Innovation to Icon: 150 Years of Cable Cars Exhibit Opens

Innovation to Icon: 150 Years of Cable Cars Exhibit Opens
By Jeremy Menzies

We are happy to announce the opening of a special history exhibit at the San Francisco Public Library, as part of the ongoing celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the cable cars. The “Innovation to Icon: 150 Years of Cable Cars” exhibit runs from July 1 to September 30 on the 6th floor of the public library’s main branch library at 100 Larkin Street.

Color photo of cable car 16 climbing hill on Hyde Street with view of San Francisco Bay in background. 150 years strong, San Francisco’s cable car system is a symbol of the city.

"Innovation to Icon: 150 Years of Cable Cars" takes a visual journey through time that brings the incredible history of San Francisco’s beloved cable cars to life. Combining photographs, original documents, and unique memorabilia from the San Francisco History Center and the SFMTA Photo Archive, this exhibit showcases the spirit, ingenuity and timeless allure of a city icon. 

Black and white photo of intersection showing people and cable cars on streets. Cable cars once dominated the transit scene in San Francisco. This 1890s shot was taken at Market and Geary Streets in the center of the city.

Invented in 1873 to conquer the city’s challenging topography, cable cars evolved from a groundbreaking transportation mode to a symbol of San Francisco. The cars have endured multiple boom-bust cycles, nearly becoming extinct more than once thanks to natural, political and economic turmoil. During the post-war era, they rose in popularity locally and nationally and became a “must-see” attraction for visitors.

Color photo of the side of a cable car with people sitting on board and standing on the running boards. California Street cable car passing Grant Avenue in Chinatown in the late 1970s.

Years of use and deferred maintenance in the 1970s left the system battered and unsafe. From 1982-1984, the entire system was shut down and rebuilt from the ground up. Reengineered for improved safety and structural integrity, the new system held onto its 19th century roots.

Today, San Francisco’s cable cars are landmarks of American history and culture. Rather than being static relics from the past, they are living and moving museums, reminding us of what makes San Francisco such an extraordinary place. Drop by during regular library hours to immerse yourself in the world of the “little cable cars” that forever changed our city.

Published July 13, 2023 at 02:53AM
https://ift.tt/7gAq18m

Comments

New top story from Time: R. Kelly Found Guilty in Sex Trafficking Trial

https://ift.tt/3kMSmKc (NEW YORK) — The R&B superstar R. Kelly was convicted Monday in a sex trafficking trial after decades of avoiding criminal responsibility for numerous allegations of misconduct with young women and children. A jury of seven men and five women found Kelly guilty of racketeering on their second day of deliberations. The charges were based on an argument that the entourage of managers and aides who helped the singer meet girls—and keep them obedient and quiet—amounted to a criminal enterprise. Read more: A Full Timeline of Sexual Abuse Allegations Against R. Kelly [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Several accusers testified in lurid detail during the trial, alleging that Kelly subjected them to perverse and sadistic whims when they were underage. For years, the public and news media seemed to be more amused than horrified by allegations of inappropriate relationships with minors, starting with Kelly’s illegal marriage to the R&B phenom Aaliya...

New top story from Time: 2021 Could Be the Biggest Wedding Year Ever. But Are Guests Ready to Gather?

https://ift.tt/3wC3WKU I was supposed to get married in September. Well, technically, as my husband would be quick to correct me, I did get legally married in September 2020 in the courtyard of our New York City apartment building in front of our parents, a handful of friends who lived nearby and a naked guy standing in the window of the building next door, who, I am told, cheered when we recessed. The 13 people in attendance wore masks I’d ordered with our wedding date printed on them, sat in distanced lawn chairs and sipped gazpacho I’d blended and individually bottled that morning in a frenzy of health-safety panic. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] This was not the wedding of 220 people that we had originally planned. A few months into the pandemic, we made the call to delay our big celebration until 2021. We were hardly alone. In a typical year, Americans throw 2 million weddings, according to wedding website the Knot. Last year, about 1 million couples in the U.S. post...

New top story from Time: A COVID Outbreak Sparked by Partying Teens Leads to 5,000 Being Quarantined in Spain

https://ift.tt/2UJaeL7 MADRID — Almost 5,000 people are in quarantine after vacationing high school students triggered a major COVID-19 outbreak on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca, a senior official said Monday. Authorities have confirmed almost 1,200 positive cases from the outbreak, Spain’s emergency health response coordinator, Fernando Simón said. The partying teens celebrating the end of their university entrance exams last week created a “perfect breeding ground” for the virus as they mixed with others from around Spain and abroad, Simón told a news conference. Mallorca health authorities carried out mass testing on hundreds of students after the outbreak became clear. It is believed to have spread as hundreds of partying students gathered at a concert and street parties. Officials have so far traced 5,126 travelers to Mallorca. More than 900 COVID-19 cases in eight regions across mainland Spain have been traced back to the outbreak. Scores of infected teens are...

How to Pay for Parking at The City's New Multi-Space Paystations

How to Pay for Parking at The City's New Multi-Space Paystations By Pamela Johnson One of San Francisco's new paystations as the city moves away from its aging parking meters. How drivers pay for street parking in San Francisco continues to evolve. In March 2022, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) began the Citywide Parking Meter Replacement Project to replace San Francisco's aging 27,000 parking meters. Half of the parking meters will be replaced with new single-space meters and the other half with multi-space paystations that use a brand-new pay-by-license-plate system. The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2024. San Francisco uses paid parking to create curb availability in commercial districts and high-demand neighborhoods. When parking meters are in operation, drivers spend less time circling the block looking for a space. Less circling means less congestion and fewer greenhouse gas emissions. To help drivers use the new m...

