By the early 1960s, the technology had leaked through a government contractor and a private program was already underway to develop a levitating vehicle (LV) for the everyday driver. Without the friction of wheels, an LV could skim along roads while economically sipping much less fuel than the typical gas hog cars of the time. By the time the oil industry caught wind of the development, the LV disappeared into oblivion thanks to a joint conspiracy by the oil and tire industries who saw them as a threat to their bottom lines. The big automakers quietly shut down their levitation R&D divisions.

Today there are only a few remaining levitators left in the world, some meticulously cared for while others sadly rust away. They are technically not street-legal due to horrendously poor braking distances, but police officers tend to turn a blind eye to the beautiful streamlined classic floaters. But most people probably never even notice them.

Inspired by a levitating car he had remembered seeing as a kid, moviemaker George Lucas featured the Landspeeder in his 1977 blockbuster Star Wars. The film brought about a brief resurgence of interest in vehicle levitation, but the whole concept again faded quickly back into obscurity.

I met with Miles Weston, president of the North American Chapter of the Levitating Vehicle Owners Society (NACLVOS), and he pointed out where I could find a few LVs in the area. Here are a few shots of these beauties:

Levitating Vehicles of the 1960s: The Ford F-Air

Levitating Vehicles of the 1960s: The Fiat Floatista

Levitating Vehicles of the 1960s: The Chevrolet Overair

Levitating Vehicles of the 1960s: The Studebaker Light Hawk

Levitating Vehicles of the 1960s: The Chrysler Allay

If you’ve spotted any floaters in your town, I’d love to hear about it.

[EDIT: I've received a surprising number of emails about this post from people wanting to know more about these cars. I'm sorry to disappoint, but this was an April Fool's joke. These cars are not real. There, I said it.]

Most visiting or passing through Point Reyes Station in Northern California have at least glanced at the huge brick and mortar eyesore and probably have not even given it a second thought. Standing on the main street through town (also Highway One), the building has been boarded up and abandoned since 1950. But the building had a much livelier past.

The town was called Olema Station when it was founded in 1875 and would not be known as Point Reyes Station until 1891. The first store was built in 1883 and a man named Salvatore Grandi purchased it in 1887 and Grandi’s Mercantile Company was born. When the 1906 earthquake struck, not only did a locomotive leaving the train station fall sideways off its tracks, but Grandi’s brick building also collapsed. It was replaced with what is now the Western Saloon. When Salvatore Grandi retired in 1908, he sold the lot across the street to his nephew, who built a much larger Grandi Company, which sold everything from cattle feed to housewares to pianos. The second story of the building was a 20 room hotel and dance hall. Dwight D. Eisenhower stayed in the hotel in 1940. In 1950, the Grandi closed.

The building has been derelict and boarded up for decades. A grand piano lies in silence on the floor of the old dance floor upstairs. The new owner had plans approved in 2005 to renovate the building, including the 20 room hotel in the style of the landmark’s heyday. In late December 2012, all plans for the future of the Grandi came to a grinding halt, tangled in a mess of bureaucratic red tape.

Let’s hope the Grandi doesn’t meet the same tragic end as San Francisco’s Fleishhacker Pool House, another historic landmark which survived decades of uncertainty and neglect, only to burn to the ground earlier this month.

Six Decades of Silence

The floor of the old Grandi general store

The Grandi's hotel hallways

Lower level of the Grandi

A former hotel room in the Grandi

The Grandi's reception desk which also housed the town's telephone switchboard

The Grandi from A Street

Cars everywhere started honking at the first out in bottom of the 10th… not yet, wait for it! Come on Romo…let’s get this done!

Then it happened. Job done. San Francisco erupted. The tens of thousands watching the simulcast in Civic Center howled in euphoria and began pouring onto Market St., completely halting all traffic and Muni buses (thankfully Muni kept the classic streetcars away this time). The masses slowly marched toward the ballpark while others headed to the parties already in progress in the Mission.

By 11pm, it seemed like half the city was in front of AT&T Park celebrating. Street bonfires by the dozens lit the night, fireworks sparkled in the sky, and champaign and beer flowed freely. Brooms were everywhere to celebrate the 4-0 sweep, many blazing in flames. Sweep! Sweep! Sweep!

