Via a link on digg I was shown this 11-minute film shot on April 14, 1906 in San Francisco, four days before the major earthquake that devastated the city.
While there is a certain tragic quality in seeing these people going about their ordinary lives not knowing the great destruction that was imminent, I was struck by several things. First, the roadway seen in the video–Market Street– is remarkably wide given that much of the traffic was still horse-drawn. Second, I love the utter casualness of the people dashing across and in-between the automobiles, streetcars, bicycles and horse-drawn carriages. Even as they come within inches of being run down, they maintain an air of perfect nonchalance.
Mostly, though, I notice the hats. I watched the entire 11 minutes and did not see a single person, whether man, woman or child, who was not wearing some kind of hat or cap. People loved hats back then. They probably slept while wearing them. Judging from the size of some, I have no doubt that they may have even protected certain people from debris raining down on them during the quake. Seriously, a few women in the film are wearing hats that are about two feet high. By the time a brick got through that it’d probably only muss the hair.
I was also surprised by how many cars there were. Looking it up, the Model T didn’t come out until 1908, so this appears to be the transition period where cars were still too expensive for most but affordable enough for many to no longer be rare. It must have sucked to be a horse back then, having to share the road with a bunch of noisy tin buckets full of yahoos. Fancy yahoos wearing hats.