisco doing the most humdrum things look like people at the peak of some enthralling adventure.}

{The St. Francis Hotel and the St. Anton Hotel stared at each other across the formal flower beds of the park like two rival and opulently upholstered dowagers at a garden party. We tried the St. Francis first. It would have none of Iris’s charm or my blunt instrument. Traipsing across the little park, we pushed through the swing doors and stepped into the haughty vestibule of the St. Anton.}

The only hotel that could have possibly been the St. Anton Hotel would have been the old Hotel Plaza built around 1915 that stood on the northwest corner of Post and Stockton streets. The hotel was still there during World War Two but I don’t know if it had been renamed the St. Anton Hotel; I can’t find any hotel under that name researching San Francisco history. I’ll have to do some more checking. The above two comparisons are of the St. Francis Hotel looking across Union Square to where the Hotel Plaza was, and the Hotel Plaza looking back (sort of) at the St. Francis. Demolished now, the Plaza Hotel was behind the trees in the background on the north side of Union Square.

Shortly after checking in to the St. Anton, Iris and Peter receive a mysterious warning that Iris’s cousin, Eulalia Crawford who lives on California Street on Nob Hill, may be in danger. They leave the hotel to take a cable car to warn her and walk through the Stockton Tunnel. I’ve crossed through this tunnel heading in the direction they headed many times and I find the description entering and exiting the tunnel, (leaving out some of the slightly racists comments acceptable at the time) accurate; east does meet west if you’re heading in their direction, which was actually south to north.

{Since it was impossible to get a taxi, Iris and I decided to walk up Stockton and take the cable car over on California.” / “We passed through a long dark tunnel and as we emerged at the other end, we were in another city where unreadable hieroglyphics took the place of names on the stores and the faces around us had lost their Anglo-Saxon features}

The vintage photo is the south entrance to the Stockton Tunnel in 1950, six years after Iris and Peter crossed through here.

Iris and Peter came out of the Stockton Tunnel into Chinatown here at this end, seen here in the vintage photo from above the tunnel, circa 1950. Peter noticed too that It doesn’t quite look as exotic as the impression that Iris gets, but you do get a feeling of leaving one country behind for another when you walk through the tunnel in this direction.

{Iris, watching the Chinese men and women moving past, made a little crooning sound. Already, I could tell, she was in a world more exotic than this real Chinatown.}

In the next paragraph, they’re catching a cable car at Stockton and California Streets heading up Nob Hill to Eulalia’s apartment. They would have to have climbed up the steps at the north end of the Stockton Tunnel and doubled back a block to do that. Here the writers get really confusing! Iris and Peter catch a downhill heading cable car to go up Nob Hill, and the cable car goes up and down hills as it climbs Nob Hill!

{We waited on the precipitous corner of California Street. Soon a cable car bucketed down the hill and ground to a last-minute, breathless stop. We boarded it. Iris chose places in the open section under the shadow of the giant brake lever. We sat there on the absurd benches which faced out towards the sidewalk. That cross-town ride, lurching up hills and zooming down hills added a final touch of insanity to our mission. Iris, clinging to an iron pole like a pole on a merry-go-round, kept her own counsel. Once, as we wheezed up to the great bulk of the Mark Hopkins Hotel, she murmured, “The white rose and the red rose mean blood.}

That sounds like a prophecy to me! When they get to Eulalia’s, they find her brutally murdered with clues pointing to Peter as the killer. They decide not to notify the police, and try to find the killer themselves. How original! They take a cable car back to where they originally caught it. Another reason that I think Iris and Peter were staying where the old Hotel Plaza was Peter’s narration here.

{At last the cable car dumped us at Stockton. We could have waited for another car to take us the four blocks to the hotel, but we decided to walk.}

Four blocks south, California to Pine, Pine to Bush, Bush to Sutter, Sutter to Post would have put them exactly where the Hotel Plaza used to be. Also, if they would have waited for another cable car to take them those four blocks they would have waited until World War Three because no cable car line could have traveled that way. The vintage photo above is California Street at Stockton looking east in 1948.

A tip as to where he may find a clue concerning the murderer’s identity leads Peter on a late night visit to the San Francisco Zoo area and Wawona Street. Peter accepts a ride from an acquaintance that he doesn’t trust in preference of taking a streetcar. However, playing it safe, he has the man drop him off at Sunset Blvd. and Sloat and walks a number of blocks in the dark past the zoo. Peter gives an eerie description of walking through this area at night back then.

