It was a clouded Saturday early morning atop San Francisco’s Nob Hill, and a little team was collected by the water fountain in Huntington Park, paying attention to Bruce Bennett narrate that started in 1873.
“Andrew Smith Hallidie descended down into the fog,” he began. “They all raised a hand to their ear, to listen for the catastrophic crash — which never came.”
Bennett is a volunteer tourist guide with the not-for-profit San Francisco City Guides, and his latest excursion starts with the tale of the really initially cable auto trip, which happened on San Francisco’s Clay Street 150 years earlier. It’s the tale of exactly how an unlimited loophole of cord rope — performing at 9.5 miles per hour in a port underneath the road — designed the areas and the background of San Francisco.
“That’s what got the upper class people to move to Nob Hill,” Bennett discussed. “So it made our hills accessible.”
In the very early months of 2023, Bennett recognized that out of greater than 70 various complimentary strolling trips, San Francisco City Guides really did not have one concerning the cable cars. So he determined to develop one. And by what he calls large good luck, his timing was definitely ideal.
“I didn’t know it was the 150th anniversary,” he admitted. “It just happened to work out that way.”
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In reality, Bennett’s brand-new strolling excursion introduced just as the city started a perennial string of events recognizing the 150th wedding anniversary of (*150*) Smith Hallidie’s really initially cable auto trip. At an occasion in June, arranged by the transportation background conservation not-for-profit Market Street Railway, chosen authorities signed up with stars in duration outfit from the 1880s at the Market Street terminal of the California Street cable auto line.
“How many of you were alive 150 years ago?” San Francisco Mayor London Breed asked the group.
By all accounts, no hands ought to have increased, however San Francisco does enjoy a great outfit celebration — and it ended up among the individuals in duration attire was none apart from a contemporary manifestation of (*150*) Smith Hallidie.
“I’m told I look very good for being dead 123 years,” he stated, while continuing to be completely in personality.
Colorful events versus a dark background
Politicians enjoy to open up with a joke, however Mayor Breed had some organization to go over. About a week previously, the public had actually discovered of the newest phase in the unraveling of San Francisco’s midtown: A significant chain store, a cinema and a high end shopping center were all calling it stops, leaving also less factors to check out the once-thriving community around Union Square. Headlines that mentioned the now-infamous “urban doom loop” story were anywhere.
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“While other people are trying to write us off, we are doubling down,” by leaning right into what makes San Francisco unique, Mayor Breed informed the group. “When they come to San Francisco to visit, they want to go to the Golden Gate Bridge, and they want to ride a cable car.”
Bruce Bennett stated he likewise intends to reveal individuals a various side of San Francisco than they have actually seen in current headings.
“I think, ‘What is it that I can do to promote San Francisco in a positive light?'” he stated. “And my way of doing that is through giving this tour.”
As they waited in line to board the cable cars at Fisherman’s Wharf, site visitors to the city had no problems.
“We’ve been here a day and a half, and it’s just been incredible,” stated one male from Iowa.
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As cable cars drifted down the hillside onto the turntable, where transportation drivers rotate them around and press them back out onto the tracks utilizing their very own body weight, checking out households broke images of each various other hanging off the sides of the cable cars and remaining on their wood seats, admiring just exactly how old they are.
“It’s such a crazy old technology that we still use today,” mentioned Nick Schuster, that was checking out with his entire family members from Colorado.
“It reminds me of my youth, listening to the Rice-A-Roni commercials,” stated a lady called Stephanie from Indiana, and included that she would certainly taken pleasure in riding a the cable auto throughout the city when currently. “It’s the San Francisco treat!”
And over on California Street, an added unique reward was in shop after the mayor completed talking: the main introduction of the city’s earliest and biggest cable auto, totally brought back and prepared for solution. Built in 1883, “Big 19” is 4 feet much longer than any type of various other cable auto in the city, and needed to be specifically customized to make the limited turn onto California Street without obtaining stuck. At its introduction, Big 19 drifted with a polka-dotted bow, and was consulted with joys and praise.
“It looks as good today as it did then, and I want to thank all those workers who’ve continued to preserve it,” stated the renovated (*150*) Smith Hallidie, that was quite active when Big 19 entered into solution the very first time.
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Building a tradition out of timber
Preserving background this old calls for much more than just cleansing and upkeep. As the firms around the area that developed and serviced cable cars gradually disappeared over the training course of the 20th century, a whole craft could’ve been lost to time — but instead, it lives on at a small building in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood: the Muni carpenter shop. It’s the last place on earth you can get parts for a cable car. And they build them all from scratch.
“This here is a cable car gong,” explained shop supervisor (*150*) McCarron, using the technical name for the large brass bell on the cable car’s roof.
McCarron spoke to a small group of devoted rail transit enthusiasts attending a rare public tour of the shop, held in honor of the cable car’s 150th anniversary. He showed off the mold used to cast new cable car bells, complete with an embossed Muni logo. Behind him, a half-built cable car had just had its brand new seats freshly sanded by two carpenters who are rebuilding it piece by piece, working from 50-year-old copies of 100-year-old plans.
