Found on Modcult

What's also great about this is you know that this event was put on by a bunch of hippies, just as today a funeral for the hipster would be put on by a bunch of hipsters, and a funeral for the douchebag would be put on by me.

Dolores Park was in full effect yesterday, with a concentration of adorable at the slip n' slide.

I figured that because it was Memorial Day weekend, I would take a trip somewhere new.  Somewhere like Noe Valley.  Totally crashed a BBQ in which featured people mixing Four Loko with Cook's between shots of tequila, a crazy cats digging holes in the garden and a goddamn hen-house full of real life hens just cluckin' and diggin'.  Fascinating!  That said, the highlight of the trip west was the sass the roommates left for each other all over the house.  Between Four Loko, champagne, sass and and sampling of Akon tracks, I'm pretty certain Noe Valley gays are my spirit animal.

We've all oohed and aahed over the Victorian era footage of the carriage ride down Market Street (My, that man's derby hat looks positively smashing! … are those horses?) but honestly, I find the footage in this video from 1984 far more compelling.

It's just some guy driving down Broadway onto the Embarcadero Freeway (for those of us born post-Loma Prieta who don't actually remember it, that part is actually pretty cool) and across the Bay Bridge. Towards the end he's listening to “White Lines” by Melle Mel on the radio. Basically this video is everything  - well, almost everything, since the 49ers aren't in this - that I've imagined being awesome about San Francisco in the 80s, all rolled into one. If I actually were to time-travel to the city in 1984, I'm pretty sure that I'd inevitably end up intervening in my parents' budding romance and screwing up my future existence, but after seeing this, I think it's a risk I'm willing to take.

This second video is much prettier than the other one and shows many different parts of the city, like Fisherman's Wharf when it was actually charming and not horrifying, and Mission Street when those empty theaters that will soon be condos were actually theaters. The parts shot around Nob Hill look basically the same as today, but the rest is mind-blowing.

Maybe it's just the aged quality of the film, but in this old footage the city looks so clean and well maintained, and everyone's dressed really well. I guess the world of the early 1960s really did look exactly like Mad Men! Let it be known that I fully support a resurgence of skinny ties in the Financial District suit-wearing population. For now when I want to see cute sixties style my only option is to go to Edinburgh on Wednesday nights.

So anyway, you know how sometimes on Mission Mission they post about something from San Francisco way back when and all the old timers take to the comments and reminisce? I'd be really psyched if that were to happen on this post. I love all those stories about how much cooler this city was before the dot-com boom.