> 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.
Yeah, 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:
"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.
I 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.
The 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.
I'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.
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. 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.
> 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.
> 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.
Let me add to that list for you (in no particular order), Optimizely, Salesforce.com, Heroku, Medium, Square, Docker, CoreOS, AirBNB, OpenTable, Yelp, Mesosphere, Instacart, a whole bunch of drone startups and many more...
Well sure but you're making my point. Silicon Valley has non-tech businesses too like Survey Monkey which is about as high tech as Yelp, i.e. not much higher tech than a Cheesecake Factory (who has a lot of computerized supply chain).
The point isn't to have a pissing match. I'm simply pointing out that the heavyweight tech region is the San Francisco Bay area but within it the tech influence is unevenly distributed which should hardly be remarkable.
It's easier to find marketing, PR, non-B2B sales folks, web designers, ruby developers etc in SF than down here. It's way easier to find people down here who understand interrupt latency on 32-bit arm cores, oddities of device physics below .14 nm, B2B BD folks and the like. Does one diminish the other? No.
Reporters from outside of course go to SF to report because, frankly, what's to see in Palo Alto? I have lived in Palo Alto for decades and yes, apart from the work (which is awesome) it's dull compared to SF, or even to many places lamer than SF.
I think part of the point is that tech startups aren't founded upon chats over coffee, they're founded by a couple guys working on a project nobody else thinks is important in a garage. Completely anecdotally, that still seems to happen more often in the South Bay than in SF, if only because there are more garages. There are probably more startups being founded in SF, but there's more tech being developed in the South Bay.
Long-term companies in the south bay that have no (or virtually no) SF tech presence. Just off the top of my head: Google/Alphabet, Facebook, Oracle, Texas Instruments, National Semiconductor, Intel, AMD, Applied Materials, Apple, Yahoo, Tesla, Palantir, and so on and so on.
Yes there are lots of kids in SF trying to get their website turned into the next unicorn. That does not make SF the "center of the tech world", it makes it the "center of the SF tech startup world".
Google has a large office space just down the street here in SF. Yahoo has/had a huge office in SF. Then on top of that, there are ton of buses going from SF down the peninsula, which recognizes that choice of many to live in SF.
I would suggest that it's just a misunderstanding of "San Francisco" vs. the "San Francisco Bay Area," but then I'd expect pictures of other bay area places.
I'm not even really sure what these pictures are trying to say, anyways. I don't live in SF, but I've been there a lot, and these pictures don't look much more different from current reality than most large cities between mid-20th century and early 21st. If anything, it may be distinctly less different looking than most.
South Bay has changed a lot too. Even when my family moved there in the late 70s / early 80s, there were still a few orchards left here and there. Almost all condos and town houses now. (Wish I have some pictures to share...)
> Back when there were blue collar jobs in Santa Clara County.
There still are.
If you don't think there are blue-collar jobs in Santa Clara county, please explain why restaurants, stores, construction companies, plumbing companies, etc. are able to exist.
Not sure this is what you meant by "blue collar," but I was just thinking this morning about driving by the NeXT logo in Fremont, the stretch of Mission connecting 680 to 880. I believe they actually built the cube there, but I could be wrong. (I'm sure someone reading this can confirm or deny that.) Not sure if anyone still assembles computers in the Bay Area anymore.
People "love to live in SF" because it's currently trendy to live in S.F., especially if you're a newcomer.
You generally don't find many people living outside those 17 square miles pining to move there. Its unique amenities (real and perceived) are easy enough to drive or Caltrain or BART to.
Then again, I'm perplexed that tech companies feel so driven to base so many of their employees in the Bay Area at all. They could save 20%+ on compensation to employees combined with providing them a better standard of living (and more family-friendly as well) by opening workplace options in Beaverton, Bothell, Boulder or Boise.
Plus, those employees would be a bit less immediately accessible for an SV competitor to dangle something shiny in front of.
This is very common on this forum. Bay Area = SF. In any given topic about the "Bay Area" you can tell they are usually talking about SF, and use very sloppy language and often randomly switch between the two names, sometimes in the same sentence.