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“If you like to work with wood, this is the place,” said carpenter Luis Ferreira with a good-natured chuckle.
Ferreira had just finished rebuilding the roof of Powell Street cable car No. 18 with perfectly-aligned strips of yellow Alaskan cedar, supported by curved beams of California white oak. Car 18 was the first cable car Muni rebuilt entirely in-house back in the 1960s, and it included some regrettable errors — like a plywood roof that eventually leaked. Ferreira said he was excited to rebuild it the old way.
“It’s similar to a wine barrel,” he said, making a round gesture with his hands. “It slopes this way, and it slopes this way.”
Cable car No. 18 will also be the first rebuilt car to feature two-tone wood with mahogany windows — something was specified in the original plans, but never implemented until now. Mahogany is rot-resistant, and well suited to San Francisco’s foggy and sometimes rainy weather. Ferreira gazed up at the finished roof and windows he’d spent so many hours on — fully assembled, with no paint or sealant on them yet.
“The natural wood — it cannot get prettier than this!” he said.
Jonathan Bloom/NBC Bay Area
Across the room, carpenter Mark Sobichevsky was carefully adjusting a table saw to remove a tiny sliver of wood from a piece of trim — the final touch for car No. 18’s new seats. Sobichevsky built high-end homes during the dot-com boom, but now he’s building a legacy: This will be the tenth cable car he’s worked on from start to finish. Asked what he loves about his work, he doesn’t hesitate to answer.
“Seeing what I built,” he said. “Seeing people happy on the line — kids, tourists.”
Though Bay Area families continue to enjoy the homes he’s built up and down the San Francisco peninsula, millions of people from all over the world enjoy the cable cars every year — and Sobichevsky gets to share in that joy.
“When I retire, if I retire, I will be going down on the line, to the turnaround, and look at the things I’ve built,” he said, and added that it’s already a place he likes to bring his 7-year-old granddaughter.
Asked if his granddaughter understands how much love he’s put into these rolling pieces of history, he replied, “I hope so. I hope so. It’s my life.”
Saving the cable cars
But for all the men who have actually built and restored them, it’s women who’ve saved the cable cars from political annihilation — over and over again. First, there was Friedel Klussmann, known to history as the Cable Car Lady. In the 1940s, and again in the 1950s, she organized ballot measure campaigns to protect the cable cars when politicians wanted to replace them with buses and trolleys.
Courtesy: Friends of the Cable Car Museum
And then there was Mayor Dianne Feinstein, who raised $60 million from corporate donors to fully overhaul the aging cable auto system in time for a 1984 reopening.
But it wasn’t until the 1990s that a woman finally shattered the glass ceiling at Muni’s cable car division. At the age of 52, Fannie Mae Barnes became the first woman ever promoted into the front operator’s position on the cable car: the incredibly physical job commonly known as the “gripman.”
In a ceremony 150 years to the day after (*150*) Smith Hallidie’s historic ride, it was only fitting that the first woman ever to operate the cable car grip levers received recognition from the first woman ever to be Speaker of the House. Barnes posed for pictures with U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Mayor Breed, and told the crowd she was just doing what her mom told her.
“My mom told me, ‘Baby, you can do whatever you want to, you just have to put in the work,’ and that’s exactly what I did!” Barnes said to cheers and applause.
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Saying goodbye
But as the flagship Powell Cable Car No. 1 pulled away from the Market Street turnaround adorned in fresh flowers, there was someone missing. The former mayor, now U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, had gotten sick. She died just two months later, at the age of 90. Her death came all too soon after the loss of another San Francisco icon who loved the cable cars: legendary singer Tony Bennett.
Upon news of his passing in July, fans flocked to the Fairmont Hotel, where a statue of Bennett stands tall and proud on the front lawn. They left cards and flowers, and shared fond memories.
“He represents the good side of San Francisco — the cable cars, the fog,” said one woman.
“In spite of all the problems everybody says we have, people who live here love San Francisco — and he loved it,” said another.
Courtesy: SFMTA Archives
Bennett immortalized an idyllic image of the City by the Bay in his greatest hit of all time, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” The lyrics paint an image of steep hills shrouded in fog, “where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars.”
The statue of Bennett, at the hotel where he first performed the song in 1961, sits at the very top of Nob Hill — which is also the highest elevation reached by any cable car line. Standing in front of the statue, Bruce Bennett — no relation to Tony — confirmed that it’s true: “It doesn’t get any higher than this for the cable cars, so we are, essentially, halfway to the stars.”
In fact, he decided to name his new walking excursion “Cable Cars: Halfway to the Stars” in memory of Bennett. He’s in good company: Mayor Breed has also said she wants to name a cable auto after Tony Bennett.
San Francisco is a city of ups and downs — and not just the hills. Long before the boom and bust economies of tech and real estate, it was devastating fires that forced the city to start over from nothing again and again — and it’s why the city’s flag bears the emblem of the phoenix. But Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin thinks there’s another symbol of San Francisco’s ability to rise from its ashes.
“The city burned down to the ground three times, and the cable car was a constant through all of that,” he stated. “I suggest that the real symbol of resilience is our cable car.”
