[HN Gopher] The Bay Area's lost streetcars
___________________________________________________________________
The Bay Area's lost streetcars
Author : rmason
Score : 93 points
Date : 2022-08-13 05:06 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sfstreetcars.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (sfstreetcars.co)
| radiojasper wrote:
| I'm a bit sad you can't navigate through the photos with arrow
| keys on the keyboard.
|
| There is also no way to interact with the 3 year buttons with
| keyboard (1941, 1956, 2020) because when using tab, the buttons
| are completely skipped.
|
| Lastly, when I click an external link (eg. the link to Chris
| Arvin's website [0] and then click Back in my browser, I'm back
| at the homepage and not on the map I had previously selected.
| This is because the selected map does not change the URL and
| therefore loads nothing in the browser's navigation history.
|
| All in all, this makes this website unusuable for people with
| certain disabilities, because it always requires a mouse to use
| the website.
|
| [0] http://chrisarv.in/
| beowulfey wrote:
| Really great site! Would love to see something like this for
| other cities. LA is an obvious one, but recently I was thinking
| about how many lesser known street car networks were built and
| destroyed. For example, most medium to large towns in CT were
| once serviced by extensive interconnected streetcar networks, but
| few maps of those networks still exist.
| washbrain wrote:
| Many cities had "streetcar suburbs", developments on the fringes
| of town serviced by street cars that took people to work.
|
| Sadly, they were largely decommissioned and replaced with buses
| or nothing.
|
| We badly need to get more trains moving through American cities.
| I'd prefer grade separated, but honestly even if we had
| streetcars running in from all the suburbs that'd be pretty
| great.
|
| It's also worth mentioning the General Motors Streetcar
| Conspiracy:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_con...
|
| There's pretty good incentive to see streetcars removed if you
| are a car company...
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| My town is famous for being a city that feels like a bunch of
| neighborhoods. Nearly all of those iconic neighborhoods are
| along the historic street car routes, that were dismantled in
| the 30s and 40s.
|
| I won't claim the street cars were perfect, but there is a lot
| of merit to the idea that they were replaced by an inferior
| solution due to the prevailing winds of the moment. What I find
| more interesting is the street car lines had such a dramatic
| impact that now 100 years later they're still defining the
| shape of the city.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > My town is famous for being a city that feels like a bunch
| of neighborhoods.
|
| Ha, I think everywhere I've lived has described itself like
| this.
|
| Maybe it's less common in the US because you don't have
| cities swallowing up villages.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Yeah, US city planning is unfortunately pretty dismal.
|
| My town has a reputation for being better than most, but
| truth is we've grown so fast the last 2 decades our transit
| system is overwhelmed now too.
|
| Most US cities are dominated by suburban sprawl, and where
| there's pretty much nothing like a walkable neighborhood
| high street.
| throw0101a wrote:
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0
| m0llusk wrote:
| This always comes up, but is not accurate. Streetcars were
| never greatly loved. They were boiling hot in the summer,
| freezing in winter, the ride was jarring, and they were crowded
| with all manner of people. During the war maintenance was
| deferred to the point that at the end of the war most such
| lines needed to be rebuilt in order to stay in operation.
| Ripping them out to build roads for cars was not a conspiracy
| but a popular transition which at that time had few visible
| downsides.
| mymyairduster wrote:
| the modern ones work well in toronto mixed with the other
| transportation modes which is probably a better point of
| reference for american cities than the various EU/Asian
| examples people bring up
| washbrain wrote:
| If only there had been solutions to heating and cooling, or
| ride comfort. Sadly, we as a species never got around to
| inventing heat pumps, springs, or cushioned seating. LOL.
|
| Cars were popular post war, so were suburbs. But surely GM
| had no incentive to make them so.
|
| I'm not saying they personally went out and sabotaged the
| streetcars, but they absolutely put their thumb on every
| scale they could.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > If only there had been solutions to heating and cooling,
| or ride comfort.
|
| Effectiveness of heating and cooling is considerably
| diminished when a vehicle opens all its doors every few
| minutes.
|
| The transport authority of the city I grew up in tried to
| solve this problem by setting the temperature to a cool
| 18degC - you could catch a cold from taking a longer trip
| via tram in the middle of summer.
