Recent Streetsblog SF posts about San Francisco

Of Cable Cars and Whales

By Chris Carlsson | Jul 19, 2010 | 12 Comments

A Clay Street Hill Railroad dummy and traile cable car atop Nob Hill, c. 1875. The invention of cable cars in 1873 by Andrew Hallidie is an oft-told saga, with a perhaps apocryphal point of origin on a rainy winter day in 1869 when he saw a team of horses pulling a horsecar up a […]

Lessons from Copenhagen for Bicycling in the Bay Area

By Leah Shahum | Jun 23, 2010 | 22 Comments

Bicyclists — and blue bike lanes and physically separated bikeways — abound in Copenhagen, where biking makes up 37 percent of the trips to work and school. Photos by Leah Shahum Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of dispatches from Copenhagen and Amsterdam from Leah Shahum, the executive director of the San […]

The Heyday of Horsecars

By Chris Carlsson | Jun 14, 2010 | 5 Comments

In 1907 the horse was still a major part of the transportation picture, but the horsecars that dominated the 19th century were being replaced. Editor’s note: This is one in an occasional series of stories on the history of transit in San Francisco. After walking through the mud and sand of early San Francisco, locals […]

Technology and Impotence

By Chris Carlsson | May 28, 2010 | 7 Comments

The BP oil spill goes on. And on. We watch the oil on live web cam pouring into the Gulf of Mexico. And we watch. Political rage is muted, practical responses even more distant. What to do? How do we “take action” on something like this? How can individuals meaningfully respond to this catastrophe? Stop driving? Boycott one brand of gas? Stop buying things made of plastic?

Say What?

By Chris Carlsson | May 24, 2010 | 26 Comments

The vibrations and rumble of cable cars used to occur on many of San Francisco’s streets. We are often attracted to city life for the energy, the boisterousness, the noise. I am a city guy having lived all my life in cities (born in Brooklyn, Chicago until age 10, Oakland until 17, and San Francisco […]

Wind Powered Transportation…Back Then

By Chris Carlsson | May 13, 2010 | 3 Comments

This is the second installment of a slow journey through San Francisco transit history. All of this information is derived from our Shaping San Francisco collection that you can explore on Foundsf.org. "Arrived All Well" by William Coulter (1909) is a painting that hung in the Merchant Exchange over the chalkboards that indicated what cargoes […]

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