San Francisco in the 1920's (1928)

Oh Lord, I hate Temporal Storms! Feels like I lost two weeks or more in there...time to land and see when and where I am and recalibrate my....cablecars? Hills and valley? Fog? Oh yes I know this place...

This lovely nine minute feature appears to have been assembled from shots taken from roughly 1921 to 1927 and assembled into a single work at a later date-there is a subtle evolution in automotive styles and the Radio KFC sign wasn't up until 1924. The subject is San Francisco, mostly Powell and Market Streets and the nearby neighborhoods, completely rebuilt and thriving with the tragic 1906 earthquake now a distant memory...the camera shows clear, sunny skies for the most part, with one slightly overcast and foggy one for comparison at about 2:00 to 2:15 (also the earliest footage). At this point the automobile has all but fully taken the place of the horse-drawn conveyance-but pedestrians still outnumber vehicles...and of course San Francisco is dominated by the public electric cablecar systems which even today have yet to fade away completely. The camera technology has improved enough that we are treated to steady and detailed panning and tracking shots moving up and down the glorious multi-story buildings, rotational aerial panoramas at rooftop level and mid-range shots of people and vehicles just going about their day...

This footage remained in a frankly amazing state of preservation in the famous Prellinger Archives-until found by the media restorer known as NASS, who ran the assembled footage through a Neural Net to correct Aspect Ratio and Speed, clean up minor artifacting-and of course add a 'soundtrack' of ambient noise and bring the film into the Age of Color! As I sit here with lemonade in hand and sandwich in the other, I raise glass in hand to NASS and all of those others who made this nine minute vacation possible...Soundtrack, Colorized.