|
| As for ride comfort: there isn't much you can do against
| people drinking alcohol, having their phone on speaker or
| just urinating in the middle.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| AC came to public transportation pretty late, mostly due to
| reliability issues; a broken AC in a car is a personal
| problem, but a broken AC in public transit is the
| operator's problem.
|
| It also didn't really help that the US made a "standard"
| streetcar that was such a lemon that they were starting to
| get scrapped only 11 years after entering service: https://
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Standard_Light_Rail_Vehicle
|
| Most of our modern improvements to modern light rail
| vehicles came from manufacturing designs either straight
| from or derivatives of successful European ones. But that
| wasn't an option in the less globalized mid-century.
| jahewson wrote:
| > that wasn't an option in the less globalized mid-
| century.
|
| Oh it wasn't less global, the Republican administration
| forced government entities to buy (or in this case build)
| American instead of European in an attempt to fight
| inflation.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Oh it wasn't less global,
|
| Yes, it was; trade globalization progressively advanced
| under the GATT regime shortly after Ww2 through the
| formation of (and further after and by expansion of both
| the membership and scope of rules of) the WTO to replace
| the GATT in 1997.
|
| > the Republican administration forced government
| entities to buy (or in this case build) American instead
| of European in an attempt to fight inflation.
|
| The Buy America Act was not a unilateral partisan or
| executive actions, but was a bipartisan law passed by a
| Democratic-majority House and Republican-majority Senate
| under a lame-duck Republican Administration, and it was
| more motivated by stimulating the domestic economy during
| the Depression (it was signed on the last day of the
| Hoover Administration) than fighting inflation, which had
| been negative and getting more negative for the three
| years preceding the passage of the bill.
| 62951413 wrote:
| For those in the East Bay, https://www.eastbayhillsproject.org/
| is such a mesmerizing place to read about the old times. And see
| the pictures of the places you know which looked so different
| just a couple generations ago. Electric trains, forgotten tunnels
| under the Berkeley Hills, much simpler times.
| gregoriol wrote:
| It may be controversial, but I think all transportation that
| requires fixed infrastructure is designed to fail.
|
| The future is to light and flexible, composable and fast.
| bregma wrote:
| No one is going to build high density development that is not
| near reliable, dependable, fast, frequent, comfortable, and
| appropriately scalable transportation infrastructure. Buses and
| Ubers are not scalable to the target density.
| gregoriol wrote:
| Small electric 1/2 person transport devices (bikes,
| motorbikes, scooters, micro-cars, ...) are the future for
| high density. Everyone needs to go to a different place. Then
| for longer rides, regrouping those small rides in "trains",
| as I was saying "composition", should be the way to go.
| beowulfey wrote:
| I agree, proper bike infrastructure is painfully
| undervalued, even amongst transit stans
| jltsiren wrote:
| They are a major part of the future in medium-density
| areas. Less so in high-density areas, where individual
| vehicles of any kind create too much traffic to be a
| majority solution. Just look at pictures from Chinese
| cities in the 1980s to see how dystopian the combination of
| bikes and high density can be.
| CTmystery wrote:
| I did some googling and found pics such as this one from
| the 80s: https://www.theurbancountry.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2013/02/6...
|
| To me that doesn't look dystopian, it looks practical
| :shrug:
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| This is a weird definition of 'fixed infrastructure' that
| includes rails, but not roads, gas stations etc.?
|
| There's definately shades of gray, but any time you get high
| density or high throughput you're going to want infrastructure
| that leans more towards the "fixed" end of things. But with
| battery vehicles (from skateboards up) and automonous driving
| coming in, it'll make less sense in the middle areas.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Europe, Japan and China and many other countries beg to differ
| and are running and/or building plenty of railways.
| gregoriol wrote:
| Railways are practical to go fast from a transportation hub
| to another transportation hub, without much stops in the
| middle. Local railways are fading away because last miles
| transportation needs to be more flexible that what railways
| can offer.
| danhor wrote:
| France and Germany have been expanding local tram &
| Stadtbahn networks, even opening new ones since the ~1990s.
| Tram-Trains have also become popular in Germany, due to
| offering more stops in the middle.
|
| Not sure if you mean trams or branch lines by local
| railways, but at least Germany has also been keen on
| reactivating old branch lines, often to resounding success
| and exceeding expectations (and few failures, although
| there are many hurdles that reactivation projects much pass
| to avoid that fate). S-Bahn networks with many infill stops
| are also popular.
