Welcome back on Equinoxio Airways, your Time-Space shuttle. This is the second leg (Leg? Whaddaya mean “leg”? English is a weird language) of our journey to San Francisco, back and forth between 1965 and 2016. Half a century but who’s counting? Just make sure your seat-belts are securely fastened.
San Francisco 2016. Hold your bar-Mitzvah in a Cable car. Seriously? I must have slipped into a parallel universe.
December 1965. A cold winter light. This was probably at the corner of Market (street). Bank of America was already there. Not sure Woolworth still is.
Alcatraz in the background. What year is that? Check the cars.
The streets of Frisco today. Same old, same old…
Hopping back fifty years. Again, I beg you: make sure your seat belts are properly fastened. You can download the manual on http://www.seatbelt.com.
Golden Gate Bridge, 1965. No fog then. For the technique-oriented, this was taken with my brand-new Instamatic camera of which I was very proud. Then. 🙂
San Francisco skyline today. Well, last year. Same difference.
And the skyline then. 1965. Right to left: my mother, my little sister’s turning her back on the camera, our friend Marie-Andrée, who’d invited us to spend Christmas in California.
Alcatraz today. Don’t let the black & white fool you. 😉
Today’s skyline, the Oakland Bay Bridge to the left. And “yesterday”:
One can – barely – see Fisherman’s wharf in the foreground. With a two-mast ship moored on the right.
Alcatraz again. 2016.
And in 1965. Occupied then.
The Golden Gate now. Foggy. This is a colour picture in case anyone asks. (And we did see a few whales in the distance…)
Marin county on the other side of the Bridge.
The Golden Gate Bridge before Global Warming.
Your all-American diner. 1965 or 2016?
My first diner (and road-trip). En route to San Diego, 1965. My mother in the foreground to the right. I already published this photo but I urge my American friends to look again at the prices. “Halibut steak – with hash browns – ” for $1.09? The times they are a-changin’.
Once again, thank you for flying with Equinoxio. Should you have any complaint or suggestion on our service, please feel free to drop at our San Francisco offices on Pine street:
Have a lovely week-end, y’all.
Loved it!
Gracias! Viste el anterior? Pot-Pourri 3317?
Wow… great pictures
Gracias amiga. The ’65 shots are old and passed, but I like the contrast. Buen fin.
Feliz Fin de Semana
😉
Lovely photographs, San Fran is so beautiful, I wonder if I will ever get out there! Long time no see, Brian, I hope you are well!
Hi Holly “Coeur de feu”. Good to see you too. I’ve only just come back from South America (almost no internet), slowly picking things up. 🙂 I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and end of year with family and friends. Have a lovely new year, despite all the worries one might have on many fronts. And do hop to Frisco. It is an amiable “town”. Worth the trip. Bz.
Traveling again ! Good for you. One day I will visit SF for sure! 🙂
Yeah, last year was good. 4 trips abroad. Can’t complain. 😉 Look SF up. I’m sure there are affordable plane options, and Airb’bnb is a great option. We are using it more and more. Tschüss meine freundin. 😉
Fifty years… lots of water under the bridge. Which one? Take your pick. I’ve burnt some. Still hooked to the past though.
Now the whole world is a giant Alcatraz – who needs that old ruin anymore…
Yes, I am impressed at the passing of time… Weird. (Never thought I would come to count in half centuries) 😉
Now “a giant Alcatraz”? Wow. You might right. Scary but right…
😦
Soul never gets old, it’s just the container that can’t keep up with time. 😉
I’m usually right about bad things and hate myself for that.
Quite true. The wrapping is bad quality. Expiration date and all. 🙂
With you all the way on the last part. Let us hope we will be wrong. 😉
Love that you found an equinox sign!
Yeahhhh! That was lots of fun. (I was waiting for an opportunity to put it in) How are you guys doing? Learning to deal with your new life? 🙂 It takes a bit of time and things smooth out.
Things are great thanks. It’s definitely an adjustment.
🙂 I will send you a few pictures of Grandbaby Gonzalo when I get to your last mail, so you can see what to expect. (He is already practically walking. OMG!) Have a lovely week-end my “niece”. 😉
Walking?! How old is he? He must be advanced!
Babies start walk between 9 and 16 months. Whether early or late has no relationship with the child’s development. Some perfectly “normal” babies don’t walk until 16 months. This one is probably just in a hurry to discover the world! 😉 (Which also means new worries: scrutinize all floors for ingestible stuff. Lift anything he can grab and break, etc. Fun!)
I’m sure it will be here for my baby quicker than I want it to be!
