Lost Landscapes of San Francisco 19: Rick Prelinger's Archival Tour of Streets, Labor, Loss and Play
The Long Now Foundation
Rick Prelinger's annual Lost Landscapes screening is less a lecture than a live, collectively narrated film. For the nineteenth edition, presented with the Long Now Foundation, Prelinger stitched together fragments of home movies, promotional films, newsreels and unfinished documentaries showing San Francisco and the Bay Area. He added sparse commentary from the stage, and the audience was encouraged to call out identifications, corrections and jokes. What follows traces the program in the order it was shown, with Prelinger's remarks about where the footage came from and what it reveals.
"Projecting the Past into the Present"
The evening opened with thanks to Long Now for sustaining the event for 17 years and a note that the room was where the United Nations Charter was signed in 1945. The audience was told that it was "the soundtrack" for the evening and should not hold back from talking, arguing or "projecting."
The introduction made one argument. In what was called "a truly difficult and for many people a truly awful time," it was worth spending an hour thinking about the value of "historical intervention," which was defined as projecting the past into the present in order to change the future. Viewers were urged to take the images and ideas from the evening "and do something with them."
The first shot, of Turk Street, was offered simply "to get you riled up."
Students, Tourists and a City Before the Bridges
The first extended sequence came from a film about an experimental high school in Palo Alto. Among other experiments, it let students travel to San Francisco to make photo essays. Prelinger noted that they "picked a good moment." The footage shows Telegraph Hill and the harbor, and the Bay appears with no bridge and no Treasure Island. The film carries its original music, a pop song about going downtown where the lights are bright.
A San Francisco travelogue followed. It includes an English-language typesetter and the red-and-white tourist boats. Prelinger pointed out its most striking feature: prisoners are visible in the yard on Alcatraz.
An Unfinished Film and a Native American Voice
The mood shifted with an unfinished film in which a Native American speaker describes what he calls a false choice. People could stay on the reservation and die, or go to the city and "get swallowed up into the ghettos." In his view there has "really never been a choice for the American Indian." He argues that Native people can show the world a "human element" rather than technology as a path to peace. His goal is for Native people to regain lands that were taken, or at least parks and lands the government does not use, as a place to start again. Traditional ways of life, he says, are hard to practice "on Mission Street" or "in Oakland on 14th Street." There is "no feeling" there.
Prelinger said very little is known about this film. It came from the widow of its maker, and its sound is poor or sometimes missing because it was never formally mixed. He tied it to material connected with the San Francisco Art Institute: films associated with faculty member Roy Ramsing, rescued by Mark Wilson. He believes they will now go back into the institute's archives, which still exist although the school is closed. There are roughly six hours of this material, of which the audience saw about two minutes. The Art Institute sits at 800 Chestnut on Russian Hill.
The same body of footage includes Cost Plus Imports, the Longshore Hall, the Trips Festival and glimpses of the port. Audience members helped identify some strange shapes: wooden forms for ventilator stacks and skylights. There is also Fisherman's Wharf "before it was terribly touristy." The sequence moves on to Sausalito and the Marina, then Crissy Field. Prelinger dated one film to thirteen years after the Panama-Pacific Exposition, with the area still in a "post-Exposition state," and someone in the audience noted that there were no fees.
Transit Before and After the Automobile
For "the transit nerds," Prelinger crossed to Oakland to show Key System trains, which ran over the Bay Bridge. One clip appears to be from a transit buffs' day at the Western Railway Museum at Rio Vista. When the old trains appeared, an audience member called out that "capitalism and cars killed" the system.
This led into a promotional film for BART. It opens by describing the morning commute in hundreds of thousands of homes: the last cup of coffee, the walk to the garage, the car that is "ready when you are." Then it turns to traffic. When a few hundred thousand other commuters must be at work at the same time, the film says, all the advantages of personal transportation "evaporate except one: you can still talk to yourself." Its answer is rapid transit, presented as "an engineering masterpiece" backed by extensive scientific testing.
The film tells BART's story as a dream turned into a plan and then into a legal mandate when voters approved the district in 1962, guided by an eleven-man board. It says fifteen architectural firms were hired to give each station individuality. It describes several stations:
- Civic Center, which brings the "stately atmosphere" of San Francisco's seat of government underground.
