Back in 1989, Ms. D and I drove our Celica down to the Bay Area to visit my brother for Thanksgiving. He was attending Stanford at the time and living near Palo Alto. Our trip took place only weeks after the Loma Prieta earthquake and when we got down there, the Bay Bridge was still closed. When digging through old photos for my COAL pieces, I came across some pictures of the area that I took through the windshield. In a couple of these, you can even see the Celica’s emerald green paint on the sliver of hood that is showing. Have fun seeing how many cars you can identify!
Everytime that I watch “Bullitt” I am constantly identifying the various cars parked along the streets, and in the traffic. It’s still amazing that in that time period, cars that are now considered worth $$$$ were ordinary daily drivers! Great pictures; a visit to S.F. is on my bucket list! 🙂
Great photos from my birth year and the Golden Gate Bridge is beautiful as always. More cars from Detroit than I was expecting.
And quite a few Volvos, too, which, of course is no surprise.
Very close to home for me! At least in the Fall of 1989. But I couldn’t spot any of our now-CC fleet from that time, my wife’s ‘87 Mazda B2200 and my Ford Ranger, though you did catch a couple,of other Rangers. The intersection in Palo Alto with the traffic lights, in the picture with the motorcycle (Kawasaki EX500?) and the Camaro, Tempo and aero Bird, was the first location, around 2007, of GM’s Silicon Valley Advanced Technology center. It’s now a gym, just beyond the tall beige windowless building which has gone through several iterations as an Apple repair shop for decades. Turn right at that traffic light, and the former site of the Fry’s Electronics store is now a Yamaha lab and venture capital division facility.
Wow, you certainly know your locations. All I could remember was that some of these were taken in SF (those ones are pretty obvious) and the others in/near Palo Alto and Mountain View.
I lived and/or worked within a mile or three of those spots on El Camino in Palo Alto between 1988 and 2011. Ironically, because of massive redevelopment recently along that strip, I recognize it less now, than in 30 year old pictures. I now live about 40 miles away but frequently visit good friends who live just two blocks north of those locations. The Volvo wagon in under the Jack in the Box sign in one of the Palo Alto shots could in fact be the same gold 240 they bought used in the nineties. And the Jack is still there.
You confirmed it for me…I thought those two pictures were probably taken on El Camino Real, but couldn’t quite remember. It was 30 years ago!
Nice photos! The bridge shots remind me of the closing credits from To Live and Die in LA which featured a Ford Courier, Chev Luv, and Monza Towne Coupe. Song is Wait by Wang Chung.
Love this movie and the Wang Chung soundtrack, which I currently have in my cassette suitcase in the back of my CC, a 1981 VW Vanagon.
In college, right around the millenium, I took a sound design class at LMU with Rodger Pardee, who worked on this film and is credited in this clip as one of the “Sound Recordists”. He was a great teacher, and I recall him showing us a couple of scenes from this film with alternate sound designs.
I was in the Bay Area around that time (Navy A and C School at Mare Island) and that brings back memories. I left the area only a few days before The Loma Prieta Earthquake hit.
Given that we lived in the Bay Area at this time, these all look very familiar. Takes me right back…
I love these “identify the cars” things. Like “what do you see” on Hemmings. Whether it is 89 or 59 or some year in between, its always safe to start with “Beetle.”
There always seems to be one, for sure!
Wow, thanks for taking this pictures 30 years ago! I love random street scenes, and these are great.
My favorite shot is the one with the Acura Legend directly in front of the car. A bit further away are a Pontiac 6000STE driving, and we can see the edges of a Mercury Tracer parked by the side of the road.
Good catch on that Pontiac. I couldn’t quite make it out. Definitely has that A-Car squareness and when I take a close look at the taillights, they do indeed look like a 6000.
I’m a fan of old street scenes, too. When I worked at a historical society back in the ’90s, they were my favorite things to look at in the archives.
And second generation Camrys like the one in the first picture are still not an uncommon sight in California 30 years later. One of them “lives” about a block from me.
Like Eric said above, the shot with the Legend is my favorite – the car seems to notice the camera and steal the scene, as it were. I looked up the license plate on the smog database and and it is an ‘87 but last record was in 1997. I hope that car made it a lot longer and just changed plates or moved to a non-smog locale.
So many Toyotas, weird seeing what looks to be dealer plates on that white Camry in the lead photo!
The Legend photo is the best shot of the bunch. I had a neighbor in Medford a few years later who had one that looked almost exactly like that one, right down to the color.
Those “dealer” plates are now a thing of the past in California. Recently the law changed and instead of a tiny piece of paper taped to the windshield as temporary registration, a full-sized, black and white printed number paper plate must be attached in the normal license plate location.
Reminds me of my epic 1982 cross-country road-trip, with my best friend from high-school, in my ’71 Audi Super-90 wagon. My vacation finished up with 4 days in San Francisco, and many of these same views. Often, while my friend was behind the wheel, I recorded a lot of our trip with a Sony video camera, cabled to a portable Toshiba Beta VCR.
Of course, like most tourists, we had to drive down Lombard street. I have some great video of that, including other drivers honking at us when we stopped at the bottom to film the other cars coming down!
Volvo 245 in 3rd pic with headlamps on in full sun, before daytime running lights were a thing in North America at all (Canada mandate from 1/1/90, US allowance from 1995). There used to be jokes about weird and annoying things Volvo drivers did in service to a singular obsession with safety. There was a comic strip about it, called “Planet Ovlov”.
First two pictures of 19th Avenue traveling through the Outer Sunset past Santiago. I know it well. GGB pretty obvious.
The GG bridge photos look so sparse and uncluttered. I can easily remember when there was no center divider (there is now a movable barrier separating north and southbound traffic, basically an articulated k-rail), but I don’t remember when they added the fence separating pedestrians from the roadway.
Next addition will be the suicide barrier. Who knows what else the future holds.
Back in the early 90s I would ride my 18 speed across the bridge on the ocean side which is much narrower than the bay side. No fence then but also no pedestrians who were not allowed. So much easier to ride without dodging wandering pedestrians. Alas you can no longer rider on the ocean side so it isn’t worth it for me any more.
You can definitely still ride on the western ocean side.
Haven’t seen the back end of a Ford Tempo in a long time!
Your pics reminded me of the first time I drove around SF in 1993 and how surprised I was by the lack of trees lining the streets. SF does have the highest population density after NYC, and I suspect widening of streets over the years eliminated any parking strips. I was also told that people often have lush back yards.
So cool. I was attending language school in Monterey at the time. Wife worked on the Presidio, but had quarters on Treasure Island. I commented home every weekend. When I graduated, we were assigned a house in the Marin headlands on Fort Barry. Commuted across the GG bridge every day. As our family grew, we were later assigned a larger house on the Presidio proper located on Lincoln Blvd just opposite the GG bridge tollgates. These scenes were so “every day” that it never occurred to me to take photos. Oh well.