{I was scared of the trolley. After midnight trolleys are infrequent. They are always maddeningly slow, and Wawona Avenue (Peter refers to the steet as Wawona Avenue instead of Street in the book) huddled close to the Pacific on the fringes of the Fleishhacker Zoo, was maddeningly remote.” / “I headed down Sloat towards the sea. I had never been in this district by night. It was desolate beyond word. A few houses straggled on my right. On my left, the bleak edge of the Lake Merced Park stretched away into the darkness. As I hurried on the street curved into the park itself and there was nothing but the darkness and the gaunt skeletons of trees. From the Great Zoo ahead of me, the lonely yowling of wild beasts rose every now and then, intensifying the silence. I quickened my pace until I was out of the park again and turned right into Wawona Avenue itself.}

The David Rumsey Map Collection aerial photograph composition of San Francisco in 1938 shows that there were, indeed, very few houses along Sloat Blvd. from Sunset Blvd to the ocean around this time. The vintage photograph above, circa 1940, shows Sloat Blvd dropping down from Sunset Blvd. and approaching the Pacific Ocean past the zoo on the right. This was the route Peter made his lonely walk before turning toward Wawona Street, probably at 45^th Avenue.

Peter goes to house on the corner of Wawona and 45^th Avenue where a second murder occurs. This murder is even more horrible for Peter because he sees another woman being murdered as it unfolds and he tries desperately to prevent it. Peter narrates that the house was on the corner of Wowana Avenue but doesn’t identify the cross street. The Rumsey photograph map shows that Wawona Avenue only cut three blocks from the Great Highway past 47th to 45^th Avenue around this time. After witnessing the murder, Peter states that he walked several blocks toward the ocean to the trolley terminal for the Zoo which was at, and still is, 47^th and Wawona, that’s why I’m putting the murder at 45^th and Wawona.

{I walked the few desolate blocks to the zoo terminal of the trolley line.” / “An empty car was waiting at the end of the tracks, less than a hundred yards from the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean. I was the sole passenger at first, and by the time the car bolted forward I had only two sleepy sailors as traveling companions. At least my exit from Wawona Avenue had been inconspicuous.}

The top two then and nows are at the 47^th and Wawona streetcar terminal. The black and white photo from 1949 shows that it was the L line, as it still is today, that ran all the way out here. The color picture from 1970 of an L Line streetcar turning onto Wawona Avenue from 47th shows that the terminal wasn’t quite “less than a hundred yards from the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean” which is behind where the hill in the background is.

The denouement of the book takes place at a circus being held at a building called the Lawrence Stadium. The only building that this could possibly have been is the Civic Auditorium, now the Billy Graham Civic Auditorium, in the Civic Center. Iris and Peter have learned from clues and tips that the murderer might have something to do with the circus being performed there.

{The Lawrence Stadium was somewhere along Market Street. Iris and I walked down Fillmore.” / “We Reached Market. It was too early for the tidal wave of sailors, but the street was crowded enough.” / “Iris said: “We’d better take a trolley. Oh, there’s one now.” / “The Lawrence Stadium reared up on the other side of the street. It was one of those big random buildings that get put up in cities and then have to be used for something}

Well, that could describe the Civic Auditorium. Circuses were held inside the auditorium, and I learned from SFGate that on one occasion in 1972 two lions got out of their cages and roamed around the auditorium for around three hours before being captured!  The top photo is a 1919 parade by the Hospital Corps passing the Civic Auditorium along Polk Street. The current picture is of preparations being put in place along Polk Street for the 2018 Pride Parade. Well, I’ll leave the rest of the story to anyone interested in reading the book. If you enjoy mysteries set in San Francisco or just mysteries at all, it’s not a bad read. Peter and Iris Duluth are not unlike Nick and Nora Charles only a little naughtier, and it was fun following them around San Francisco.

These are some more updates of slide pictures that I took in the early to mid 1980’s. I went back to spots that I photographed long ago, and it felt like almost everything had changed except me!

Market Street at Powell in 1985: This was around the time they began running old-time street cars along Market Street, although, they weren’t as “old-time” back then as they are now!

The Embarcadero, looking south in 1983, next to Levi Plaza: The old Belt Line railroad tracks were still there and Levi Plaza had only opened up a year or two earlier.

The Embarcadero at Broadway looking north in 1983:

This was taken on Powell Street in front of the St. Francis Hotel in June of 1984, the day the cable cars returned to service after being closed for repairs for nearly two years.

Chinatown at Grant Avenue and California Street in 1983: I may have taken this one while passing by on a cable car, I don’t remember. Old St. Mary’s is hidden behind trees now that weren’t there when I took the first picture. I wonder who that was taking a picture of me while I was taking a picture of him!