- Glen Park, with rough-textured beams resembling heavy timbers, bright blocks of color, Idaho slate and a skylight spanning the length of the station.
- Powell Street, with supergraphics, stainless steel columns, color transparencies and a dominant brilliant white.
Because some riders would spend thirty minutes or more on the train every day, the film says the cars had to be "first class." That meant extra-wide upholstered seats, carpeted floors, air conditioning and tinted wide-view windows. It ends by calling BART "living proof" that contemporary engineering can bring new life to an urban community.
Prelinger answered that optimism directly. The next footage came from the Mission District, which, he said, was very suspicious of the gentrification BART would bring.
The Mission in 1971–72
The Mission footage came from a partner archive whose material the Prelinger team has been scanning, which he referred to as the Ray Balon Mission Media Arts archive. He called it a vast collection. About 20 or 30 hours have been scanned so far, and he picked a few scenes of street life in 1971–72, including Halloween art.
A long sequence takes place inside USC, a used department store on Mission around 21st Street that "sells everything." Audience members added that there was also a store on Geary in the Richmond District. Prelinger pointed to dating clues: a McCartney record in the store, and the new street signs that went up around 1972–73. He also flagged a place in the footage that he personally misses.
Fragile Films and the Work of Preservation
Next came films from about 1936–37, held by the History Room of the San Francisco Public Library, which Prelinger said was "not a great transfer." He followed with a film transferred for Special Collections at UC Santa Cruz. It is severely deteriorated, and its color shifts visibly. He pointed viewers to an article that day in SFGate by Amanda Bartlett, who was in the audience, which describes what the archive does and how.
Labor on Film: "Fish Fulfillment"
Prelinger made a broader observation about home movies. People who shoot them, he said, tend to shrink from photographing people at work, "unless there's fish involved." He joked that it was "wish fulfillment or fish fulfillment." He valued films that show the dignity of that kind of labor. The fishing footage shows hauls of anchovies, sardines or herring. Megan Prelinger added that a haul like that would be impossible today because the fisheries are so stressed.
A Hidden Love Story
Warning the audience to "hang on to your seats as we do every year," Prelinger introduced a film that came to the archive labeled as a chorus recital in San Francisco. It turned out to be a gay love story, which he excerpted from a much longer work. It shows Dave's bathhouse at 100 Broadway and a club at 132 Turk, which he described as very important places for men. It also shows the seawall before the sand rose against it. He added an aside about editing: you work through a window about three inches wide and "don't see everything."
A Japanese American Family: Before and After Incarceration
The next films followed Dr. Carl Hiroa (as heard), a San Francisco dentist and the first of what became three generations of dentists, and his wife. In 1938 they traveled to a Japanese American Citizens League convention in Los Angeles's Japantown. The footage shows San Franciscans from the Western Addition with other California delegations, and some games whose meaning, Prelinger said, "we'll never know."
Prelinger then described what came next. The family was incarcerated along with all Pacific Coast Japanese Americans. Dr. Hiroa got out and served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which Prelinger called the most decorated unit in the U.S. Army. The film shows him back on the street in his 442nd jacket.
Western Addition Redevelopment: "A Story That Hurt Many and Helped a Few"
The program then showed the demolition of the Western Addition under the so-called Redevelopment project. The footage was shot by Zapora Glass for a film of hers, and Prelinger believed she was in the audience. San Francisco Heritage brought the footage to light and featured it at its recent annual event, along with a tribute to the houses that were saved. Prelinger summed up redevelopment as "a story that hurt many and helped a few." He noted that in 1979 a few houses were saved and moved, and invited Glass to add anything she wanted. The sequence ends near Turk and Gough with the old freeway ramp.
Modernizing Garbage and the Office
A very obscure film, scanned by Meg Needles, documents modernization at Sunset Scavenger. It contrasts "the old way" with the new. Prelinger noted that Sunset Scavenger was a worker-owned company, and asked aloud whether Recology had later taken it over. The film also shows the 1300 block of Fillmore between Ellis and Eddy. He included it for its shots of office work being computerized, with printouts and terminals. The film comes via California Revealed, digital archives made available through the San Francisco Public Library.
Another very long film from 1956 got a wry introduction: he sometimes thinks its best feature is the title, but it still contains wonderful images, and he admired what he called its "Soviet cinematography." One shot includes a Veterans Cab, which he noted changed its paint scheme only in the last few years.