Things got out of hand way more than last time around in the vandalism department, including a security guard’s truck that got completely trashed and overturned on Market St., topped off by an attempt to light the gas tank on fire. These vandals were a fraction of a percent of the people out there and most weren’t even wearing Giants shirts–probably out-of-towners. And I have absolutely no problem turning over high-resolution photos of these people to the police. Charge them with felonies, hold them financially accountable for the damage, and make an example of them. That isolated behavior was despicable. Between taking photos, I made every effort I could to help some frightened wide-eyed tourists get their cars out of the area.

I stuck around until midnight, but things still seemed to be ramping up even more. I’m sure King St. looks like a warzone today. Go Giants!!!

A new member to the Fleet Week family was introduced: the F-22 Raptor Stealth Air superiority fighter. And that baby could do aerobatics that I though were impossible, including coming to an apparent mid-air stop, along with maneuvers I would later learn were called the Herbst maneuver, Pugachev’s Cobra, and the Kulbit. The U.S. Air Force claims that the mach 2+ Raptor cannot be matched by any known or projected fighter types.

Most of the photos I took were during the Friday practice flights. I watched Sunday’s show from my balcony to retreat from the swarms of 100,000s of people, which pushed the city to her limit. (In addition to Fleet Week, we had the America’s Cup World Series races, a Bluegrass festival, a Jazz festival, Columbus Day celebrations and parade, Veg Fest, a film festival, the Giants NL division series, the 49ers game, multiple street fairs, several urban treasure hunts, and the remnants of Oracle world.)

A P-51 Mustang, F-16 Fighting Falcon, and F-22 Raptor in tight formation.

The Blue Angels.

A US Navy F-18 creating transonic shock waves over San Francisco.

Blue Angles #7 over San Francisco

The Blue Angels over San Francisco Bay.

Thank you for the overwhelming response to my 1906 + Today Earthquake photo mashups. In one week in August 2012, the story of my photo mashups hit the front pages of dozens of major websites including MSN, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Digg, Reddit, Popular Science, the Daily Mail UK, SFGate, KQED, Laughing Squid, the New York Daily. At last count, the photos have been featured on over 400 websites. I’ve been doing TV, radio, newspaper, and magazine interviews from around the world and trying to reply to messages, comments, and tweets by the thousands, but I’m still far behind.

Two requests I’ve been seeing repeatedly is for prints and for a book. The good news is that some high-quality prints are now available and a book is in the works.

Coming Soon: The Book

The book is a go, and now has its own page: Fade to 1906.

Prints Now Available

(frame and matte not included)

A limited selection of prints are now available from my 1906 + Today Earthquake photo mashups. Prints from this collection are printed by Smugmug partner Bay Photo and shipped directly to you using my full-resolution masters and contain no watermarks or borders. Prints are available in frame-ready sizes from 8×12″ all the way up to 24×36″. I’ve also made available float-mounted MetalPrints which I have in my own home and I can tell you they are awesome. Prices start at just $25 and have a 100% satisfaction guarantee.

Please note that I cannot sign these prints as they are shipped directly to you from the photo lab. If the mashup photo you seek is not in the store, it is because either I do not yet have the right to commercially sell it from the owner of the original or it is of insufficient resolution to make a good print.

Browse available prints HERE.

At 5:12 a.m. on April 18, San Franciscans woke up to a quick jolt. For the next 25 seconds, all was silent. And then it hit hard–42 seconds of intense shaking. Buildings fell, sinkholes in the streets opened up, railroad tracks bent, and collapsing bricks crushed cable cars sheltered for the night in the cable car barn. But the real damage had not even begun. It was the out-of-control fires that did 90% of the destruction to San Francisco. Over 30 fires, caused by ruptured gas mains, destroyed approximately 25,000 buildings on 490 city blocks. Worst of all, many were started when firefighters, untrained in the use of dynamite, attempted to demolish buildings to create firebreaks, which resulted in the destruction of more than 50% of the buildings that would have otherwise survived. The dynamited buildings themselves often caught fire. In all, the fires burned for four days and nights.

Mayor Eugene Schmitz put out an authorization for the federal troops and police to shoot and kill looters. Thousands of tents and temporary relief houses went up to house 20,000 displaced people. The city was in disarray. But photography was a common hobby by 1906 and thousands of photos have survived to this day. One photographer even flew his 46 pound camera on a kite to get aerial shots of the aftermath. Some color photographs have even been found.

