Lost Bay Area Stories

1940's General Motors exhibit at Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco. Transparent Car with Pontiac Chassis and Body by Fisher.

1924 Photo of a Flint Automobile with Ghiradelli Square in the background.

C.W Smiths Yum-Yum treat stand during the 1930's at Playland in San Francisco

Yosemite in the 1920's

I love old movie billboards. This one was in San Francisco in 1922. Betty Compson was a rising Hollywood startlet and had early connections and cameos with Alfred Hitchcock. Apparently this movie was thought to be long lost until a copy was found in the Gosfilmofond Russian Archive. I could resist DeOlidfying it. Here's a nice synopsis of the movie in the Humbolt Times Want to go to the South Sea Isles? Nearly everybody does, since reading the books of Frederic O’Brien, W.

San Jose's Marcian Rossi was an interesting local character as I've mentioned in other posts.. He was the overseer of the family's collection of Marco Polo maps. He wrote a science fiction novel on a trip to mars. He invented weapons for splicing enemy ships and shells to cut through barbed wire. It's unclear if any of these pursuits ever earned Marcian any money......perhaps momentary fame. Apparently M. F. Rossi was also a holder of a Florentine promissory note back dat

Ironically, this debate a hundred years ago is the same one that we're having today. Sources: San Francisco Call, October 5, 1921

I've already posted about San Jose resident Marcian Rossi's collection of Marco Polo era maps and their noteworthiness. I've also posted about his collaboration with a Santa Clara University engineer to invent and patent new weapons and artillery for the military. It turns out, the ever so creative Mr. Rossi was also a science fiction author and published a work called 'A Trip to Mars'. It was published by Smith McKay in 1920. Mr. Rossi's conception of spacecraft and propu

Cultural norms and modesty were amusingly different a hundred years ago. Showing legs and ankles were a sign of avant guard fashion. There's a definitely an Oriental fetish quality to the writing of the era too. In 1921, the story of Fah Teh Loy's bifurcated pantaloons caused quite a stir. So memorable in fact that a columnist just had to write about it.. Fah Teh Loy’s Wearing’Em Higher Than You’d Suppose They’re' wearing 'em short in Chinatown. Sure, of course. It doesn’t

As I've mentioned in a previous post, Marcian Rossi's claim to fame was that he held a collection of maps from the Marco Polo era. He was also a local merchant and tailor. During WW I, he also decide to become an inventor and filed a patent on a projectile to defeat barbed wire fencing. In the patent, the device is described as such: This invention relates to a projectile for ordnance purposes and has for its object to provide a hollow projectile in which is mounted a movab

There was an Italian San Jose resident and local tailor/machineist that lived in the area 100 years ago who's lineage connected him through friendship with the Marco Polo family and passed on documents and the maps that survived through the 7 centuries. As of 2014, they have ended up with a descendant Jeffrey R. Pendergraft. Part of this collection is referred to as the Rossi Map Collection by cartographers and academics. His name was Marcianus F. Rossi (Marcian Rossi) and