Found Home Movies and a Collapsing Hillside
Through Sharon Spain came a family's home movies that may have turned up at Recology. Prelinger hoped someone would recognize the family so the films could be returned. The audience identified a rainy street as Ocean Avenue.
A newsreel followed about houses collapsing down a San Francisco hillside. According to the narration, the houses were undermined by nearby excavations combined with heavy rain.
Where the Food Comes From: Packing Sheds and the Salinas Lettuce Strike
Prelinger then left the city deliberately: "this is not San Francisco, but it's where San Francisco gets its food." He asked the audience to watch, for a minute, women doing packing work in 1937. Audience members joked about the "I Love Lucy" chocolate scene, and he noted this was one year after Chaplin's Modern Times.
A newsreel on the Salinas lettuce strike followed, told entirely from the growers' side. Its narration describes trucks moving "under guard" through streets "menaced by the strikers," a radio call for "all able-bodied citizens" to report to the sheriff to form a posse, and a tear gas attack that sends strikers "weeping and scattering" while the lettuce trucks roll on.
World's Fair, a 1942 House, and Lake Merritt's Birds
Brief World's Fair footage shows a pressed-penny souvenir and a television pavilion. Prelinger said he would like to know more about the pavilion.
Next came a 1942 film of the family house of Rick Blaire, which works almost like a household inventory. Prelinger valued it as a rare glimpse of the inside of a San Francisco house. Asked whether the color had been enhanced, he said no: it is Kodachrome, which keeps its color, and the scanners only did what they could to bring out what was already on the film. He pointed out a stove about ten years newer than his own, appreciated the "visible storage," and noted a radio amateur in the family.
Footage of birds at Lake Merritt came with the observation that many of the species shown are no longer there. It also shows old-style bird banding. Prelinger explained that banding tracks populations, because when a banded bird turns up elsewhere, migration patterns can be studied. The films are by Laurel Reynolds and reached the archive through her grandchildren. With her filmmaking partner Mindy Willis, she made many nature and wildlife films, including Save San Francisco Bay, which was part of what Prelinger called a very successful campaign to save the bay. The archive is only beginning to explore this collection.
A Time Capsule and the Problem of Forgetting
A film news release about a set of curved buildings showed a time capsule being buried. The sound had not survived, which Prelinger called fortunate. The audience asked whether the capsule is still there, and someone joked about going out afterward with a drill. Prelinger remarked that most time capsules are in fact lost because people forget about them. He suspected this one would eventually be caught up in sea level rise.
The G Family: Chinatown to the Avenues
The last family visit of the night was the G family, whose films have appeared in earlier editions. They started in Chinatown and moved to the Richmond District in the mid-1950s. Dr. G was instrumental in founding the On Lok health center. Their home movies cover life in Chinatown and then in the Avenues, and Prelinger picked out clips not shown before. One of the children, Cathy G, would attend the next day's screening and appears in the footage. Scenes include prom night and Easter Sunday. One shot of 34th Avenue between Kirkham and Lawton was included because it shows sand dunes still present, along with what Prelinger thought was a block of Rousseau houses.
Shipwrecks, the Cliff House, and the Real Playland
New footage showed a familiar subject: shipwrecks on Ocean Beach, which Prelinger identified, inviting correction, as the Ohioan and the Frank H. Buck. Audience members added that pieces such as an engine block are still visible from the Coastal Trail, and that the wrecks were tourist attractions for a long time before being cut up for scrap. Prelinger recommended the Western Neighborhoods Project's pages on the wrecks and invited people to visit them at Balboa and 17th.
The Cliff House footage runs from the late 1920s to 1960. It includes the saltwater pipeline, Sutro Heights with its "fake rocks," which were fake "even then," along with buildings and statuary, plus Seal Rocks and Sutro Baths before the fire. Prelinger acknowledged the widespread nostalgia for the Cliff House but asked how many people know what actually happened there. One example: exhibitions of the California missions in replica. He mentioned that it is soon to reopen but that little is known about the plans.
