re: HD Dashcam footage from San Francisco Streetcar 1906

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That video had to be taken right before all that happened. That's kind of eerie.

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Video was taken on April 14, 1906--quake happened 4 days later. Eerie indeed. Here's a before and after of the quake with the same video.

LINK

SF is cable cars, not street cars.

A few things stand out: 1-Pretty remarkable how well those cars seemed to handle. 2-How both vehicle (including horse drawn) and pedestrian traffic moved so well without anyone getting run over or crashing into each other. 3-The guy who steps out to sweep up the horse crap as traffic flies by

Most notable differences from Market Street circa 1906 to now: 1-Traffic actually moved on Market Street in 1906. Yep no double parked trucks no crazy Muni buses blindly pulling out into traffic and no Critical Massholes on their bikes intentionally stopping traffic during Friday rush hour. 2-No vagrants panhandling or urinating in the street every 10 feet.

Often think about this footage when I go into the Seattle Market. Cars creep along because people never yield to cars and it takes forever to go the short distance. We've become babies.

I've seen this before, supposedly it was right before the earthquake, like days before.

Four days before the Earthquake.

Folks mostly now don't realize that San Francisco was the only large civilized city on the West Coast, LA and Seattle were much smaller and very less developed at the time in comparison. The transcontinental railroad was the lifeline to supply the Earthquake/Fire survivors as it was pre-Panama Canal days and ship traffic took months from the U.S. East or Southern ports.

That was about the only U.S. historical parallel to Hurricane Kortina in scale and scope. Obviously the human toll was higher in San Francisco.

Galveston in 1900 wasn't nearly as large a city as San Francisco in 1906.

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Pretty neat.

I wish everyone wore a suit nowadays

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Some strong mustache game on display as well.

From your link:

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Here is a side-by-side comparison of two filmed journeys down Market Street shot in April of 1906 sourced from the Prelinger Archives at LINK The video on the left has enjoyed wide circulation online, but has often been incorrectly dated to 1905. Subsequent research by Historian David Kiehn of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, has determined that the footage was actually shot by Harry and Herbert Miles on April 14th, 1906, only 4 days before the catastrophic event and subsequent fires leveled much of the city, resulting in conditions depicted in the video on the right, and of which the initial production source is unknown. Rick Prelinger, of the aforementioned Prelinger Archives has suggested that the post-event footage depicted on the right may have been shot by an Edison cameraman. (Update: It is believed that the imagery on the right was captured by Otis M. Gove, a noted and prolific film documentarian of that era, and who was working in the western United States at that time as a contracted traveling cameraman for Edison Studios.)

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Market Street as you approach the Ferry Marketplace on Embarcadero:

1906:



2015:

Traffic in Jakarta is like this today.

I wouldn't really say it's better.

I liked how well dressed people were.