It’s been two years since I posted the first installment of this series, 1906 + 2010: The Earthquake Blend (Part I). I kept running into delays. In the case of the Valencia St. Hotel, I had to return to the scene on Valencia between 18th and 19th four times before I managed to get it right. There’s quite a bit of conflicting information of exactly where this building once stood. And just when I was about to wrap things up, my dad announced that he had unearthed a local magazine published in late 1906 loaded with earthquake-aftermath photos that I had never seen in any library or online collection. On the plus side, I’ve got plenty more material for a part three now.

To put these photos together, I first create a catalog of historical photos that look like they have potential to be blended. Unfortunately most of these photos end up on the digital cutting room floor because there’s simply no way to get the same photo today because either a building or a tree is in the way. Once I get a good location, I get everything lined up just right. My goal is to stand in the exact spot where the original photographer stood. Doing this needs to take into account equivalent focal length, how the lens was shifted, light conditions, etc. I take plenty of shots, each nudged around a bit at each location. Just moving one foot to the left changes everything.

Here is part two of the series (part one is here):

Cable car #455 rests halfway in the partially-detroyed cable car barn

People cross Market Street in front of the destroyed Hearst Building

Cars travel down S. Van Ness, which has buckled after the quake

People walk through rubble on Geary St

A bicyclist rides towards the fallen Valencia St. Hotel and a huge sinkhole that has opened up in the street

People walk up California St amid charred scraps of lumber

Cars park in front of the brand new US Courthouse which fared well in the quake

People stroll by the original adobe Mission Dolores which survived, while the brick church next door was destroyed

Horse carriages and cars park in front of Lafayette Park while a destroyed city looms in the background

People walk beneath Old Saint Mary's Cathedral, which survived the quake but was gutted by the fire

People mill around Lotta's Fountain, which served as a meeting place after the quake

The Conservatory of Flowers stands undamaged as now-homeless citizens camp in a tent shelter

Historical Notes

• The Cable Car Barn & Powerhouse was completely dismantled and rebuilt from 1982-1984. The Washington Street facade depicted is different in design than that of 1906, but the garage opening and tracks are in the exact same place to the best of my knowledge.
• Lotta’s Fountain has moved around over the years. It was raised eight feet in 1916, smashed by a drunk driver in 1954, moved 10 feet in 1975, and completely stripped down and rebuilt in 1998. I lined it up the best I could, but it was obvious when I was overlaying the photos that things weren’t perfect. The Palace Hotel in the background was demolished after the quake and rebuilt to the “new” Palace Hotel that I’ve blended with the old one.

75th Birthday Bash

After the debacle of opening the entire bridge to pedestrians on the 50th anniversary, the 75th anniversary went off swimmingly. My dad proudly displayed his 75 year-old Rolls Royce on Crissy Field while bands entertained throughout the day. I hauled around 45 pounds of photo gear all day to get some shots of the fireworks show. We headed down to the roadway to Fort Point to get close to the fireworks, encountering surprisingly few people down there. And no one had a radio so the show had a strange eerie feel as we watched it with no music soundtrack, just booms and foghorn blares. It was nice to see what the show looked like with the full soundtrack (not my video):

Strain at 50

Here’s a picture I took at the 50th anniversary holding the camera over my head. We were packed like sardines.

The bridge’s 50th anniversary didn’t go quite as smoothly. For the first time in 50 years, the bridge’s roadway was opened to pedestrians. The people arrived. And they kept arriving. Organizers planned for a maximum of 50,000 people. 800,000 to a million people showed up. A sea of gridlocked bodies squished together so tightly it was impossible to go anywhere but flow onward to the span. I was one of them. Many suffered from nausea and claustrophobia, but the bridge had bigger problems that day.

A potential disaster was brewing. Maximum load on the bridge in bumper-to-bumper traffic is 2,000 lbs/ft. The bridge was designed to withstand a maximum 5,700 lbs/ft. On May 24, 1987 the bridge was strained under a 6,000 lbs/ft load from the crushing weight of the unexpected crowd. The bridge’s normal bowed-arc flattened and even bowed down a bit in one section. The bridge’s vertical cables near the towers flapped in the 17mph wind while the cables toward the center of the span were stretched tighter than ever.

Structural engineers still debate how near collapse the bridge came that day.

An Interesting History

The bridge’s chief engineer, Joseph Strauss, led the funding, engineering, and construction of the bridge and you’ll find his name everywhere for his achievements. But he didn’t design the bridge you see today. Strauss’ blueprint for the bridge’s design depicted a utilitarian eyesore of cantilevered mishmashed steel, a design that was thankfully trashed.