That's because people outside the bay area don't care about the distinction. People don't generally differentiate between Boston and Cambridge either. Is that sloppy? I'd say it's just understood that references to a city are often, maybe usually, referring to the surrounding region as well.
"Those are some nice pictures you got there. It'd be a real shame if I started a useless argument just to prove how right I am rather than simply enjoy them."
Tons 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.
> 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]
I 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.
I'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.
Nice 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.
sorry 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?
The 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.
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.
thanks for the info. I wonder if they "braid" the cables? Like I've heard they do for ski lifts. Supposedly they dont weld/solder them in, they just braid them very carefully and friction is enough to hold it together!
I don't know - maybe I'll look it up when I get home (I purchased this huge and expensive history book on cable cars from the museum when I last went - it probably has info in it about that aspect).
My best guess would be that they do; I can't imagine another way (like welding or soldering) wouldn't cause issues going over the sheaves, possible causing the cable to jump the pulleys. Plus there'd be potential issues with the cable pinch system on the car itself should such an area be "hooked" so to speak...
70 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] threadWhat 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.
One of the main reasons it's such an unaffordable place to live, they haven't built nearly enough.
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.
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
A bit of a stretch considering there's the rest of the Bay Area
It ain't Oakland, though.
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.
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.
Looking at the cars I would guess most of those pictures are somewhere in the 40's/50's.
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.
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.
The point isn't to have a pissing match. I'm simply pointing out that the heavyweight tech region is the San Francisco Bay area but within it the tech influence is unevenly distributed which should hardly be remarkable.
It's easier to find marketing, PR, non-B2B sales folks, web designers, ruby developers etc in SF than down here. It's way easier to find people down here who understand interrupt latency on 32-bit arm cores, oddities of device physics below .14 nm, B2B BD folks and the like. Does one diminish the other? No.
Reporters from outside of course go to SF to report because, frankly, what's to see in Palo Alto? I have lived in Palo Alto for decades and yes, apart from the work (which is awesome) it's dull compared to SF, or even to many places lamer than SF.
Yes there are lots of kids in SF trying to get their website turned into the next unicorn. That does not make SF the "center of the tech world", it makes it the "center of the SF tech startup world".
I'm not even really sure what these pictures are trying to say, anyways. I don't live in SF, but I've been there a lot, and these pictures don't look much more different from current reality than most large cities between mid-20th century and early 21st. If anything, it may be distinctly less different looking than most.
What? The pictures are clearly older, from 1950-1960s(maybe early 1970s) timeframe. Certainly not 1980s. Look at the cars, the fashion clothes.
Back when there were blue collar jobs in Santa Clara County.
There still are.
If you don't think there are blue-collar jobs in Santa Clara county, please explain why restaurants, stores, construction companies, plumbing companies, etc. are able to exist.
Not so much the churn of retail that most large cities (suburban sprawls in this case) have.
You generally don't find many people living outside those 17 square miles pining to move there. Its unique amenities (real and perceived) are easy enough to drive or Caltrain or BART to.
Then again, I'm perplexed that tech companies feel so driven to base so many of their employees in the Bay Area at all. They could save 20%+ on compensation to employees combined with providing them a better standard of living (and more family-friendly as well) by opening workplace options in Beaverton, Bothell, Boulder or Boise.
Plus, those employees would be a bit less immediately accessible for an SV competitor to dangle something shiny in front of.
But it's definitely part of it, now. It got annexed a long time ago.
- HackerNews
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.
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
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill_gas_utilization
http://imgur.com/a/vfCWb
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/05/a-comprehensive-loo...
and
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-10-photographe...
Thank you so much for that.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOpCZTmurgk
https://archive.org/details/SanFrancisco1955CinemascopeFilm
http://humansfromthepast.blogspot.com/2016/11/composite-then...
Puts the destruction of that earthquake in perspective.
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?
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
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.
I don't know - maybe I'll look it up when I get home (I purchased this huge and expensive history book on cable cars from the museum when I last went - it probably has info in it about that aspect).
My best guess would be that they do; I can't imagine another way (like welding or soldering) wouldn't cause issues going over the sheaves, possible causing the cable to jump the pulleys. Plus there'd be potential issues with the cable pinch system on the car itself should such an area be "hooked" so to speak...