A Monthly Seminar Series, Hosted by Stewart Brand. + About this Series | Subscribe to the Podcast
The Long Now Foundation's monthly Seminars were started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking; to help nudge civilization toward our goal of making long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare.
Rick Prelinger, a guerrilla archivist who collects the uncollected and makes it accessible, presents the 6th of his annual Lost Landscapes of San Francisco screenings. You'll see an eclectic montage of rediscovered and rarely-seen film clips showing life, landscapes, labor and leisure in a vanished San Francisco as captured by amateurs, newsreel cameramen and studio filmmakers.
This talk was given at The Castro Theater in San Francisco, California on Thursday December 8, 02011
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Held at the historic Castro Theater, almost 1,400 enthusiastic San Francisco history buffs packed in to partake of guerrilla archivist Rick Prelinger’s annual ritual. The audience learned from, laughed at, quizzed and heckled the lovingly curated footage of their city’s past.
New material this year (presented for the first time in HD) included San Francisco's lost cemeteries in color, unique drive-through footage of the Produce Market (now Embarcadero Center and Golden Gateway), rides along the now destroyed Embarcadero Freeway, back streets in working-class North Beach, the sand-swept Sunset before its dunes were covered, wild automobile rides through downtown in the 1920s, newly-rediscovered Kodachrome Cinemascope footage of Playland and the Sky Tram, and much more.
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• 1 year, 5 months ago
Extraordinarily powerful presentation. Well done Rick. Very memorable.
• 1 year, 2 months ago
It may already have been determined but the driving shot in the Western Addition starting at 01:08:25 does begin with a turn from Divisadero onto Ellis, past the Henry Laundry, and then right onto Scott. The MobilGas station was torn down by Redevelopment in the early or mid seventies (I salvaged a wonderful Gast air compressor from it just in time) and the house that's now there was moved from somewhere north of Geary. I was living next door at 1209 Scott at the time. The shot then turns right once more onto Eddy and passes the rectory and church (now Macang Monastery) but I can't recall it's original denomination.
While I was living on Scott St in the early seventies the buildings across the street (east side) were demolished and a School of Podiatry was built and then, recently, torn down. I think it is now a park.
Great job, Rick.