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Photographs Taken of San Francisco Before It Became the Center of the Tech World
- bluejekyll 10y agoThese are beautiful pictures. Thanks for posting. What I find interesting of them, is how little has changed. This could practically be taken now, perhaps replacing those kids with some programmers... One thing people may not realize, one of the most beutiful areas of SF, the waterfront by the ferry building, used to have a huge multi-level highway. Now it's one of the best looking areas of the City.
- jonknee 10y ago> What I find interesting of them, is how little has changed. This could practically be taken now, perhaps replacing those kids with some programmers... One of the main reasons it's such an unaffordable place to live, they haven't built nearly enough.
- exodust 10y agoIn this photo I don't see overhead power lines for the tram: https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PgZkW7hgkro/WHPMo2nxx7I/AAAAAAAADpw/bvPqIZrdDI04RQA_B1bloNfkG-QCHsHOwCLcB/s1600/San%2BFrancisco%252C%2B1940s-50s%2B%25286%2529.jpg https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PgZkW7hgkro/WHPMo2nxx7I/AAAAAAAAD... Does this mean trams only went downhill on this particular road? Or were they powered some other way? Other photos show overhead wires.
- stormbrew 10y agoThat'd be a cable car, I think. It's pulled along by a cable embedded in the middle 'rail', afaik.
- exodust 10y agoAh, of course. Thanks.
- bluejekyll 10y agoYeah, that middle "rail" is the underground cable. I don't recognize the street, but that doesn't mean much. There were a bunch of cable car lines that were removed, we now have three left: https://www.sfcablecar.com/routes.html https://www.sfcablecar.com/routes.html It looks like most were removed in the 40's, and 50's https://www.sfcablecar.com/history.html https://www.sfcablecar.com/history.html
- avisser 10y agoI believe that is the cable-car line.
- pizzetta 10y ago"Bullitt" has some nice scenes of that area as well as others in SF as McQueen chased the hitmen all over the place, including visitation valley, Guadalupe canyon road and some in the marina, etc.
- coin 10y ago> Center of the Tech World A bit of a stretch considering there's the rest of the Bay Area
- throwaway91111 10y agoOr the suburbs. It ain't Oakland, though.
- enahs-sf 10y agoI love this nostalgia. I find myself watching old movies of San Francisco just to see how the city has changed. In one of the Dirty Harry movies there's a great shot that shows the where the ballpark is now as a basically empty industrial area. Great to see how soma and the rest of the city has evolved over the years.
- stuckagain 10y agoIf the evolution of soma interests you, check out the work of this photographer https://deyoung.famsf.org/exhibitions/janet-delaney-south-market https://deyoung.famsf.org/exhibitions/janet-delaney-south-ma...
- exodust 10y agoThe quality of those images is very nice. Smartphones definitely don't come close to those colours. No doubt the photographers skill also plays a big role, but that "pigment print" is sublime.
- ghaff 10y agoI'm guess Cibachrome prints though you can't fully appreciate online. Pigment prints are pretty rare these days. A photographer I was at a dinner a couple of months back favored a Bay area company that prints on metal as an alternative.
- 1_2__3 10y agoSan Francisco isn't Silicon Valley. It has never been the center of the tech world, and to whatever extent it's tech-heavy now that's less than 20 years old. These pictures act like SF was churning out silicon and code starting in the 1980s (based on the age of the pictures) which isn't even close to true or accurate. Even during the last dot com bust it was mostly just marketing companies in sf - all the tech was south of Menlo Park. I actually really hate that people try to retcpn SF into this visionary of technology and futurism. Almost all of that was and remains in the South Bay, as much as SF startup peeps hate to admit it.
- mhurron 10y ago> These pictures act like SF was churning out silicon and code starting in the 1980s (based on the age of the pictures) Looking at the cars I would guess most of those pictures are somewhere in the 40's/50's.
- kozikow 10y ago> San Francisco isn't Silicon Valley. It has never been the center of the tech world, and to whatever extent it's tech-heavy now that's less than 20 years old. I moved to Mountain View to found a startup a few months ago. When I think about the "chat over coffee" type of meetings go, I would say that there may be slightly more of them in San Francisco than South Bay. It feels like San Francisco starts to outweigh Silicon Valley. I didn't do precise calculation, but estimation based on my gut feelings would say that ratio of "Seed stage" startups between SF and South bay is 2/1.
- gumby 10y ago> ratio of "Seed stage" startups between SF and South bay is 2/1. The density of tech startups in SF is much lower, more like New York. Most of them are just retail companies (shops) or food services. Yes, Pinterest, uber, lift, twitter have serious tech problems to solve involving scale, but companies like that are in the minority. And businesses where people develop new technologies are more common in the Valley. Living in the city and commuting to the Valley was already the norm when I got here in the early 80s.
- matt_wulfeck 10y agoI always marvel at how clean cities used to look before we began churning out garbage and waste breakneck speeds.
- refurb 10y agoReally? Nothing was ever recycled back then (maybe metal and glass). We were way more wasteful back then.
- awfgylbcxhrey 10y agoTons of stuff that's now sold in blow-molded plastic was in glass or aluminum back then. Stuff that's now sold in styrene and/or plastic wrap was wrapped in waxed paper. And, of course, people made and consumed food at home way more often. So, more of the waste was in the form of of cars dumped down ravines, and less in the form of shopping bags and granola bar wrappers blowing in the wind. Also, from personal observation, I'm inclined to say that a significant amount of trash these days is due to the rolling trash bins and the hydraulic arms used to gather them. Many people don't bag their trash, and I always see a significant increase in 'litter' after trash day.