Most probably. 🙂
I hope to bring Colin down to Mexico City some day. Perhaps he and Gonzalo can meet!
That would be lovely. They are very close in age. We have a couple spare rooms. Consider your room booked. 😉
Thanks! I’ve always wanted to see the ruins there and the museums.
Have a nice weekend.
🙂
Very interesting visual journey!
Thank you. Should you ever visit San Francisco, bring a windbreaker. It can be chilly. (Happy new year!)
Brian, beautiful photos. Did you have a chance to visit Alcatraz in 2016? Please enjoy the rest of your Friday and have a terrific weekend ahead. ~ Mia 🙂
Thank you Mia. You too. No we did not stop at Alcatraz. Don’t know why, I guess I feel like I’ve already seen it in so many movies? 😉 You live on the west coast, right? From San Diego to Seattle it is quite a stretch. Anywhere close to SF? Take care. B.
You’re welcome Brian. Yes, it has been in so many movies. Actually, SF is further north, I’m in Los Angeles County, much closer to San Diego. Thank you, take care too!
LA now? It is on my travel (back) to list. My only recollection of LA was hours and hours of driving between SF and San Diego. “Mom, where are we?” “LA, dear.” 2 hours later: “Mow where are we?” “LA dear.” “Can’t be! We’ve been driving for hours on the highway!” 😉
(I’m sure there is more to LA than the Highway.) Be good. 🙂
Brian, L. A. is a huge county. Oh definitely, there’s much more! 🙂 Enjoy your Sunday evening. ~ Mia 🙂
Thank you Mia. You too. 🙂
Great photos with sweet reminiscing. Lovely place to visit. So that’s where you took your blog name after?
Haha! No, Equinox(io) I chose long before that trip. Has to do with my childhood in Africa and the high tides of the Equinox. You probably have those in SE Asia. I will write about it one day. The Equinox sign was just a coincidence. 😉
Oh I see, hehe. Sounds interesting. 🙂
Just need a bit more free time to write… 🙂
Soon you’ll have it. 🙂
Working on it. 🙂
Thank you for the excursion. The Golden Gate Bridge impressed me the most when I saw it from the airplane window 🙂 Only then I realised how long it is 🙂
It is quite long. A good walk, with or without fog. 😉
Un vol très agréable, à bientôt mon ami …
Merci très cher ami. Quel Français parfait… Le mystère s’épaissit.
Have a lovely week. Eine gute woche(?) 😉
Eine gute Woche! Les substantifs en allemand (im Deutschen) toujours en majuscules … La langue arabe est vraiment plus facile mais ca peut aider dans tous cas:
http://www.linguee.fr/allemand-francais/traduction/im+deutschen.html
You are so very richtig! I forgot that rule. (Not that I took many German lessons, but still, I should remember.) I have no idea about Arabic, besides Shukriya.
Actually no great need for Arabic, as it is hard to visit such countries actually, except Morocco everything else not secure anymore – even Tunisia used to be a great country for visiting and staying also in the Sahara in the past, but now not so safe any more except in a guided group, ca c’est très dommage!
Yep. Not secure at all. My Grandfather’s tomb is in Casablanca. He died there right after the war. One of my brothers has been but I don’t think I will visit. 🙂 (Kein wunderbar!)
I also prefer nowadays the Canary Islands in order to flee the f…. winter in Central Europe, next trip in 6 weeks. When I was on La Palma in 2015 it was somehow sometimes like being in Latin America .. a lot of influence from there due to migration and re-migration. Interesting!
Never been there, but I understand the place is quite lovely. Definitely so weather-wise. Only a few weeks left. 🙂
Canary Islands: All climate zones present … desert, semi-desert, normal climate, subtropical, more cool fog forests & a now dead volcan with a real huge caldera on Tenerife where we go now. We still have to climb on Mt. Teide there (3,718 m altitude), may be this time we will achieve it.
I hope you do. 3,718ms is quite feasable, and being a volcano it probably is volcanic sand. No big deal. Just good, hard hiking shoes and a few hours. 🙂
Once again I have enjoyed traveling Equinox Airlines and Time Machine. It is good to see the past meeting the present.
Thank you. It is isn’t it? I Liked the contrasts and similarities. The cable car has practically not changed at all. And there will aways be seagulls at fisherman’s wharf. 🙂
Time travel is possible. Alcatraz the prison rather than Alcatraz the tourist attraction. I bet no one would have imagined it possible in 1965.
Quite right. Nor did one ever imagine Stephen King’s orange clown in the White House… 😦