|
| Many S-Bahn stops also rely on walking for the last mile,
| which works well. There are also of-course people that come
| by bus or bike, but both seem like a smaller portion to me.
| There are efforts to try to get more bike&ride traffic to
| expand the station reach, but it's doesn't seem to me like
| it has increased a huge amount. There are also always
| efforts to expand park&ride, but the share of passengers
| using it is tiny [1]. The portion of people using
| E-Scooters and taking them into the train has noticeably
| increased, but not (yet) enough to be a significant portion
| (I'd guess 1-2% at most). In places where E-Scooter rentals
| are available, the trams, subways, busses, walking and
| personal bikes are usually cheaper (30ct/min) and
| guaranteed to be available. I'd guess few people use
| rentals for their daily routine, but more for fun and rare
| trips.
|
| A few german transport associations have tried implementing
| on-demand ridepooling, but I haven't heard of any large
| success stories yet. It's more of a complement for off-peak
| service due to the waiting times (if it takes 20 min for
| the vehicle to get to you, that's 20 minutes of waiting and
| you can't rely on a timetable), hassle (having to use an
| app and ordering it) and price.
|
| [1]: Park&Ride is very limited anyways. You can't retrofit
| a lot of parking to existing stations, because they're in
| the middle of (sometimes small) towns and would discourage
| denser development. If you want enough ridership to sustain
| an additional stop, there'd have to be a huge amount of
| parking (necessitating expensive parking garages) and
| enough demand to take the train for part of the trip and
| not a car for the whole trip. There usually isn't (with
| some exceptions, like greenfield HSR stations that the
| french like).
| woweoe wrote:
| This assumes that the people are living far away from the
| railway, which is obviously the opposite situation in much
| of Europe and Asia.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| morsch wrote:
| Street level light rail is fantastic. My city replaced most of it
| with subways. Which, don't get me wrong, are preferable to almost
| everything else. But it does mean getting to and from the train
| requires an additional walk and stair/escalator/lift ride, in
| addition to whatever distance you already had to walk. This
| easily triples the time it takes to get to the train for many
| trips.
|
| Of course, there are advantages, as well, principally a better
| separation from traffic.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| There's a line in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" where Bob Hoskins
| says (this was early 20th Century LA):
|
| "Who's going to ride on your _freeway_ when the Red Car costs a
| nickel? "
| toast0 wrote:
| Hmmm no mention of the interurban street car from Los Gatos to
| San Jose, ran on San Carlos ave. Was marked on the turn of the
| century (1900) subdivision maps for my house in the Burbank
| neighborhood.
|
| https://www.santacruztrains.com/2021/07/streetcars-san-jose-...
| SLWW wrote:
| I miss seeing the Streetcars in San Fran.
| hadlock wrote:
| What a lot of pro-transit (full disclosure, I am full transit)
| folks fail to mention, is that most streetcars were initially
| built, in particular, those out towards the sunset, big chunks of
| LA, were actually built by property developers, as an incentive,
| "look! see! don't need a car! just like urban living, but look at
| all this extra space you get! just take the street car into
| town". Street cars were run at break even, or even at a loss, to
| sell property, and once they hit X saturation rate, the street
| car prices were raised to make it pay for itself, or simply sold
| off to the city to maintain, out of property taxes. With barely
| break-even rates, and no maintenance budget these lines quickly
| fell into disrepair, and no suprise, the city and local citizens
| decided to buy private cars, rather than eat a tax hike to pay
| for the maintenance of a rail line that only went downtown.
|
| Yes, absolutely Big Business bought up/bought out a lot of small-
| time public transit, but you need to look at how and why these
| lines were built in the first place. They did not spring up out
| of the goodness of the hearts of property developers. Street cars
| for many years existed as a perk to sell farmland to urban
| expats, and once they had served their propose, were rapidly
| dismantled due to lack of service and maintenance costs. Nothing
| comes without a price.
| melony wrote:
| The reason they are failing is because they are slow ass and
| never modernized. Now they are primarily tourist traps. SF is a
| bad example of a city with street cars, there are many
| countries with much better implementations of street cars. You
| need to give street cars priority and make sure they don't get
| overly slowed down by city traffic. If you want people to take
| streetcars, overhaul the entire infrastructure. You can keep
| the outer decoration and layout but the insides should be
| replaced with the latest tech from Siemens/the Japanese.
