This old film was shot from the front of a street car on Market Street in San Francisco. There are so many things going on that I don’t know where to start. I’ll just review my stream of consciousness as I watched it:
- Multi-use: Look at all the different kinds of transportation happening all at once. We’ve got street cars, horse and carriage, cyclists, pedestrians and cars all in the same space. Of course, this is happening in an era when there wasn’t much speed differential between most of those modes of transportation.
- This must be prior to having much in the way of traffic laws. Other than cars and carriages driving on the right side of the road, it looks like a free-for-all. Especially for pedestrians. They’re all over the place. At one point a few of them appear to be having a casual conversation in the middle of the road as everything moves around them.
- I noticed the first of several near car/pedestrian collisions at minute 2:26. When is the last time you saw pedestrians have to run to get away from an oncoming car on at least three separate occasions in 7 minutes?
- There’s no audio so I can’t tell what people are saying, but from the body language it doesn’t look like anyone gets too upset about the chaos.
- There are people running in front of the street car like they’re playing “chicken” with it. At one point a guy runs zig-zag in front of it. For those who long for days when people used better judgement on the roads, this film is proof that any longing for better driver or pedestrian behavior in the past is based on myth.
- It’s amazing to watch an ordinary day on Market Street from over 100 years ago.
Now for one more cool thing, take a look at Market Street today from Google Maps: