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- Hacker News
- Wild there's a Safeway sign in there and not Alpha Beta, Fedco, and the old Coronado bridge sign.
My parents grew up around this time and a lot of it still looked liked this when I was a kid in the 90s.
I always wanted to move back to this San Diego, but it no longer exists. Appreciate whoever did this work.
by stevenfoster - As someone born and raised in san diego since the 70s, this is really nice!by latchkey
- Can't forget California smog and haze that varied between yellow, orange, and brown.
- And we just can't capture the smell of those vehicles or the smell of gas stations of that time.by annoyingnoob
- Nice you could choose if you would like your gasoline with or without service :-) (4:00).
Why was the chain called "Der Wienerschnitzel" and not "Das Wienerschnitzel". It is (was) a proper noun, but why the wrong article? (5:02)
A small part appears twice (from 8:51--9:06).
more cyclists than I see in current streetview footage
Coca-Cola delivery vans where yellow?
by sllabres - Nice you could choose if you would like your gasoline with or without service
Still possible in some places. Especially cities with large numbers of retirees.
I used a full-service optional Shell station in Las Vegas last year. Unlike when I was young, full-service didn't mean in increase in the price of gas.
by reaperducer - > Nice you could choose if you would like your gasoline with or without service :-) (4:00).
Yeah. Too bad you weren't able to choose if you would like your gasoline with or without lead yet.
by jonas21 - > before pulling into a Texaco to pay $0.34 per gallon for low-lead Fire Chief gas and fill up your "Mellow Yellow" AMC Gremlin.
The nostalgia aside, that's $3.23/gallon today. Cheaper than today with our ongoing war, but same price as Nov 2020. At 20mpg that AMC gremlin was about as fuel efficient as our modern huge SUVs though.
by danans - Folks might find the archives of California Revealed interesting - photos, videos that you can filter on place, time, subject, etc.
- I drove down Garnet and Grand so many times as a teenager on the way to the beach. Beings back a few memories. Most of that was thirty years ago, and the videos are from way earlier. But it's kind of interesting that some of it seems familiar.
I actually don't really think cities should be like that though. They should evolve more freely. No point in trying to explain it though.
by ilaksh - Color is magnificent and I can't believe we've lost so much joy on our relentless march to hyper-optimized profit. I recently read another article about how everything has gotten more monochrome, will try to find it again.
In scanning some slides from the 1970s, I was struck by the colors of the pants! Bright! Stripes! Fun! I sew shirts and gravitate towards bright prints, and everything tends to stand out because clothing in general doesn't seem as varied today.
EDIT - Found many articles along the same lines, some even with the same images. This isn't the original one that I was thinking about, but it is equivalent
by squeedles - Excluding pantsuits, the 70's were a great time for clothes!by WalterBright
- Les Girls is still there. I chuckle every time I pass it on the way to the rehearsal space my band uses. I always suspected that it had been a bigger deal in some bygone era; glad to see that confirmed via photographic evidence.by alexjplant
- I keep hearing that whole area is gonna be razed as part of the Midway/Sports Arena redevelopment, but I feel like as long as MCRD stays put, Les Girls will always have a home. LOLby jimt1234
- It is shocking how quickly California developed from agriculture to this, and how it basically stopped developing further after hitting this point. These photos could just as believably be van nuys in 2026. No wonder why we have a housing crisis. Progress and building to meet demand has been refused for almost 60 years.by asdff
- > It is shocking how quickly California developed from agriculture to this
Check out Disneyland. There was nothing else there when it opened in 1955
by socalgal2 - I think it's the only possible outcome if sprawl is allowed.
New families with some money spend too much income buying house.
Kids move out, parents get old and don't get out as much. Don't keep up the house, because they need to retire.
Sell house that's only attractive to lower income. Low income statistics take over the area.
Nearby businesses close from everything related to low income statistics.
Repeat with new families and newly built houses at edge of city, letting the interior rot.
Like a slime mold.
by nomel - I love looking at historical photos of Southern California if only to re-enforce this exact phenomenon. At one point the largest vineyard in the world existed in Southern California [0]. Just a small patch of green and some abandoned buildings remain [1].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guasti%2C_California
[1]: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Guasti,+Ontario,+CA+91761/
by lapetitejort - That was my biggest gripe growing up in SD - felt like Caltrans / SANDAG abdicated responsibility for developing good transit/bike/ped infra, doubling down on car dependency. It should be a mecca of active transportation given the weather!
- I work in commercial real estate, grew up in San Diego and work in the SoCal market. I am not joking that the MAIN problem is Prop 13, which came into effect 5 years after this video was made.
I deal with these owners EVERY DAY who would rather sit on crappy buildings and land because why not, it costs them nothing. They've owned forever. Literally TODAY I had an offer rejected from a Seller that would have yielded 80 units of affordable housing in an area with $150k median income, delivering completion in 2028-2029.
- Your color correction is incredible - the frames you selected look much better than the original video.
The matrix of vehicles is my favorite part. If you drive down these same streets today it's a sea of black, white and grey.
You'll be happy to know that Les Girls is still there today, advertising burlesque, go go dancers and "full nude". They finally replaced the sign earlier this year, but it still looks very much the same.
Les Girls is the feature of a fascinating podcast, too: https://www.kpbs.org/podcasts/stripper-energy
by AntiRush - Everything looks so green, but I'm not sure if it's the color correction or because there was water back then. :shrug:by jimt1234
- The Les Girls sign has stood at the same place basically unchanged until a few months ago, iconic. I remember when I first came across these videos I was living in an area of the city that was hardly developed and mostly dirt roads it was baffling. But aftwards I moved to the center of the city and it was baffling for the opposite reason, the storefronts and buildings were basically the same. Looking at the street view now and downtown also looks similar but a lot more trees.
Edit:
Looks like the author only has a reference to a subset of the originals on archive.org. There's tons more for more rural parts of SD you can find them on the city website:
https://www.sandiego.gov/digitalarchives/film-audio/street-v...
by ear7h