New top story from Time: A’Ziah ‘Zola’ King on Making an Authentic Film Adaptation of Her Viral Story—and What Comes Next

https://ift.tt/3qrYOHB A’Ziah “Zola” King is well aware that her storytelling is exceptional. For the uninitiated, a brief summary: in 2015, at the age of 19, Zola chronicled a (mostly) true tale of epic proportions in a 148-tweet thread that began with a blossoming friendship and a road trip to a strip club in Florida and ended in a shootout. The thread, compelling in its easy humor and wit yet ultimately chilling in the harsh realities it depicted (among them, sex trafficking and gun violence), captivated the Internet and was subsequently dubbed #TheStory online, going viral before going viral was a commonplace occurrence. Zola’s legacy online is significant—her grand tweet thread is largely credited with inspiring Twitter to create official Twitter threads, an easy way to link tweets together for more comprehensive storytelling, while her brief, cheeky turns-of-phrase, meted out in the limited characters of a tweet (“vibing over our hoe-ism” and “pussy is worth thousands”...

New top story from Time: Ireland Abandons 12.5% Tax Pledge as Global Deal Races to Finish

https://ift.tt/3iFmrts Ireland is ready to sign up to a proposed global agreement for a minimum tax on companies, a climbdown that removes one hurdle to an unprecedented deal that would reshape the landscape for multinationals. On the eve of a key meeting between 140 countries hosted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Irish government said it will join the push for a floor of 15% levied on profits of corporate entities. “This agreement is a balance between our tax competitiveness and our broader place in the world,” Irish Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said in a statement Thursday evening announcing the pledge. The decision “will ensure that Ireland is part of the solution in respect to the future international tax framework.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The rate agreed is 2.5 percentage points higher than the longstanding level that has been a pillar of Ireland’s economic model for a generation, underscoring its huge symbolic signifi...

New top story from Time: How Liberal White America Turned Its Back on James Baldwin in the 1960s

https://ift.tt/2QBsNzv In discussions about race relations today, the works of James Baldwin continue to speak to the present, even decades after they were written. So it is worth remembering that, at the very height of his influence, Baldwin experienced the same frustration that some Black activists, particularly on campus, feel about white liberals today: their refusal to acknowledge their complicity in the regime of white supremacy. In Baldwin’s case, the liberal backlash was widespread, and effectively marginalized him for a time. The very first piece on the front page of the very first issue of The New York Review of Books , Feb. 1, 1963, was a review of Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time by F. W. Dupee of the Columbia English department. Dupee (a former Communist Party organizer) took exception to Baldwin’s apocalyptic tone. “Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?” Baldwin had written. The answer, Dupee wrote, is that “[s]ince you have no other, yes; and t...

New top story from Time: I Left Poverty After Writing ‘Maid.’ But Poverty Never Left Me

https://ift.tt/3kXte3r I signed my first book contract without paying much attention to what it said. I didn’t know at the time that the book would be a best seller or that it would one day inspire a Netflix series . I just needed the money. I was a single mom with a 2-year-old and a 9-year-old, living in low-income housing, and because of a late paycheck, I hadn’t eaten much for a few weeks, subsisting on pizza I paid for with a check I knew would bounce. This wasn’t my first bout of hunger. I had been on food stamps and several other kinds of government assistance since finding out I was pregnant with my older child. My life as a mother had been one of skipping meals, always saving the “good” food, like fresh fruit, for the kids I told myself deserved it more than I did. The apartment was my saving grace. Housing security, after being homeless and forced to move more than a dozen times, was what I needed the most. Hunger I was O.K. with, but the fear of losing the home wher...

New top story from Time: Good Intentions Are Not Enough. We Must Reset for a Fairer Future

https://ift.tt/3usi2im We need a reset. We know we have racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and additional forms of bias and discrimination built into our workplaces, our schools, our medical care and all our institutions. We know it is systemic and harmful. In the tech industry , its products are harming our brains, our self-worth, our values, our pandemic response, our children and our society. Social media platforms are enabling and amplifying white supremacy and other forms of hate for profit. Workers are struggling to make a living wage while CEO billionaires work them harder, pay them less, create poor working environments and hoard ill-gotten profits. In politics, we are witnessing attacks on voting rights , abortion and housing; in schools and universities, teaching racism and science are under threat. In hospitals, Black, Latinx and Southeast Asian workers hold the front line while their communities get less access and worse care. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] ...

FOX NEWS: Couple gets married at 'most beautiful' Taco Bell: 'It was the best of both worlds' Analicia Garcia, 24, and Kyle Howser, 25, from Sacramento, California, got married on Tuesday, Oct. 26 and had their reception at the famous Pacifica, California, Taco Bell.

Couple gets married at 'most beautiful' Taco Bell: 'It was the best of both worlds' Analicia Garcia, 24, and Kyle Howser, 25, from Sacramento, California, got married on Tuesday, Oct. 26 and had their reception at the famous Pacifica, California, Taco Bell. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/bGAoiKV

My precise view

Search This Blog