The Parade of Ships during Fleet Week, 1983, taken from Chestnut Street: This was still during the Cold War, and there was a lot more of a military showing back then. I’m not sure which aircraft carrier that was, but it may have been the USS Abraham Lincoln. You can see the Balclutha sailing ship on the left when she was still docked at Pier 43.

Watching the Blue Angels from the Coit tower parking lot in 1983: Look at the kids climbing up on the Columbus Statue on the left. We used to do that too. I was watching the air show from the steps leading up to Coit Tower. Fleet Week had only been revived two years earlier; I wouldn’t even try going up there on Blue Angels day anymore!

Late afternoon from Telegraph Hill in 1983 and in 2018: It doesn’t feel like thirty five years ago to me. I think that usually means that you’re getting old!

You have to enter San Francisco from the Bay Bridge pretty early nowadays to catch traffic as light as it was in this color photo from the 1940’s. (Vintage Everyday)

“All aboard for the Dramamine Express!” Those old buses, like the one these ladies are boarding at the Ferry Building during the 1950’s, may not have been as uncomfortable as I’m making them out to be, but I’m sure they’re not as comfortable as today’s Muni buses. (Lucian Rosca)

A cable car crosses Geary St. on Powell, heading toward Market Street in the 1940’s:

Street and sidewalk motion in the 1970’s and today: That’s the old Samuels Clock, installed on Market Street in 1915. The clock, now a San Francisco Landmark, was moved a little from its original Market Street location in 1943. (24media.com)

A scooter and cable car crossing paths on Hyde Street at Chestnut in the early 1960’s: The cable car in my photo was heading down Russian Hill unlike the vintage picture and I could have waited here for hours for a scooter, so I’ll just settle for the cable car. (Michael Bry)

Sutter Street looking east at Stockton Street during the 1940’s: This is a wider angle of a clearer photo I posted on June 1^st this month showing the location of the legendary Forbidden City nightclub on Sutter Street. (SFMTA)

Sometime near the end of 1985 or early 1986, I drove over to Fort Mason to visit the Liberty Ship, Jeremiah O’Brien. She was tied up at there back then and having recently learned about the ship, I had already visited her on previous occasions. Fort Mason didn’t have as much activity back then as today, (although nothing compares to the activity there during World War Two) so I parked in the parking lot and headed toward the Liberty Ship. It was a chilly day and I remember that I was wearing a red jacket with the words ‘San Francisco’ on it that I bought earlier that year in Fisherman’s Wharf. As I approached the ship I saw a number of 1940’s cars parked around the pier the Jeremiah O’Brien was docked at and a group of people in clothing from that period standing around or boarding the ship. I’m sure that the Jeremiah O’Brien charged a fee back then but as I mixed in with the crowd and headed up the gangplank nobody said any thing to me. When I got on board, it was obvious that a scene from some movie being produced was about to be filmed. By talking to some of the crew I learned that it was going to be a miniseries called ‘Crossings’, set during World War Two and starring Cheryl Ladd of ‘Charlie’s Angels’ fame. That was all I needed to hear to decide to hang around. Soon, there she was only a few feet from me walking toward the starboard aft side of the ship for the filming of the burial at sea episode of the miniseries. I moved up a ladder to watch the filming, and since Cheryl was facing my direction during the filming I’m sure that she saw me, or at least I hope so. A number of scenes were filmed around or aboard the Jeremiah O’Brien and here are some then and nows from the movie. Keep in mind that while they were filming these scenes I was always hovering around nearby trying to look cool for Cheryl Ladd.

The first scene I watched them shoot was a burial at sea. I’m standing about where I was watching that scene long ago; it was filmed just past the lifeboat where the garbage cans are. The Jeremiah O’Brien is now located in Fisherman’s Wharf.

The bodies were laid to rest on the side she was docked at in the show so the crane cameras could capture this scene. That’s costars Cheryl Ladd and Lee Horsley in the center.

This scene was right up where I was at during the burial scene so I had to move back out of the way. Cheryl and Lee move down the ladder from second to first deck.

They headed to their romantic encounter through this passage.

It’s been a trying day watching sailors buried at sea so even though Lee Horsley is married to Jane Seymour in the film, and Cheryl Ladd is married to Christopher Plummer, they go to Horsley’s cabin and….. “get involved”.

Lee and Cheryl “get involved” a lot while aboard ship like here in a hammock on the starboard aft side. It didn’t seem to bother the crew much.

Back over at Fort Mason, this was the scene that they had just finished filming when I showed up of the ship arriving at port.

The Jeremiah O’Brien’s name was changed to Dorchester for the film. Here she is today at Pier 45.

