Comments on: San Francisco on film: Days before the 1906 Quake
Add a Comment
- This is one 11-minute clip. Given the pandemonium seen here, I can only surmise that it would be a minor miracle if there WEREN'T numerous collisions, injuries, etc. on a daily basis! Thanks for the post, though. It's beyond cool...:)
- Reply to this comment
- Just a few years back, I had the time to walk down Market Street from about Fifth to the Ferry Building. This film is really a transport back in time. It's an excellent news item on not just the film, but the detective work to place it in the right time.
It's also amazing to watch, how all the traffic, horse, Trams, trolleys, bikes, cars, and people walking manage to get around without collisions. - Reply to this comment
- Incredibly beautiful and mesmerizing. It just draws you into all of the faces you see here, wondering what their lives were like...how many caught on film here died in the quake, how many of the men were Civil War vets, etc. The poster who used the term "mind blowing" here had it right. Mind blowing indeed.
- Reply to this comment
- I grew up in S.F. and by 1950, at the ripe old age of 7, I was a regular streetcar passenger and intrepid explorer of Market Street and Downtown S.F. (I had doctors appts. 3 times/wk for allergy shots (ugh)- which brought me there from the neighborhoods.) The streetcars then were big, heavy, iron affairs (painted yellow or brown) with iron grill gates for doors that were manually opened by the conductor (we still called them 'conductors' in those days) with a shiny brass lever next to his chair that slid them back to let us on and off. These iron Juggernauts had 3 sections, the front for boarding, where the 'motorman' was. A rear platform where you could stand more in the open and look out the back window, and the long 'inside' center section that was reached by sliding back some heavy glass doors framed in polished oak (?).
The inside section had two long wooden benches, one on either side. Fine pieces of highly polished furniture really, with a curve that just fit your bottom perfect if you sat back. The streetcars back then made this wonderful mixture of sounds (clackety-clacks of the wheels, clanks and clunks of the gates opening and closing, a deep klunng of the bell it used as a honker (a little like the cable cars only deeper and more sonorous) and an assortment of all sorts of percussion clanks&gongs - it was always quite a little symphony of a ride to take the 'N Judah' through the tunnel and then out of from few minutes of darkness into the dazzlingly brilliant Mediterranean daylight at the other end (Castro & Mkt) with the vista of Market Street ahead, as if freshly rolled out for our arrival like some grand concourse.
You could see all the way from upper Market to the Ferry Bldg. It was absolutely beautiful. Interestingly, in the mid-afternoon (my usual appointment time) there was less traffic on the street than seen in the in the film, even discounting the Miles Bros. 'extras'. Some days, mid-afternoon Market Street was practically empty of automobiles. My transfer point was supposed to be at Powell St., where I would catch the cable car for a ride up Powell to Sutter St. where I'd get off half a block from the doctor's office.
But every third or fourth appointment, if I had time, I'd ride all the way down to the Ferry Bldg. just for the heck of it, and then stay on the street car and ride back. I can't quite recall, but I think there was a switchback at both ends of the line and the driver just took his seat off the pole at one end, walked to the other end of the streetcar and stuck his chair on the other pole, sat down and was ready to go in the opposite direction. Maybe I'm just filling in for my child's mind. Anyway, it was a wonderful ride and, for a few years of my childhood, I had a front row seat three times a week, for about 25-cents.
The strangest thing about watching the film was my own connection to it. I left S.F. in about 1960 or so. I've been back a few dozen times over the years, the last was about 2 years ago. As the film cleverly flipped back and forth (kudos to the 60 Minutes editor) between past and present views of the street, the 1906 version of the scene seemed much more familiar and related to me than the new version. Oh, the cars of 1950 were nothing like the cars of 1906, and (except when Ringling Bros. came to town) there were no horses pulling drays and wagons. And, too, the old version of the street was completely destroyed a week later and had to be entirely rebuilt. But the architecture, the pace, the color and easy grace of the city by the bay that I knew as a child was more akin to the one fifty years before than to the one 50 years later. The Miles Bros. film brought me very close to being home again. Not quite, but close.
Thank you, 60 Minutes for the change-of-pace that brought the world out of me rather than plunging me into someone else's world. Or, maybe like Andy Rooney's closing segment, I'm just getting THAT old?
Well, if any S.F. nostalgia fans are reading this, I do have a little piece (poem, not film) with a few more early SFy glimpses in it. It's called 'Passages' and can be read at http://holopoet.com/hp2/Poems/passages.html And this very short&sweet little ditty from earlier days:
City
City, oh city, city of my birth,
sweet silent city,
city of stucco sunsets
and a thousand Spanish stories
whispered in the shadows
of andalusian lightfalls
on soft stone walls.
- red slider, 1997
[herb caen, we miss you.] - Reply to this comment
- Thank you so much for showing this!
I'm an electric railfan (real ones, not models), and seeing cable cars, trolley cars, and horse-drawn streetcars all in the same continuous film was almost too much to bear! - Reply to this comment
- I want to know more about the information they uncovered concerning the making of the original film. Do they know who did it, when and why? I'd like more detail other than two peoples' research told us this took place days before the earthquake.
- Reply to this comment
- This is our first slice of reality television! So fascinating. I'm surprised, though, that not more people got themselves killed by all the weaving of traffic and crossing dangerously in front of tram cars, horses just nearly colliding with motorists and cyclist, no traffic signs, etc. What's even more fascinating is that I was at this end of Market Street when the 1989 quake hit. My mind is officially blown. I love time travel!
- Reply to this comment
- In the 60 minutes broadcast the story editor end the segment praise what one person with just a computer and the Internet can do. I disagree. This was made possible by one person doing a lot of hard work and worn shoe leather and the OFFLINE resources of the San Francisco Library ande motor vehicles. The computer and Internet were not what made it possible.
However, this got me to thinking about how much we have lost in jounalism. There was a time when jornaists did this kind of hard work. Now it seems we have 24 hours a day of non-stop opining often by individuals that are not qualified and whom should be spending their time doing the hard work of journalism. It is tradgedy that so many real newspapers and reporters have been reported by blogs.
Recently we saw supporters of two presidential candidates (Bachman and Palin) attempt to rewrite history at Wikopedia. I do not criticize these candiadates for the zealous and foolish activities of supporters. But I do criticize these candidates for not condemning the activity.
And now to see someone working independently to research and bring history to light its a refreshing delight. Thank you CBS for airing this. Let's hope in inspires a few journalists to go back to basics. - Reply to this comment
- I've lived here in SF for 30 years. This is best video I've seen as it really shows the city, the dress of the men and woman, the fact that cars and horse drawn buggies competed for space...and more.
Wow!
Thank you 60 Minutes.
Milt - Reply to this comment
- with what kind & size (mm?) film was the original shot??
- Reply to this comment
