3 Streetcars
art, digital March 23rd, 2010
3 Streetcars. Illinois Street MUNI yard, San Francisco.
I took a little PhotoCrawl on my lunch hour today, first to Kitchenette for lunch and then to see what’s changed in Dogpatch.
As with the rest of the areas that lay neglected years ago, things have changed. Mid-day parking was a challenge, eateries have popped up where old longshoreman bars sat empty, hipsters and 21st century dot-commers waited in line with retro sneakers and expensive messenger bags, and quite a few business types were milling about.
When MUNI opened up the F-Market trolley line, the city purchased nine so-called Peter Witt cars from Azienda Trasporti Municipali — Milano, the transit system of Milan, Italy. The Witt design dates from the 1920s, and at one time thousands of the cars ran in North American and European cities. Milan once had about 500 in service. It is finally scrapping them, and Muni figures the cars have many years of life left.
The San Francisco cars are painted in the livery of many of the cities that originally ran the cars, and make a fitting tribute to a classic design.
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