A time for, “Gosh, we shouldn’t have done that!” goodbyes. That’s the Van Ness Pier on the far right.

The inevitable goodbye kiss and tearful parting:

“Why are you crying, my dear?”

“I’m thinking about that cute guy in the red San Francisco jacket I saw on the ship. I may never see him again!”

And she never did!

Cheryl drives away, but it’s only half way through the miniseries so they’ll be seeing each other again.

Lee Horsley looks back tenderly at Cheryl Ladd, and Cheryl looks back thinking, “I wish that guy I had to kiss would get out of the way so I can see if that fellow in the red jacket is getting off the ship.”

By the 1950s, color photography was getting less and less expensive, although, the “natural color” had a little ways to go yet.

I’m not sure that I dislike the look of the Fairmont Hotel lobby back then, but it hurts my eyes!

When you make it up to Twin Peaks and the colors are as good as the old photo, you picked the perfect day to be there.

Grant Avenue, down from Chinatown: Aw, hope he got a nice tip.

It was nice of that fellow to pose for me at Fisherman’s Wharf. He wasn’t crabby about it at all!

Looks like there’s more than just “natural color” on this old souvenir book, but I’m not going to guess what it is. Same view, different colors, both from the Top of the Mark.

Well, we’ve moved into another month. With less than three weeks of spring left I’m wondering if,

the Giants can avoid a “June Swoon” – or the Warriors will be champions soon – as I update my blog this afternoon.

Yeah, I know. Sorry!

The southwest corner of Sutter and Stockton Streets in 1946: If you look down Sutter Street in the background of the vintage picture, you’ll see the Forbidden City night club, once San Francisco’s answer to New York’s Cotton Club. (Pinterest)

Union Square in 1948: The I. Magnin Department Store is now part of Macy’s, the City of Paris Department Store behind the Dewey Monument has been demolished, and there’s so little grass in Union Square today it’s hardly worth the name. (Roger Sturtevant)

 

The old Armory Building in the Mussion District, seen from Woodward Street in the 1970’s:

Washington Street, looking west from Grant Avenue in 1944: The building with the Chop Suey sign in the old photo has been remodeled and was where the Golden Dagon Restaurant, the site of one of the worst massacres in modern San Francisco history, was located.

It was a lot nicer when I took my picture looking across Market Street to 4^th Street than it was on this cold day in 1935 (SFMTA)

Harbor Blvd across from the entrance to Disneyland in 1966: At least Denny’s is still there. (UCLA digital library collection)

  The Main Street Cinema in the 1960’s:

“What, this glamorous outfit that I wore to Disneyland so that I could show it off? Why, I’ve had it for years!”

I don’t know what this building behind her in Frontierland was in the 1960’s, but it’s a small restaurant today. Nothing much was open when I took some of these pictures because if you stay at one of the Disneyland Resort Hotels they let you into the park an hour before they open. (Galadarling)

Main Street USA in a slide I took in 1983: Well, at least you can still see Sleeping Beauty Castle through the forest.

The Wizard of Bras ladies underwear shop on Main Street: I guess some things had to go. Hmmm, someone is peeking in the window. (DisneyShawn)

Some of my family in front of the Main Street Train Station in 1985:

“Uncle” Walt deep in thought on Main Street near the City Hall:

Disneyland remembered the real meaning of Memorial Day with a ceremony honoring fallen vets during the flag lowering at the end of the day at Main Street Plaza.

 

California Adventure – 1983 and now: The top photo is the Disneyland Parking Lot where California Adventure is today from a slide picture I took in 1983. That was in “Section G as in Goofy”.

It’s a busy weekend in San Francisco, this one is. Today is the Bay to Breakers Race. This evening Kim Novak will be at the Castro Theater for a screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film ‘Vertigo’ celebrating the 60^th anniversary of its release. And yesterday was the Veterans Memorial Cruise aboard the SS Jeremiah O’Brien. The cruise honors veterans living and dead and a wreath laying ceremony is conducted on the voyage each year for some of the veterans lost. Once again I relied on http://opensfhistory.org/ for vintage pictures to compare with some of the photos that I took along the journey.

There were a surprising number of World War Two veterans on hand and some interesting uniforms.

There were also a number of authors who have written books on military subjects autographing their books.

We departed Pier 45 on a windy but beautiful day. This is Russian Hill in 1955. The street climbing the hill in the center of both pictures is Hyde Street.

We sailed around Telegraph Hill, seen in 1927 without Coit Tower.

We’re approaching the Ferry Building, seen in 1968. That’s the Bank of America Building going up in the old photo.  There was no Hyatt Regency and no Embarcadero Center yet. The Bank of America Building, not the “king of the hill” anymore, can be seen on the right along with the Alcoa Building in my picture.

