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Orange County and the vehicles that ply its roads
We don’t really need a reminder of how widespread the automobile became in Southern California, especially after World War II. But after flipping through the Flickr stream of the Orange County...
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Santa Ana, California, 1961
We’ve sure seen plenty of California in our street scene series, but we’re not complaining – the dry climate means there’s always a good diversity of vehicles in shots from that state. Today’s photo,...
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Portland, Oregon, 1973; Abilene, Texas, 1977
Two more photos to round out this week’s bridges theme for our street scene series. The first comes from the Documerica project, taken by David Falconer in May 1973 approaching the I-5 bridge over the...
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Houston, 1962
Based on the filename for this photo, as posted on the H.A.M.B.’s Vintage shots from days gone by thread by swi66, it was taken somewhere on U.S. Route 59 in 1962. Route 59 passes through seven states...
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Bayamon, Puerto Rico, 1973
While we’ve seen John Vachon’s photos here before, they were taken in 1942 when he was shooting for the Farm Security Administration. Thirty years later, he shot a series of photos for the EPA’s...
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Los Angeles, 1950s
Ever since we took a look at the Hollywood tourist video from 1948 a couple weeks ago, we’ve been perusing tha ‘Tube for similar videos and came across this mesmerizing compilation of Los Angeles...
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St. Petersburg, Florida, 1952
February 11, 1952, was a Monday, not exactly the day of the week one would expect to see traffic backed up along Corey Avenue in St. Petersburg, Florida, but that’s exactly what we see here in this...
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NYC, 1957
Dipping again into the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s online photo archive, we find these two shots of New York City traffic by Bernie Stadiem, taken in 1957, judging from the cars we see here. The...
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Los Angeles, 1952
We hear it all the time how old car enthusiasts could tell what make and model a car was just from its headlamps and taillamps. Well, here’s your chance to prove that ability, with a handful of...
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Cleveland, 1973
We’re sure this photo by Frank Aleksandrowicz, taken for the EPA’s Documerica project in Cleveland in June of 1973, directly depicted typical rush hour traffic rather than the exodus to the suburbs,...
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Columbus, Ohio, 1966 and 1985
Longtime blog readers will recall that I spent my formative years in and around Columbus, Ohio, so I was delighted to come across PhotOhio.org, the Grandview Heights Public Library’s online photo...
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Londoners get there
As we’ve noted before, mass transit strikes always make for good carspotting opportunities. In 1962, London experienced a one-day tube strike that caused massive traffic jams, and British Pathe, in...
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Los Angeles, 1953
The modern-day street view of the intersection of Venice and La Cienega boulevards in Los Angeles is nigh unrecognizable compared to this scene, snapped in 1953 from a street car trestle no longer...
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Portland, Oregon, 1939
Just try not to cringe at the near-misses at least once throughout these films of various intersections in Portland, Oregon, uploaded by Dan Haneckow of Cafe Unknown and pointed out to us by Gene...
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Los Angeles, 1953, part 2
After yesterday’s videos of Portland’s dangerous intersections, we recalled this photo series on the USC Libraries digital archive of a couple dangerous intersections in the Los Angeles area, shot in...
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California, 1960s
Cruising through the LayItLow forums recently, we came across a thread of vintage street scene photos, most of which we hadn’t seen before, though after a little digging, it seems the photos had...
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Honolulu, 1973, part 2
For a few years and especially in certain locales, carspotting became less a game of Identify That Car and more a game of Count The Bugs. This Charles O’Rear photo of the morning rush hour on a...
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Los Angeles, 1955, part 2
We’ve seen versions of this Sid Avery photo, taken of an unnamed Los Angeles freeway in 1955 (we’re guessing the 101), floating around the web purporting that it shows typical 4:30 p.m. rush hour...
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“Too many cars, not enough space:” British road congestion in the Sixties
Here in the United States, we’ve long dealt with road congestion by simply building bigger roads, among other tactics. Two lanes become four, six, eight, and more. In Merry Ol’, however, they didn’t...
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Barcelona, 1960s
As far as we can tell, Eugeni Forcano was more interested in fashion and documenting Catalonian life than cars, but as we see from these two photos we came across recently, cars did at least...
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New York City, circa 1969, part 3
One more from Impounded‘s set of found slides depicting NYC streets in about 1969. From the original uncropped vertical photo, it appears that the photographer is looking south along FDR Drive,...
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San Francisco, 1960s
Richard C. Clark’s father – also named Richard C. Clark – at one point served as the public relations manager for the Golden Gate Bridge, and as such had pretty much unlimited access to the bridge....
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I fought the law… and I won – How I weaseled my way out of a (probably...
This didn’t happen. Not this time, anyway. Photo by author. It was the perfect mix of conditions: a dark, clear night; a miles-long straight shot of divided four-lane unimpeded by development; light...
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