The actual designer of the bridge is a name virtually obliterated from history. A man named Charles Ellis designed every elegant detail of the bridge down to the rivet placement. Charles Ellis’ name is nowhere to be found on the bridge’s credits on the south tower plaque. It’s an interesting and controversial history. If you pick up a book or catch a documentary on the bridge’s design, you’ll see the bridge in a whole new light.

Sounds of the Bridge

When the fog comes in, the bridge sings out in sweet harmony with rhythmic fog horns to guide ships safely through Golden Gate Straight. The horns are so loud that I can hear them nearly halfway across the city when I’m jogging laps at Kezar Stadium. Two short higher-pitched blasts at midspan followed by a deep wail from the south tower pier at 20 second intervals. Walk or ride to the south tower on a foggy day to feel the bone-rattling blast of the dual 4′ airhorns at the base of the south tower. The soothing harmony of the horns is one of my favorites sounds of the city.

Download audio file (goldengatefoghorns.mp3)

The Bridge in Pictures

I’ve taken thousands of photos of the bridge over the years. Here are a few from different angles:

When Darkness Comes

4200@75

While the Moon Is Bright

Fleet Week 2010: Blue Angels

Fleet Week 2010

Fleet Week 2008

Golden Gate Bridge from Marin

Looking Up the Cables

Golden Gate Bridge North Tower

Golden Gate Bridge: Speed Limit = 45

Golden Gate Bridge South Tower

Baker Beach Footsteps

Bay Area from the Air

Bay Area from the Air

Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco

Golden Gate Bridge and Marin Headlands

Golden Gate Bridge

Golden Gate Bridge North Tower

Golden Gate Bridge North Tower Roadway

Surf Time

Fog Lingers Over the Golden Gate Bridge

Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge

Golden Gate Bridge

The Darker Mood of the Golden Gate Bridge

Empty Walkway on the Golden Gate Bridge

A Foggy Golden Gate

Fog Over the Gate

One of the Golden Gate Bridge's Massive Tower

One Moment Before We Cross

Look Mummy, There's an Aeroplane Up in the Sky

It was the largest pool in the world and a San Francisco icon. At 1000 feet long by 160 feet wide and holding 6.5 million gallons of filtered saltwater pumped in from the Pacific Ocean across the street, the pool was so huge that the lifeguards patrolled in rowboats. The Fleishhacker Pool opened in 1925 and welcomed thousands of daily swimmers and hosted national swim meets with thousands of spectators. The 25 cent admission fee (15 cents for children) bought swimmers pool admission, access to the pool house’s dressing rooms and showers, as well as a bathing suit and towel for the day. Admittance also included access to the mammoth pool house’s cafeteria and childcare center.

But with the cold ocean fog frequently blanketing the pool, the novelty began to wear off as shivering pool-goers sought out warmer climates. Attendance dropped and the pool’s cost to the city climbed. In 1943, the pool found a new purpose as it served as an ideal training ground for American troops training for amphibious beach assaults. After the war, maintenance on the pool was severely underfunded by the city, and in 1971, the pool closed forever and the pool house was boarded up.

In 1999, the city turned over the pool and its accompanying ramshackle pool house to the San Francisco Zoo. The zoo filled in the huge pool with gravel and converted the space to a parking lot. But the pool house has endured. The imposing structure still stands between the Great Highway and the zoo’s parking lot. The dilapidated building is riddled with holes in its soggy roof and is covered in moss and graffiti. A fence surrounds the derelict building with warnings of arrest for trespassing.

Historic photos courtesy of SF History Center, SF Public Library

The haunting interior of the Fleishhacker pool house is like a scene straight out of a horror movie. Graffiti decorates every inch of the crumbling walls and scraps of bedding material, syringes, and cans of spent spray paint litter the dirt-covered wobbly floors. Homeless huddle in sleeping bags behind creaky doors in the dozens of rooms throughout the huge complex. Glowing beams of light infiltrate the collapsed rooftops and broken windows into the upper levels of the poolhouse. The staircase down to the basement takes a descent into a damp, pitch-black concrete expanse where laundry machines once sterilized towels and swimsuits for happy swimmers.

The future of the old Fleishhacker pool house is in limbo as its new owners debate what to do with it. For now, it continues to stand as a haunting edifice of San Francisco’s past.

UPDATE: On Dec 1, 2012 the Fleishhacker pool house burned to the ground. It was a sad day for San Francisco history. A month later the building’s remains were demolished and removed, except for one small facade section which was preserved as a memorial for the building. Investigators deemed the fire “suspicious.”