The screening ended at Playland. Nostalgia for Playland, Prelinger said, tends to focus on the rides, the concessions and Laughing Sal, and relatively little on the people who went there. Thanks to Gary Meyer, the archive obtained footage just three weeks before the show that he considered "absolutely wonderful" because it shows Playland from that different perspective. The footage has no exact date, though an audience member suggested September 1972. When someone asked why there were no girls in it, Prelinger suggested Playland had developed a tough reputation in its final years.
The evening closed with credits for the people who made the program and thanks to the patrons who support the Prelinger Library, which Prelinger described as "here to serve you all." Several questions stayed open, and he invited the audience to help answer them: who the unnamed families are, what happened to the time capsule, and what the television pavilion contained.
Thank you. Thank you, Long Now, for making this incredible event happen for 17 years. Welcome to the room in which the United Nations Charter was signed in 1945, and to Lost Landscapes 19.
You have already started to be the soundtrack, which is your job for the evening. As you know, don't hold back when it comes to speaking, talking, arguing, projecting, whatever.
By way of introduction, I really only want to say one thing: that in a truly difficult and, for many people, a truly awful time, I think it's great that we can all visit for an hour plus and think about the value of historical intervention, in other words, projecting the past into the present so as to change the future. Take these images, take the ideas that come to you this evening, and do something with them. Have a great screening.
To
Turk Street.
That's to get you riled up.
This is a film about the experimental high school in Palo Alto, which tried all sorts of things, including letting students go to San Francisco to do photo essays. They picked a good moment, as you can tell.
No chapons. Very
Telegraph Hill.
They stopped to shoot the harbor before or after eating. This is all the same film, all by itself. There's no Bridge, no Treasure Island.
Jus
So this is the original music to theic the traic in the city Ling on theose are Bri you all your all everything waiting for you don't hang around let
happy again the lights much brighter there you can't forget all your TR forget all your cares to go down down where all the lights are right down down waiting for you tonight count you're going to be all right now down down down down
guide them Al so I'll see you there can't forget all our TR forget all our be
This is from a San Francisco travelogue.
Was a typ— yeah, an English-language typesetter.
The red and white tourist boat James Gand.
What's— well, in a moment you'll see what's striking about this film, which is that you can see prisoners at Alcatraz in the yard.
Play to live stand so
damnation choices are, you know, they said, yeah, you got a choice to live here and die, or you can go to the city and get swallowed up into the ghettos and things of that nature. But there's no choice. There's really never been a choice for the American Indian.
I think we can prove to the world that we have that human element that it takes, you know, instead of the technology, that can bring peace to the world, and that if they let us live this long, I think we, you know, can give them something more in return than they have ever given us.
My ideals are to see our people regain the lands that were taken, if not all the lands, at least the parks, the lands that the government doesn't use, and something to start again, 'cause we have nothing now. We have no way to practice our ways of life. It's hard to practice, you know, on Mission Street. It's hard to practice in Oakland on 14th Street. It's just not there. There's no feeling.
How long did that last? This was an unfinished film. There's not much known about it. It comes from the widow of the maker, Don Zen, and the sound is very poor because it was not formally mixed, and sometimes it's absent.
Roy Ramsing was a faculty member at the Art Institute, and these films were rescued by Mark Wilson, but I think they're now going to go back in the archives, which exist even though the school is currently closed. There's about, I don't know, 6 hours of material. We could have looked at much of it, but we're just looking at two minutes today.
For those who don't know, the Art Institute is, what, 800 Chestnut? What is the cross street? On Russian Hill.
And here's some familiar: Cost Plus Imports, Longshore Hall, the Trips Festival, a little bit of the port.
Some of you may have recovered from your substance intake and leaned against those vents. Fill us in, what is it? These are ventilator stacks and skylights as well. These the forms for them. Yes, they're forms, aren't they? They're wood.
And this is the old Fisherman's Wharf before it was terribly touristy.
Got
Sausage C
And the Marina, this Washerwoman's Cove. Yes, 13 years after the Panama-Pacific, still in kind of the post-Exposition state. Plenty of— that's right. And no fees. And Crissy Field.
And a little more Crissy Field a little bit later.
Yes. Yes. And for the transit nerds in the audience.
And we're just going over to Oakland a little bit to look at some of the traffic: Key System, the trains that went over the Bay Bridge.
I think this is a transit buffs' day. That's at Rio Vista, the Western Railway Museum.
Right. Capitalism and cars killed. Here's a San Francisco train.
