25 9 / 2008
This has been making the transit geekery/blogosphere rounds today so I’ll loosely credit both N-Judah Chronicles and The Overhead Wire for directing my attention to it. It’s actually almost more significant to me as a historian than as a transit geek; this, like the previous Lana Turner post are from one of my favorite periods in S.F. history, the one I like the call the Productive one. (Second only to the wild and mystical Gilded Age here, which I like to call the Fun period. Being an armchair historian means being able to name shit whatever you want.)
I should probably add some kind of more cogent comment about the historical implications of the video’s subject matter and how its predictions came to fruition (about the flight of residents in coming years) and also how interesting an example it is of the timelessness of urban social and spatial issues - many of the critiques of Market Street, transit, traffic and the attitudes of local residents mirror today’s in pretty true form. That’s what I love about being history-obsessed; there’s nothing about the present day that is particularly surprising.