Click photos to enlarge or start slideshow:

The Fleishhacker Pool House from Google Maps:

View Larger Map

Welcome to Drawbridge, CA
Population: 0
Elevation: 7 ft and sinking

Over a hundred years ago it was a bustling town and weekend getaway destination. Today Drawbridge is a peaceful wetland sanctuary with strewn remains of the the old town’s structures slowly collapsing and sinking into the bay. It is the only ghost town in the San Francisco Bay Area.

It all started in 1876. A tiny cabin was built on Station Island 2 1/2 miles north of Alviso for a drawbridge operator for the South Coast Pacific Railroad’s line connecting Newark and San Jose. Before long, the drawbridge operator’s friends began to join him for some whiskey drinking, hunting, and fishing. Passersby riding the train saw all the fun to be had out in the secluded marshlands, and soon it became a regular train stop. By the 1880s, the tiny town would see 1,000 visitors flocking to its tucked away paradise on weekends for hunting and fishing.

By 1926, the town had reached its heyday, having grown to 90 buildings, many with wells and electricity. The residents split into two communities: The “stuck-up” Protestants lived in North Drawbridge, and the wilder Catholics resided in South Drawbridge. While quite a bit of feuding ensued, there were also “tide parties” where residents would row to neighbors’ houses for parties at high tide.

But as things were taking off for Drawbridge, the end was already looming. Booming construction in nearby San Jose pumped millions of gallons of water and raw sewage into the wetlands. Drawbridge began to sink…and stink. The nearby salt industry also grew and the waterfowl fled for a less salty environment, leaving the hunters with nothing to hunt. In 1955 the trains no longer stopped in Drawbridge, and everyone moved away…all but two last residents, that is. Charlie Luce and Nellie “Shotgun” Dollin refused to leave and fired upon anyone who dared approach them. They were gone by 1979. Drawbridge was a ghost town.

I set out for an impromptu trek to Drawbridge one warm winter afternoon, completely unprepared for an urban exploration journey. As the sun began to dip toward the horizon, I set off down the rocky trail with a camera and tripod slung over my shoulder. As the miles wore on, the sights and city noise of Fremont diminished on the horizon as the nature of the bay’s magnificent wetlands came alive. The old drawbridges for which the town was named have been replaced by modern rail bridges currently traversed by the frequent Altamont Commuter Express train. Getting to the town involves crossing one of the narrow bridges, wide enough only for the width of the 70 mph train. Reminiscent of the infamous train bridge crossing scene in Stand By Me, I stood at the end of the bridge looking off to the distance in both directions for any sign of a train. I moved onward. Exactly midway across the bridge, I hear it–the wail of a train horn. Traaaaaain!!! My walk turned to a trot as the flickering headlight of the train brightened. I made it across with time to spare.

With not a soul to be found, only the sounds of rustling wetland vegetation and the honking of hundreds of species of waterfowl filled the empty air. I spent a good hour exploring the twenty or so dilapidated remains of old gun clubs, a hotel, and houses. It’s the kind of place you can just sit and stare, soaking up the awe-inspiring scene of birds by the tens of thousands moving about. But with the sun slipping out of sight with nothing more than an eyelash of a moon in the sky, it was time for me to begin my flashlight-less journey back.

Drawbridge is now part of the US National Wildlife Refuge and a part of the largest wetland restoration ever attempted. They could have restored the town’s old buildings and turned it into a tourist attraction, but the feds made the right decision here: let nature grasp the remains of the tattered town and reclaim her land. Experiencing the beauty of these wetlands firsthand, I knew this was the only way to go. Within the next few decades, all sign of human habitation here will completely disappear.

Note that Drawbridge is now completely off limits to the public. The only way to see it is aboard either the Amtrak Capitol or Altamont Commuter Express train which pass through daily.

Click to enlarge:

Yet despite all the furious-paced craziness of Beijing and Shanghai, China is a country of stunning cultural heritage. The palaces are magnificent down to every detail. Walking the courtyards of the Forbidden City is like taking a majestic journey through a turbulent history. And only by trekking over miles of the Great Wall can you appreciate its magnitude as it snakes over distant hills to a pinpoint on the horizon. Modern Beijing and Shanghai possess ultra-modern architecture and sleek high-speed maglev and bullet trains.

Despite the photo-challenging elements of smog, snow, and rain, I think I managed to pull of a few decent shots of the people, ornate palaces, and ultra-modern architecture of Beijing and Shanghai: