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An eleven minute drive down the main street in San Francisco in 1906, four days before the great earthquake. This version is colorized and the quality seems to be good, I could have done without the added sound (horse neighing, etc.). You can find it in the original black and white at various sites. The period vehicles, dress, etc. are fascinating.
That was fascinating! All that traffic with no one exceeding about 5-10 mph made it fun to see the juxtaposition of modes. Definitely required a person to have their head on a swivel. It looks like bicycle was most efficient.
I thought I saw Nicolas Cage at 2:40 and Patrick Stewart disguised in hat and beard looking for Lt Data at the 11:20 mark.
An eleven minute drive down the main street in San Francisco in 1906, four days before the great earthquake. This version is colorized and the quality seems to be good, I could have done without the added sound (horse neighing, etc.). You can find it in the original black and white at various sites. The period vehicles, dress, etc. are fascinating.
Cool! I love it! Yes I love this stuff! I love seeing how they dressed and went about their life. It's fascinating to see how they drove. I love the restored and colorized versions too because they make them more real.
Last edited by Ariel Scheidegger; 08-30-2022 at 09:53 PM..
There are so many little details to notice, for instance that some of the horse drawn conveyances had iron rimmed wheels that matched the streetcar track and allowed easier and smoother travel than on the street surface.
The comments on those videos are interesting. Many people see the videos and the first thing they think of is racism. It's like the world's being brainwashed.
I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but I'm a purist when it comes to history. I'm seeing a lot of 1930s - 40s hairstyles in those TikTok videos. I could be wrong but my guess is that those are movie clips from the 1930s and 40s, maybe portraying an earlier time.
Even the Trip Down Market Street video has some issues, that have historians scratching their heads. It appears to be a series of clips that were filmed during 1905 and 1906 and edited together to make the street look much more busy than it was. You see just a few of the same automobiles looping into the video over and over again. I don't believe the anarchy portrayed in that video would have been common in that time period.
When I look at legitimate old photos of street scenes from the early 1900s what strikes me most is how relatively empty and uncongested the streets were. The streetcars, or cable cars had the run of the streets and nothing to get in their way. Probably about one car per block and no reason for them to ever have to stop for anything except to pick up or drop off passengers. No stop lights, no stop signs, nothing.
Trucks were pretty much non-existent. So horse drawn wagons delivering supplies to stores would have been pretty common. Those would have been a common sight parked along the curbs in front of stores.
Automobiles would have been a rarity in 1906. Maybe about one automobile per every thousand people. So 99.9% of the people were either walking, riding horses, riding bikes or riding public transit. An automobile would have been an occasional sight on the streets. But lines of them like were portrayed in that 1906 video would just not have been a reality.
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I love the restored and colorized versions too because they make them more real. 