We’re lined up with the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street seen in 1906 with scaffolding around the tower to repair damage from the earthquake.

We’ve sailed under the Bay Bridge and you’re looking at the western most tower of the bridge being erected in the 1930’s. The old Hills Brothers Coffee Factory can be seen in both pictures.

Now we’re at the China Basin, now called McCovey Cove after the San Francisco Giants slugger. The vintage picture is circa 1922. Just behind that ship is where AT&T Park is now. The baseball park was quiet and empty when we sailed past, but it was crowded and loud later in the evening when the Giants beat the Colorado Rockies 9 to 4.

Now we’re cruising past Potrero Hill. The gas and water towers are gone now, but the smokestack from the old Potrero Generating Station is still there.

When we reached Hunters Point a moving wreath laying ceremony was held. I noticed that none of the ships or boats on our horizon were moving as well, so I wondered if they were respecting the ceremony also. However, an old salt on the Jeremiah O’Brien said that they were just waiting to be guided into port by a port harbor boat. I don’t know about that though, the little boat among them didn’t need guiding in!

We headed back to town by a different and interesting route. It was time to relax, like these ladies on a ferry boat were doing in 1954, and enjoy some of the free coffee, donuts, hot dogs, and beer.

Our return trip took us under the new Eastern Span of the Bay Bridge that replaced the old cantilever span, seen in 1960 in the vintage picture. The Eastern Span opened in 2013.

And under the bridge we went! That’s the first time I, and probably most of the people on board the Jeremiah O’Brien, had ever done that.

So, we headed back to Fisherman’s Wharf, guided in by tug boats. That’s the old sailing ship Balclutha that used to be docked at Pier 43 in the 1964 picture. There was no Bank of America Building, Transamerica Pyramid, or Salesforce Tower back then, and two of the more cherished buildings in the old photo, Coit Tower and Saints Peter and Paul Church, can still be seen.

Looking down California Street between Powell and Mason Streets in the 1970s; no stoplights back then, and they don’t advertise Jim Beam Whiskey on cable cars anymore. The parking sign was where the old Crest Garage, then called the Rolls Garage, was located. It was demolished in February, 2018. (Vintage pictures from the photo researchers of Minerva S.A., 1977)

Powell and California Streets: I had a nice line up on this one, I wish it had been a clearer day.

Ah, the entrance to the mystic world of Chinatown! You know that you’re in an exotic location when the signs read ‘Country Burger’ and ‘Coca Cola’ at the entrance.

“Sign, sign, everywhere a sign”: There are still a lot of signs in Chinatown today, but they’re not “breakin’ my mind” like in that old 70’s song, and the red lanterns of nowadays are an added improvement.

The old Crocker Bank on the corner of Montgomery and Post Streets: This was the bank where Lee Remick’s character Kelly Sherwood worked in the 1962 film, ‘Experiment in Terror’. Crocker Bank is defunct now and the top floors of the building were removed at the end of the 1970’s for a rooftop park.

It was a lot prettier of a day in San Francisco today when I finished this set than it was a few days ago. In fact, it was about the nicest spring day I’ve had in town so far. I was trying to figure out why Alcatraz Island seems to tilt so much in the older picture looking down Hyde Street after you pass Chestnut Street. Of course, it’s partly due to the photographer, but it actually does seem to slant as you move further down from Chestnut. Probably because Hyde doesn’t run directly toward Alcatraz. Or maybe Alcatraz does tilt occasionally and no one has ever been able to figure out why.

They used to call this peaceful portion of Aquatic Park on Beach Street Victorian Park, but I don’t know if anybody calls it that anymore.

The Ben Jonson Restaurant in the old Del Monte Cannery Building near Fisherman’s Wharf was very popular in the 1970s. They served mostly recipes from England, but I’ll bet they didn’t serve Yorkshire pudding!

If I have critics, and nobody’s worth much if they don’t, “Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you”, they’ll probably say, “He’s always posting pictures of the same spots.” There’s truth in this, but I always feel that the website isn’t about my pictures; they’re, at best, pleasant snapshots. However, the vintage pictures are what it’s all about. I’ve probably posted dozens of pictures at the Powell and Market Streets cable car turnaround, but I keep discovering new pictures from the past of this location and these are what make a then and now comparison fun to look at. In short, sometimes when I post these pictures, “this I do for me.” The long cable car lines of today hadn’t really started forming yet back then and, surprisingly, the line a couple of days ago when I took the current picture was smaller than they were in the 1970’s!