| defrost wrote:
| eg: Melbourne, Australia
|
| > Trams are a major form of public transport in Melbourne,
| the capital city of the state of Victoria, Australia.
|
| > As of May 2017, the Melbourne tramway network consists of
| 250 kilometres of double track, 493 trams, 24 routes, and
| 1,763 tram stops.
|
| > The system is the largest operational urban tram network in
| the world.
|
| As featured in the engineering nerd cult classic film
| _Malcolm_ (1986)
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wffDBsSgS5Q
| spacehunt wrote:
| Melbourne is not a great example of a modern fast system
| though. The trams are far too slow in the inner suburbs,
| with the exception of parts of 96/119.
| deepdriver wrote:
| You don't even need to be a wealthy country. Tram service
| is excellent in Zagreb, capital of Croatia, where they've
| had electrics trams for more than a century:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Zagreb
|
| To someone from a place with modern, well-maintained light
| rail, I imagine Bay Area streetcars seem as quaint and
| outdated as old Ford cars in Cuba look to Americans.
| Symbiote wrote:
| > To someone from a place with modern, well-maintained
| light rail, I imagine Bay Area streetcars seem as quaint
| and outdated as old Ford cars in Cuba look to Americans.
|
| This is why San Francisco's streetcars are a tourist
| attraction. Few people go to Edinburgh just to ride on a
| modern tram, but some people visit Scotland and take a
| trip on a steam train (with or without the Harry Potter
| theme).
| quesera wrote:
| > This is why San Francisco's streetcars are a tourist
| attraction
|
| San Francisco's _Cable Cars_ are a tourist transaction.
| They do also move thousands of officeworkers to downtown
| daily, though.
|
| But the streetcar system is much larger than the cable
| car system, and it is definitely not a tourist
| attraction.
| m-ee wrote:
| The N Judah actually managed to get slower. Having trouble
| finding the photo but someone posted an N Judah schedule on
| reddit from the early 1900s and it was actually faster to get
| to downtown than it is now.
|
| EDIT- Article about it
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/us/san-francisco-muni-
| str...
| flomo wrote:
| The T-Third is also slower than the bus it replaced, and
| that was only like 20 years ago.
| opo wrote:
| The podcast 99% Invisible did a good podcast covering the Red
| Car.
|
| From their overview article on the episode:
|
| >...Henry Huntington took his money and headed for Los Angeles.
| He purchased the biggest transportation system in the city, the
| Los Angeles Railway (LARy), and then incorporated it into a new
| company called Pacific Electric. Huntington also started
| building hundreds of subdivisions on the periphery of Los
| Angeles and used Pacific Electric trains--bright red trolleys--
| to connect the subdivisions to downtown Los Angeles.
|
| >Over time, though, Huntington had built so many subdivisions
| that his Red Car couldn't do a good enough job connecting the
| city's disparate areas. The Red Car was never designed to be a
| comprehensive system like the New York City Subway; rather, it
| existed primarily to get people in and out of Huntington's
| subdivisions. Angelenos who could afford cars found it was
| easier to get around by driving. The Red Car fell into
| disrepair, and was mocked as a "slum on wheels."
|
| https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-70-the-great-...
|
| A book that covers this in more depth is:
| https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/24015/HENRY_E_HUNTI...
| NoToP wrote:
| Hold up. Why would people who weren't willing to accept the
| taxes to maintain the street car willing to instead pay all the
| tax which subsidizes car infrastructure. This narrative doesn't
| quite add up because everything you said about why the street
| car existed and the commuter pattern that fed into the
| economics of developers applies equally well to why cars and
| suburb development exists. So once suburban homes were sold,
| why didnt the roads collapse into a state of disrepair which no
| one was willing to pay for?
| floren wrote:
| > So once suburban homes were sold, why didnt the roads
| collapse into a state of disrepair which no one was willing
| to pay for?
|
| This is currently playing out in older subdivisions all
| across America.
| toast0 wrote:
| > why didnt the roads collapse into a state of disrepair
| which no one was willing to pay for?
|
| A street in disrepair is still usable, a street car line in
| disrepair becomes unusable much faster. Only one part of the
| rail needs to fall apart when nobody will pay to fix it and
| you can't use it anymore. Potholes and washouts and lots more
| problems are solved by driving slowly and carefully.
