Lost Landscapes at The Internet Archive

The Lost Landscapes of San Francisco: A Benefit for the Internet Archive. Monday January 29. 

The corner of Funston and Clement is about a half mile from my apartment. On that corner is a large, white two story building. It was obviously a church at some time. It has the classical architecture of a Greek temple. It was once the Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist. On the board that used to announce services and sermons it now says Internet Archive.

The Internet Archive has a goal that seems almost impossible. During the early days of the Internet there was little thought to what its legacy would be. Everything was focussed on the next thing. Links went “bad” and early sites were abandoned. Who cared about the history of the Internet? “The Web was ephemeral. Unlike newspapers, no one was saving it.” It was hard to think of the Internet in historical terms.  

The founder of the Internet Archive is Brewster Kahle. He started archiving the Internet in 1996. The Wayback Machine preserved early web sites. 279 billion web pages! The mission of the Internet Archive is, “To provide universal access to all knowledge.” The Archive started digitizing books (11 million) audio recordings (4 million, including 160,000 live concerts) images and software programs. 

I Googled the former church’s address. 300 Funston. In seconds Wikipedia gave me the history of the building. There was a history of Christian Science. How long would it have taken to find this in “the old days?" Maybe it would have taken a trip to the library. Would I have bothered?

The founder of Christian Science was Mary Baker Eddy> She was a powerful, dynamic woman. Christian Science taught that, “Sickness is an illusion that can be corrected by prayer alone.” Eddy’s followers believed in philosophical idealism. Reality is purely spiritual and the material world is an illusion. Sounds good to me. 

The religion was popular, but membership has dwindled. Christian Science drew media attention in the Nineties with court cases involving parents who did not get their children medical care. 

The Google search led to the Pacific Coast Architecture Database at:  pcad.lib.washington.edu. The cost of building the church was estimated at $125,000. The building was sold to the Open Library of San Francisco in 2009.

Tonight The Internet Archive was joining forces with Rick Prelinger to present Lost Landscapes 12. In the early Eighties Prelinger had started to collect and accumulate film footage that most archives and libraries were throwing away. He was going to digitize and preserve them. He saw film as a look back in time that was being lost. Home movies were a treasure trove of information.

Prelinger put together some of the footage and presented them as Lost Landscapes. They became popular events that sold out The Castro Theater. 

I had been dying to get inside this building and snoop. We checked in and there was a small lobby area with appetizers from the wonderful people of La Mediterranee Restaurant on nearby Fillmore Street.  A TV showed scenes from Lost Landscapes 7.  Tonight’s event was in The Big Room upstairs. It was a large auditorium that had served as the center of Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist. We would sit in pews facing a stage and small screen. A cardboard “Wayback Machine” was next to the screen. 

It was a church, and it was an odd setting. There were mannequins along one wall. Some were sitting in the pews that had bad sight lines to the screen. They were about half size caricatures, but they were oddly life like. In the back, behind the pews were two large black Internet servers. They were framed by church alcoves behind them. Lights on them blinked. They reminded me of an old science fiction move.   

Founder Brewster Kahle comes onstage. Tonight is a fund raiser and he thanks donors. He tells us about an anonymous donor that made such a fortune with Bitcoin that he donated a million dollars to The Internet Archive! This donor will also match any contributions in the next three months by two to one, up to another million dollars. So, if anyone knows how to raise a million dollars in the next three months, let Brewster Kahle know. 

He explains the mannequins. Anyone who is employed by The Internet Archive for three years gets their own dummy! It looks like quite an honor, and an incentive to stay working for the nonprofit. 

Kahle points out the monolithic servers in the back. Lights blink on them. Each light is a sign that someone is downloading something from InternetArchive.org. 

Kahle admits that when Prelinger told him about his idea for Lost Landscapes he “didn’t think it would fly.” Why would anyone come to see someone else’s home movies? He didn’t like to watch home movies of his own. There’s many history buffs and film fanatics in San Francisco. Lost Landscapes became wildly popular. I’ve tried to attend before and found the event sold out well in advance. 

Most of the footage we’ll see are home movies. There are ads and odd commercial footage from the past. Prelinger has tracked down out takes from movies filmed in San Francisco. 

Prelinger asks how many are attending a Lost Landscapes event for the first time. I’m surprised when at least two-thirds of the crowd raise their hands. I’ve watched Lost Landscapes online, but it’s not the same. Tonight is an opportunity.  

Prelinger has a podium with a laptop on it. “Let’s see if I can get this thing to work.” He explains that there will be no sound to the clips. We are the soundtrack. We’re encouraged to yell out comments or questions. Prelinger often finds out during Lost Landscapes where some of the more obscure footage was shot. Sometimes he doesn’t know who the people in the home movies are. “If you recognize someone or something, let us know!”  

We’ve been trained to keep quiet during films, so this is quite a switch. So what do people do? This audience seems oddly quiet. There are comments and questions, but most just watch. Maybe it’s the Inner Richmond neighborhood.

The ads for Lost Landscape gave us an idea of the footage we would see tonight. New Deal labor footage. Out takes from The Line Up. The filming of What’s Up Doc? with Ryan O’Neal and Barbara Streisand at Twenty-Fifth and Balboa. Home movies and the clincher for me: North Beach clubs and nightlife! 

Some of the early footage we see is older. There are shots of the Bay Bridge being built. The City skyline from sixty, seventy years ago! Everything looks small. It was the mythical San Francisco that we have heard and read about. 

You have to feel like a bit of a voyeur watching someone else’s home movies, but the Latino family in the Portrero are so friendly and open to the camera that it seems OK. We see someone’s first Holy Communion and then a birthday party. At the end the kitchen is scanned. Someone in the audience wished it was her kitchen. 

There’s great historical footage. A labor dispute on the Embarcadero. Trucks that can’t be unloaded line up. Another clip shows Chinese protesting the loading of a Japanese ship with scrap metal. Prelinger thinks it's from 1939.  

China had already been invaded by Japan. A clip shows a parade in Chinatown to call attention to and aid Chinese refugees. Prelinger said the parade did have a big effect, including getting the first public housing put up in Chinatown. 

The North Beach footage is pretty cool. Most of it is of the neon signs of the night spots and restaurants. Some I at least heard of, many of them I did not. Ray’s. Vanessi’s. DelVecchio’s. Gay Nineties on Broadway. Finocchio’s gets some applause. Of course The Condor. A shot of The Bocce Caffe.

We see the mysterious Running Man. He’s appeared in Lost Landscapes before. He goes through Chinatown and runs up California towards Nob Hill. Prelinger still doesn’t know who he is. 

There are out takes from Don Siegel’s classic Film Noir: The Line Up. A school group herded by nuns gets off a bus and enters Sutro Baths. We get a great look at the inside of the building. The film is obviously of higher quality than the home movies.  

One family has great shots of iconic San Francisco sites. Coit Tower. A ride on the glass elevator at the St. Francis with a view of the Forties skyline. The huge, almost forgotten Fleishacker Pool. Fisherman’s Wharf. Playland. The movies concentrate on showing two young daughters, but we can spot places in the background. Even casual footage of Fisherman’s Wharf shows the history of the area. There’s an audible reaction during a short shot of the now gone exterior of the Steinhardt Aquarium. The seals frolic outside of the museum. 

People shout out comments and information during the show. It is still a bit surprising how many of us share an obsession with obscure San Francisco history. I’ve stopped wondering why. Is it selective nostalgia? 

One of the last clips is footage of a peace march in June of 1969. Prelinger says he concentrated on faces during his editing. The hair and clothing are very similar to today’s demonstrators. “Not much has changed.”