Building upon the deluge of nostalgic Dolores Park photos that surfaced earlier this week, MM reader friscolex clued us in to the gold mine that is the San Francisco Public Library History Center Blog. And what a gold mine it is! Here we have a photo of Mission High School students eating lunch in Dolores Park in 1958. Myriad interesting things here.
First of all, these “high school” students look a lot older than most high school students I see around these days. In fact, they look older than most undergrads! Perhaps they’re not really high school students at all but are merely playing the part a la James Van Der Beek.
Furthermore, I’m not quite sure, but all of these students look pretty white. Although this may just mean that they weren’t on the city champion soccer team, I’ve got a feeling that most of their fellow classmates were white as well. 50 years later, it seems that things are a little different.
But that’s not all from the SFPL HC! Check out these amazing early (1965) designs for BART trains! Supposedly, BART promised “trains automatically timed to arrive at stations every 90 seconds during rush hours, [and] BART is guaranteeing everyone of its passengers a seat[!!!]“ I wonder how that worked out.
Nevertheless, the SFPL History Center is a gold mine. Be sure to check it out and support it however you can!
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