It happens every weekday morning between the hours of 6:30 and 8:30 in hundreds of thousands of homes all over the country: the last cup of coffee, the snatched briefcase, her lunch pail, the short walk to the garage, and the twist of the wrist that brings the reliable engine of the family car to life.
There's really nothing quite like a car for getting to work. It's ready when you are. It's handy, comfortable, safe and warm. You can listen to the radio, sing songs, or talk to yourself. The automobile, personal transportation: there's nothing like it.
Except sometimes, like when a few hundred other commuters have to be at work the same time you do. Then the zest for song gives way to another mood best not discussed. And it happens just this way Monday through Friday for people from coast to coast.
When your speedometer touches zero, all the advantages of personal transportation evaporate except one: you can still talk to yourself.
Science has a solution. It's called rapid transit, and it's a developing reality in the San Francisco Bay Area. This is its story, the story of an engineering masterpiece and of the intricate, comprehensive and very necessary scientific testing that is going into its development. It is the story of how a few hundred thousand weekday commuters are on the threshold of solving their transportation problems the easy way, by sharing the advantages of transport for tomorrow.
First it was a dream, the dream of visionaries. The practical dream became a plan, the plan a legal mandate. In 1962 the voters told the Bay Area Rapid Transit District to build the dream, one of the most costly and economical dreams ever to be realized. The district began to build with a bang.
Visions rarely precede reality in an ordinary fashion, but BART, guided by a representative 11-man board, did just that. First criteria after established a set of high standards but capable of achieving.
There's no straight line of development in building a transit system. Almost everything goes on simultaneously. But there is an added factor in the building of this system, because as the president said, such building today is proof that the era of pioneers is not over. Today hundreds of expert pioneers plan the systematic phases of construction, from the smallest detail to the most complex set of specifications, a painstaking, orderly process of building for the future.
At the same time, the designers initiated a program to make the system attractive as well as efficient. The effort to make BART not elegant but beautiful is concentrated in station design. Fifteen architectural firms were retained to bring individuality into the system. The result is a kaleidoscope of structural concepts, color and material, in each case compatible with the site and the urban activities around.
This is Civic Center Station, a handsome effort to bring into the subway environment the stately atmosphere of San Francisco's seat of government. Dignified.
Glen Park Station: its rough-textured beams resembling heavy timbers, relieved by bright blocks of color on the walls, slabs of Idaho slate on the concourse level. A huge skylight spans the full length of the station.
Powell Street Station: modernistic, brisk and business-like, with super graphics, stainless steel columns and 8T color transparencies for highlights. But the dominant color is white, the brilliant white of walls and ceilings, an attractive backdrop for the dynamic movement of people.
Attractive stations are important, so are automatic train control, electronic fare collection, but right here is where it all comes together. Some people will be spending 30 minutes or more riding this train every day, so you've got to produce a really first-class. First class, in BART's case, means extra-wide upholstered seats, carpeted floors, pleasant light, air conditioning, wide-view windows with tinted glass. These are the amenities that give people a new kind of transit experience.
Today BART is a dynamic part of the Bay Area. It is living proof that a contemporary phenomenon of engineering can bring new life and new energy to an urban community.
And this is the Mission District, which was very suspicious of the gentrification that BART would bring. And here's some Halloween art.
And these are some selections from a partner whose material we've been scanning, the Ray Balon Mission Media Arts Archive. It's a vast, vast collection. We've done about 20 or 30 hours so far, and I just picked a few things about sort of the streetscape and the life of the Mission in '71, '72.
And we're inside the USC, or used department store, on Mission around 21st, which sells everything. I mean, this goes on; I only used a little bit of it, but it's quite amazing. That's USC. Thank you. Exclusive. When did it close, do you know? There was also one on Geary out in the Richmond District.
And they've got— you can see they've got McCartney. You can date it that way.
Again, '72, '73, as they got the new street signs up. And in a moment we'll see one place that I personally miss: Chat and Chew.
This is about 1936, '37. It's not a great transfer. These are films held by the History Room in the San Francisco Public Library.
This is a film that we transferred for Special Collections at UC Santa Cruz, and you can see the color is changeable. This is a very severely deteriorated film. There's a lot of information about what we do and how we do it, and a very beautiful article today in SFGate written by Amanda Bartlett, who's here tonight.
