I write mostly fantasy, not historical, but this streetcar trip along Market Street absolutely fascinated me. This is four days before the great earthquake. My grandpa Al was 6 years old. My grandpa Harold would be born in one year. All these people going about their day’s errands, the businessmen catching the streetcar, boys running along with a motorcar, the willy-nilly traffic– a perfectly normal day, their Ordinary World, and in four days it would all change.
As I watched the streetcars and the horse-drawn wagons, the motor cars and the horseman, I began thinking about setting and world building, and the interesting conflict possible in the mix of the modern and the old in a place on the cusp of change in so many ways.
Market Street after the quake:
Films of the aftermath:
San Francisco Earthquake Aftermath, Part 2 (1906)
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