[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NINOxRxze9k[/youtube]
The band is Air, the city is San Francisco, the date is April 14th, 1906 – four days before a 7.5+ magnitude earthquake and subsequent fire devastated the city. The camera is attached to the front of a trolly car, heading down Market street.
Last Call- Rendezvous 1906 Edition
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And within a year, it was all gone.
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Within less than a week, actually.
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Wow, that was seriously cool, a window to the past. Look at everything going on, every means of transport from pedestrians casually strolling around in traffic to a guy on horseback, to horse-drawn vehicles, to bicycles (notice how carefully they cross those trolley tracks), to cars, all going every which way while the trolley (itself a newfangled innovation at the time) just goes. It's chaos, in slow-motion compared to what we're used to, not many rules or traffic regulations. That's the way it was back then, in the waning days of the Old West, just go for it, let it rip. Now, this kind of free for all would drive most people into a screaming rage, but this is the way it used to be, complete disorder, and everybody got along fine in spite of it. It was a different world back then, just look. We've changed a lot, and maybe not all that much for the better. I've got a big picture of this kind of scene happening today without road rage, yelling, hurt feelings and the like.
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There is some order to it though it looks disorderly to us. I driving in Italy and in Manhattan today have a similar feeling. You own the space immediately around your vehicle and just need to nudge your way through.
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Not a trolley car. It's a cable car line, no overhead wire. There used to be a lot more cable car routes in SF than there are now. It's a miracle the bicyclist at about 1:15 does not drop his wheel into the cable slot. You see one trolley car (the "Sight Seeing Car") cross the path. Today, Market Street does have trolleys.
I am amazed at the number of cars seen that early on.
BTW, the building at the end of the street is the Ferry Building. It survived the quake (and all the later quakes) and stands today.-
I was going to point out about the cable vs. trolley thing, but I see you beat me to it.
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[youtube Vqcz_tllnwM&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqcz_tllnwM&fe… youtube]
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That's a cool video, but I had to turn off the sound because of that high-pitched ringing noise.
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Thanks for your post. I will be visiting your blog soon! Thanks again!
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