Yeah, that rock.
And you know, a lot of people who shoot home movies tend to shrink from photographing labor, people at work, unless there's fish involved. I mean, this is like wish fulfillment, or fish fulfillment or something, I don't— but I mean, it's quite, you know, it's great to see films that show the dignity of this kind of work.
What are we looking at here? These anchovies? Sardines? Herring. Right. Megan points out there's no way you could get a haul like this today, because the fisheries are so stressed out.
All right, I'll ask you to hang on to your seats, as we do every year.
Get you alive.
So this film came to us as the Lan chorus recital in San Francisco, but it's not. It's a gay love story, which I'm excerpting generously, or not, or stingily. It's quite long.
This is Dave's Bath House at 100 Broadway, and the Club at 132 Turk. These were very important places for men.
The seawall before the sand rose. Our hero.
Yeah, watch closely.
Unconditional. You know, when you're editing, you have a window that's like 3 inches wide, and you don't see everything.
So this is Dr. Carl Hiroa and his wife Uta. Dr. Hiroa was a dentist in San Francisco, actually the beginning of a dynasty of three dentists. They're off to Los Angeles to the convention of the Japanese American Citizens League in 1938 in Japantown in LA.
No comment.
So these are San Franciscans from the Western Addition, and this is the California, I think, maybe in other places, delegation together.
And some games.
We'll never know. The Hiroas were incarcerated, like all Pacific Coast Japanese people, and Dr. Hiroa got out and served in the 442nd Combat Regiment. That's his 442 jacket, the most decorated unit in the United States Army. And he's back on the street.
This, as you know, is the demolition of the Western Addition as part of the so-called Redevelopment project, shot by Zapora Glass for a film that she was making called Change Her Dress. I think Zapora is in the audience this evening. Thank you.
This footage was discovered, you know, brought to the light by San Francisco Heritage, who just at their annual event did a piece on this and also a tribute to the houses that were saved. So it's a story that hurt many and helped a few. So in 1979— if you have anything to say about this— a few houses were saved and moved. There are photographs in the library like a
And we're approaching Turk and Gough, the old freeway ramp.
And here, from a very obscure film transferred, I believe, by Meg Needles, who I think is in the audience tonight— scanned, I should say. This is a film about modernization at Sunset Scavenger, and this is the old way.
Scar tissue.
Here's the executives. Well, it was a worker-owned company. Is it Recology? Took them over.
This is the 1300 block of Fillmore between Ellis and Eddy.
And I thought you would enjoy a few shots showing the technological modernization of work. Just a moment. So everything's computerized now. There's printouts, and there's terminals.
This is from California Revealed, a really wonderful digital archive made available through San Francisco Public Library. I sometimes think— yes, I sometimes think the best thing about this film is actually the title, but there's still some wonderful images here. It's an extremely long film. We're being a little modest here.
This is so funny, it kind of looks like it's in the country a little bit.
And again, 1956. I'm fond of the Soviet cinematography here.
Just saw Veteran's Cab, which only in the last couple of years changed its paint scheme.
And through the courtesy of our friend Sharon Spain comes this film, which I believe turned up in Recology. Maybe somebody knows this family and we can get them their home movies back.
Yeah, where are we? Well, this is Ocean Avenue, isn't it? And a beautiful rainy shot.
Not history-shattering, but certainly shattering was the collapse of houses down a hillside in San Francisco. They had been undermined by a combination of adjacent excavations and flooding rains, and provided some of the most startling newsreel pictures of the year.
Now, this is not San Francisco, but it's where San Francisco gets its food, and I wanted us to look at these women and what they do for just a minute. This is 1937.
Tunnel. Eat the chocolates, Lucy, eat the chocolates.
This is one year after Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times.
Packing lettuce under armed guard: a strike in the California salad center. They've been rioting and shooting at Salinas. Things came to a crisis as the vegetable magnates decree bit, and in the teeth of trouble send their trucks out through streets menaced by the strikers, under guard. But there's danger ahead. The strikers are waiting. There they are, ready for an attack on the lettuce. They swarm upon the salad caravan and knock off the crates. They climb on the trucks, and falling off is dangerous when traffic is arrived.