| Especially with earlier automobiles which were more likely to
| run on dirt roads.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > [...] _why didnt the roads collapse into a state of
| disrepair which no one was willing to pay for?_
|
| Suburbs are slowing falling into a state of disrepair, or at
| least more and more budget being taken away form other
| things:
|
| * https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfQUOHlAocY
| jt2190 wrote:
| The part of the story that's missing is that at the time
| these streetcar lines were built, the mass adoption of
| automobiles was about to start. Within a decade or two cars
| were everywhere, and the streetcars were no longer needed.
|
| Edit: Wikipedia says that the first line of the Los Angeles
| Railway opened in 1897 [1]. The Ford Model T was introduced
| in 1908 [2].
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Railway
|
| [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T
| dionidium wrote:
| It's because the automobile was already exploding in
| popularity at the time and all these suburban residents were
| buying cars, so they were going to have to pay for automobile
| infrastructure, either way. The streetcars were an extra,
| unnecessary cost, from this point of view.
| rayiner wrote:
| Because private cars are incredibly convenient compared to
| street cars. Faced with significant tax increases for street
| cars that only go a few places, and car infrastructure that
| can allow people to go directly from point to point, it was a
| no brainer.
|
| I just loaded up my Toyota 4Runner and dumped a bunch of junk
| at the town dump. I didn't plan this in advance, I didn't
| have to rent a truck (how do I get there anyway?) I just did
| it on a whim. To compete with the convenience of point to
| point private transit, public transit would have to be vastly
| cheaper and it isn't.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| As far as a truck; most moving companies in my area also
| offer junk haulage, and the rates are pretty decent for
| something I do rarely (like less than once a year)
| ipaddr wrote:
| What is a decent rate for you?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The city dump charges a minimum fee of $33 and that
| increases per ton.
|
| I junked a sectional for $50, I think?
| csours wrote:
| Haha. It's absolutely beautiful when someone asks the good
| question.
|
| Related - why are people willing to subsidize someone else's
| road, but not willing to pay tolls -- or -- why are people
| willing to subsidize someone else's road, but not someone
| else's bus or subway fair.
| mc32 wrote:
| It's a classical conspiracy theory. There are truths
| interspersed with assumptions and fabrications sustained by a
| fantastical desire -in this case halcyon of dependable public
| transit everywhere which was razed by greedy bus manufacturing
| companies in cahoots with petrochemical companies.
|
| When in reality it's closer to the story of the ferries that
| ferried cars across the bay before the bridges were built. Or
| the story of railroads before the interstate system displaced
| nearly all interstate passenger rail.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Interesting that you mentioned the decline of ferries.
| Streetcar systems depended on ferries to bring riders their
| way. If you are making a trip by ferry you'll need a way to
| get around when you get off on the other shore. The Atlantic
| Avenue line in Boston is a good example of a ferry dependent
| line. Once they opened the East Boston and Sumner tunnels and
| people could drive through the Bay, taking the train became
| much less attractive.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| To make this happen, first, East Bay needs to make streets
| safer. It is ridiculous how crime ridden Oakland and Berkeley
| are to the point where it is probably wise to avoid public
| transportation all together. We need a national guard deployed
| here 24/7, that's how I feel walking around in downtown
| Oakland.
|
| With NYCSPA vs Bruen ruling, I am planning to obtain a handgun
| and a CCW license from Alameda sheriff with a shall issue
| reason as "Self Defense".
|
| You can go here and see how many people feel unsafe in
| California, particularly LA, SF and East Bay.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/CAguns/comments/vlnrrw/the_rcaguns_...
| Animats wrote:
| Pepper spray and tear gas, which are legal to carry in
| California, are probably more useful. You can use them in
| situations where shooting someone would get you charged with
| assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder, or murder.
| Against crazies and druggies, brandishing a gun without using
| it isn't that effective and may make things worse. Cops
| struggle with this - they're called to deal with crazies,
| it's hard to do, and shooting them is not a good option.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| Its usually advised to carry both, so you have options. And
| to train with both.
|
| Pepper spray doesn't always work, nor is it always the
| appropriate tool for the job.
|
| And if you are carrying a firearm, carrying an IFAK is
| highly recommended.
