Carl Nolte, whom I’ve long considered the best pure writer on the Chronicle staff, puts his finger on it in his Sunday column, “Native Son.” Streetcars in San Francisco are cool again. I’d actually go further (and will, in the cover story of our next member newsletter, Inside Track)–to the general public (as opposed to railfans), streetcars are cooler than ever! By the way, Carl’s a reader of this blog — he told me he got his lead, the Monsters-on-a-Milan, from our posting. His article’s worth the read.
Month: March 2009
Take Me Out…
…is not just the name of our nostalgic exhibit at the San Francisco Railway Museum, celebrating the days when the family car was a streetcar in San Francisco. It’s also a reminder that baseball season is about to start. No, not major league, but something more important: the “F-liners.” They’re a softball team in the SF Gay Softball League, founded in 2001 and named, yes, for the F-line. They play their first game (games, actually, a doubleheader) Sunday, March 22 at Moscone Field.
$2.50 for an F-line ride?
Maybe. For the first time, Muni staff is officially raising the prospect of a different F‑line fare with its governing board.
Who Needs to Fly?
Knowing that fans of San Francisco’s vintage streetcars have lots of related interests, we’ve been venturing a bit afield on this blog … last post was vintage amphibious vehicles. This time it’s toy trains in an airplane palace. That would be the International Terminal at SFO, where through early April there’s a great exhibit of toy trains spanning the 20th century, mostly Lionel, but with plenty of variety thrown in.
Just DUCK-y
At Market Street Railway, we focus on historic rail vehicles, but there are plenty of other historic vehicles in San Francisco as well, and we celebrate all of them. One group of interest are the DUKW vehicles run by Bay Quackers. Universally referred to as Ducks instead of their military acronym, these are the World War II-era amphibious vehicles you see carrying tourists along The Embarcadero from Fisherman’s Wharf to Mission Bay, where they plunge into the water for a cruise.
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