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Cable Car Museum, 1201 Mason Street |
Cable
Cars are San Francisco's most popular attraction among tourists, many
of whom actually expect to find the cars magically suspended from
cables! (Visit the cable car museum at 1201 Mason Street to find out how
they really work.) The first cable car line in the world made history with
an experimental run from Jones Street to Kearny via Clay on August 2, 1873.
Cable cars, the brainchild of engineer and inventor Andrew
Smith Hallidie, were soon trundling up and over San Francisco's hills
from the foot of Market Street to the Pacific Ocean. Where there were once
up to eight companies running many cable railway lines all over town, today
only three lines remain - Powell & Hyde, Powell & Jones, and California.
Collectively, they are the only mobile national landmark in the U.S. For
those who live or work near the lines, the cable car is a fixture of daily
life. In the movies, everyone in the City lives near a cable car line thanks
to motorized imitators which are fine for tourists but universally derided
by locals. Following are pivotal figures in cable car history: Frieda
Klussman waged a successful campaign to save the cable cars in 1947
after Mayor Roger Lapham moved to have them replaced by diesel buses. Carl
Payne became the "Ding Dong Daddy" after winning several cable car bell
ringing contests beginning in the late 1970s. Mona Hutchin was a 19 year-old
college student in the early part of 1965 when she staged a protest against
the long held tradition preventing women from standing on the steps outside
the cable car. The police hauled Hutchin off after she refused to step inside
the car, but there was no legal violation with which they could charge her.
Muni officials then attempted to have the City Attorney formalize the prohibition
of women from riding outside the cars, but were told to forget it. The unofficial
ban was lifted in the spring of 1965 - 92 years after the cable cars' debut!
Fannie Barnes became the first female grip
operator in 1998. San Francisco literary figure Gelett Burgess (1866-1951)
is the author of "The Ballad of the Hyde Street
Grip."
Here's the ultimate tip for enjoying the cable cars without the crunch of tourists: Catch the east bound car on the California line at California Street and Van Ness Avenue, where there will almost certainly not be a line. Sit or stand along the north facing side of the car for the better view by far - Nob Hill, Fairmont Hotel, Coit Tower, Alcatraz, Chinatown, etc. You can drop by Powell and Market later if you want to see the famous turntable, or choose the arrows and see it here. More about the Powell Street Turnaround The web site of the nonprofit Cable Car Museum is excellent. |
Copyright 2002 Hank Donat |