|
| For anyone and everyone, taking a "stop the bleed" class is
| highly recommended.
| Kamq wrote:
| > Its usually advised to carry both
|
| It really isn't. In the class for a concealed and carry
| permit, they told us not to carry anything other than a
| gun. The rationale being that if you have something less
| lethal than a gun on you and you shoot someone, you'll
| get raked over the coals about why you didn't use the
| less lethal option. This doesn't happen if you aren't
| carrying anything else, it was your only option.
|
| This might be different for those with police/military
| training, but even then thinking clearly with a full
| adrenaline dump in your system is hit or miss at best.
| melony wrote:
| Is it really that bad? Seems to be mostly just homeless
| people and drug users.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Oakland overview:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH-v3aB8BwQ
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| It's not that bad at all, I go downtown every week and used
| to live on Telegraph. I think downtown has actually
| improved a bit with better development. But people's
| anxieties are still somewhat valid.
| sammalloy wrote:
| It's a good question. Whenever this discussion comes up, my
| take on it is that people are concerned about being random
| victims. In other words, some aspects of this have to do
| with being in the wrong place at the wrong time and not
| feeling safe in your environment. I think it would be
| helpful to change the frame of the discussion and ask what
| we can do to make people more safe and comfortable. The BBC
| recently had a discussion about this in the UK, and they
| came up with all sorts of specific and targeted solutions.
| We rarely see that happen over here on this side of the
| pond.
| uoaei wrote:
| Another question worth asking is: _what is the rate of
| randomly directed violent crime_? I suspect it 's small
| enough to be a rounding error vs violent crimes between
| people with pre-existing relationships.
|
| Still, I agree with your point about the rhetorical
| focus. Simply reciting the statistics isn't going to
| alleviate anxieties.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Compared to what?
|
| There is violent crime in Berkeley that is above average
| for the USA as a whole. However, it has a significantly
| lower violent crime rate than, say, Dallas. (520 vs 814 per
| 100k)
|
| The comment above you is confusing how they feel about
| violence with the actual facts about violence.
| Ferrotin wrote:
| Random violent crime is the issue here, not domestic
| violence between people who know each other. Dallas has
| different demographics; its crime rate comes from that.
| dionidium wrote:
| I can't remember where I read this, but somebody once said
| something like, "If there were a conspiracy to kill the
| streetcars in favor of automobiles, then it was a conspiracy
| conducted with the enthusiastic support of the American
| public."
|
| Transit enthusiasts and urbanists -- I'm both -- love any
| narrative that says that suburbanites have been tricked into
| their living arrangements by nefarious outside interests, but
| in fact this is what Americans have more or less demanded.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The funny thing is nobody thinks of taking pictures of ordinary
| street scenes at the time, so there aren't many. The ones that do
| get taken are treasures.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| People were not walking with cameras like they are now. A
| camera was a big object and you had to buy film for it.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I would walk around with a camera many times before iphones.
| I still didn't take pictures of ordinary street life, because
| it seemed completely uninteresting. My parents were also
| amateur photographers, and rarely took street pictures. I had
| a camera in college, but rarely took pictures of ordinary
| things. When I look at the pictures I took, it seems they are
| of all the wrong things.
| ghaff wrote:
| In a lot of cities and city neighborhoods it would be
| fascinating to have a "StreetView" of at least more
| interesting neighborhoods over time. But, as you say, even
| with relatively cheap B&W film, that would still have cost
| a fair bit of money and time and very few people
| systematically did such things.
|
| In a somewhat similar vein, I unearthed a book a long ago
| company did in the 80s called "A Year in Development" which
| had all these photos and random detail about what was going
| on during a year--with a mostly engineering slant.
| Especially at the time, that sort of quotidian detail was
| rarely documented at all.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Yeah. A photograph was expensive in terms of your time (and
| money). Especially if it meant you had to change the film.
|
| So many lost opportunities. When I was writing [1] I
| absolutely could not find _any_ photos of the golf place,
| which is now gone.
|
| You'd think the family would have some (I'm sure they do),
| but they completely ghosted me. No one from the old 'hood
| has any.
|
| [1] https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/no-compliments-at-
| the-mi...
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'm wondering what the cowcatchers attached to the front are for.
| Did cows used to roam the streets of SF? Or are they to push the
| pedestrians out of the way? flip the bicycles over the top and
| away?
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