- digler999 10y ago> now sold in blow-molded plastic was in glass or aluminum back then. and how much "greener" is it to use aluminum, whose cost is mostly due to the energy required to separate it from its oxide, than to use plastic that is a natural (yes, it comes from the earth) byproduct of oil production? > more of the waste was in the form of of cars dumped down ravines, that can percolate down into the waterways and ground water, versus dump in a landfill with a 4ft clay liner specifically designed to catch contaminants. Trash-to-energy is also a thing now. Plasma from an electric arc can (somehow) incinerate trash without harmful byproducts and actually results in a surplus of energy [1]. Not to mention methane recovery from landfills that's been a thing for over a decade [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste-to-energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste-to-energy [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill_gas_utilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill_gas_utilization
- Neliquat 10y agoI was expecting a snarky post with pics from the 90s, or today, with a point that tech never really centralized in the bay, just the money. But old pictures with questionable relevance are also nice.
- pcora 10y agoAre there recent photos to compare?
- plorkyeran 10y agoA lot of them would look exactly the same other than newer cars.
- mschuetz 10y agoYeah, I found that, other than the cars and people, it looked a lot like the San Francisco I've been to last year.
- ashare80 10y agoHere is an approximation http://imgur.com/a/vfCWb http://imgur.com/a/vfCWb
- themark 10y agoHmmm, No pictures of the wonderful parking lots and barren wasteland that turned into the Mission Bay neighborhood?
- bykovich 10y agoI live in Mission Bay and it sucks dick. As a residential neighborhood, I'd rather have warehouses.
- aaronbrethorst 10y agoCheck out SFMOMA's Pritzker Center if you happen to be in or around SF. Really amazing photography collection. http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/05/a-comprehensive-look-at-california-and-the-west/ http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/05/a-comprehensive-loo... and https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-10-photographers-who-captured-the-changing-face-of-san-francisco https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-10-photographe...
- backtoyoujim 10y agoOne of those photos includes a place I rented in the 1990s. Thank you so much for that.
- jrochkind1 10y agosuch a beautiful city. All good things will be commandeered by the rich.
- vram22 10y agoI've read in mags like National Geographic (old issues) that in the 50s, 60's and earlier, Silicon Valley had a lot of orchards with apricots, almonds, etc. Must have been great to have lived there then.
- kafkaesq 10y agoNice collection. But from the look of these photos, you'd think the person slapping the title on top was at most... about 21 or so. "1940s? 60s? 90s? It all looks the same." BTW, if you're wondering why the Sally Rand Nude Ranch looks out of place -- that's because that scene was from Ft. Worth, Texas, not SF.
- mxfh 10y agoJust came across this 20 minute 1955 cinemascope feature on archive.org earlier today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOpCZTmurgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOpCZTmurgk https://archive.org/details/SanFrancisco1955CinemascopeFilm https://archive.org/details/SanFrancisco1955CinemascopeFilm
- golfer 10y agoAnother nice photo set from that site -- "Composite Then and Now 1906 San Francisco Earthquake Pictures" http://humansfromthepast.blogspot.com/2016/11/composite-then-and-now-photos-of-1906.html http://humansfromthepast.blogspot.com/2016/11/composite-then... Puts the destruction of that earthquake in perspective.
- litso 10y agoReally cool picture of the B-Geary street car turning right off of Market St. en route to the Transbay terminal.
- digler999 10y agosorry if stupid question, but how do the trolley cars get enough traction to travel up/down steep hills ? is there a rubber wheelset ? I can't imagine metal wheels on rails would have enough friction to climb up or descend safely. edit: I see below that someone says there's an underground cable. Is there an emergency backup (like a rubber foot or something) in case of cable snap?
- seany 10y agoThe ones that go up and down hills are "cable cars". There is literally a moving cable under the street that they grab onto. So the traction issue is only there when you've released the cable grip, and are breaking.
- cr0sh 10y ago> I see below that someone says there's an underground cable. Is there an emergency backup (like a rubber foot or something) in case of cable snap? There is a brake system on the cars, that basically presses down on the rail - they're made of wood, like they've always been: http://www.cablecarmuseum.org/the-brakes.html http://www.cablecarmuseum.org/the-brakes.html That museum is at the "head" of the lines - it has the motors which drive the cables, and so in the museum you can learn about how it all works, see the cables running, all the sheaves and such, and down below the machine room where they do maintenance. That said - cable-snaps are probably the rarest of rare things to occur. What happens first, as the cable runs (and it is always running), it frays (steel cable - and you don't want one of the "threads" to pierce ya!). As the cable runs, there is a "switch" sensor mechanism that can tell when the fray passes. When that happens, they know then they have to change the cable. At night, then (when no cars are running) they run the cable at a slow speed (I think it is to keep it lubed and not rust or something), and wait for it to trigger again, then they slowly run it to find the fray. At that point, they stop the line (all lines, actually), and splice in a new cable (they have many reels in the work area), put tension on it, then turn the motor back on and let it winch the new cable thru (and take in the old cable), until the splice come back 'round, then they cut out the splice, and splice the ends of the new cable together. I can't recall how often this happens, but IIRC, one line or another would need replacing on a monthly basis (?) - I might be completely wrong.