Then the alarm, a radio call for help: "Calling all able-bodied citizens. Report at sheriff's office for an emergency." A posse hurrying to the battlefield of lettuce strike violence. For 133 days citizens have been TI, but the strikers are defiled. Tear gas attack! A gas bomb goes rolling, a wreath of acid fumes. The tearful attack sends the strikers weeping and scattering, and the lettuce trucks roll on, protected by a Gage of gas.
The World's Fair. This is your life. This is your crushed penny. I'd like to know more about the TV Pavilion.
And this is— some of you may know of Rick Blaire. This is his family house in 1942. It's like an inventory film. See the lights. It shows— well, it's a great glimpse of what a house in San Francisco looked like.
Did you enhance these? I'm sorry? Did you enhance these at all? No, this is Kodachrome, which retains its color. Our able scanners did what they could to bring the color out, but it's all on the film.
This is about 10 years newer than our stove. I love this visible storage. And we have a radio amateur in the family.
So
All
All right, let's identify. So I think the message here is that many of these species are no longer at Lake Merritt.
This is the old-style male-driven bird
Banding. So these came from a filmmaker, Laurel Reynolds, who's not been with us for many years, through her grandchildren. She made many, many nature and wildlife films, including the famous film Save San Francisco Bay, which was part of the effort to save the bay that was very much a success in its time. So she made a lot of historically significant films with her filmmaking partner Mindy Willis. We're just beginning to get into this very rich collection.
There, there. I'll tell you in a seconds. Yeah, it's to keep track of the population. When that bird turns up or is found somewhere else, patterns of migration and movement can be studied.
This is a film news release about a building you will all know, those curved buildings, and they made a time capsule. Fortunately we don't have the sound.
Is the time capsule still there? Almost looks like herb can. Is it still there, you know? Anybody want to go out afterwards? Yeah, with a drill. Thousand year time. It turns out that most time capsules in fact are lost because people forget about them.
We, this one is, I think that's going to be, well, you know, into sea level rise.
Where's Frank?
And this is our last family visit tonight. This is the Gee family. We've seen them before. They started out in Chinatown and moved to the Richmond District in the mid-50s. Dr. Gee was instrumental in founding the On Lok Health Center, and these are some of his children. One of them, Cathy Gee, will be at the screening tomorrow. But they shot wonderful home movies of life in Chinatown and then out in the Avenues, and I pulled a few things we haven't seen before.
And this is Cathy Gee on the right.
Is this Tick Tock?
Out.
And it's prom night.
And this is 34th Avenue, Kirkham to Lawton, but I'm showing it to you because there's dunes. The dunes are still there.
This is, I think, a block of Rousseau houses, if I'm not mistaken, and it's Easter Sunday. But imagine that.
And this is some new footage of something we've often seen: the shipwrecks, one of which I believe is the Ohioan and the other the Frank H. Buck. Correct me if I'm wrong. You can still see little pieces, such as the engine block of one of these, from the Coastal Trail. Yes, they were tourist attractions for quite some time.
I think they were cut up for scrap. Right. The Western Neighborhoods Project has some excellent... Yeah, by the way, shout out to Western Neighborhoods. I think they're here this evening. They have some excellent pages on their rich, rich website about this. There you go. Stop by Balboa and 17th, make an appointment.
And the Cliff House, the very early Cliff House, not the earliest. This is late 20s. This is also late 20s.
Saltwater pipeline, for your new San Franciscans, up to Sutro Heights. Fake rocks, fake rocks even then. Except there's some buildings up there and statuary.
And this is 1960. So, you know, we all miss the Cliff House, and we all miss all kinds of things around there. There's a lot of nostalgia, but I wonder how many people know about some of the stuff that they did at the Cliff House back in the day.
Well, my timing's all off here. Seal Rock, Seal Rocks. Sutro Baths before the fire.
They did exhibitions of the California missions in replica.
So, soon to reopen, we don't know much about it. So there's a lot of nostalgia about Playland, which tends to focus on the rides, the concessions, Laughing Sal and so on, but relatively little about the people who actually patronized Playland. And thanks to Gary Meyer, three weeks before the show, we have this, I think, absolutely wonderful footage showing Playland from a very different perspective. We do not have an exact date on this.
Somebody said, why were there no girls? I think Playland had gotten kind of a tough reputation in the last years. There's a few Fun House. Right, September something '72.
These are the people who made it possible.
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