The buildings become smaller, the pace slows and languid palm trees grace the median. The tracks leave Market to make a loop, and the line doubles back on itself at Castro Street, in the heart of the Castro District. The Castro is one of the country's oldest and most famous gay neighborhoods, and the local street scene is always, well, a scene. After taking a vintage trolley to a deco movie palace and watching a 1940s film classic, you may find yourself liking Wendell Willkie's chances in the next election. It's here that a group of trolley enthusiasts calling themselves the Market Street Railway Co. work on restoring old streetcars to their former glory.
People even have nicknames for some of the cars.
Look, there goes the Pumpkin. San Francisco's vintage fleet boasts more than a dozen cars from abroad, including cars from Moscow and Hiroshima. The bulk of the city's vintage fleet are American-made PCC cars, named after the President's Conference Committee, a 1930s trolley consortium that came up with the elegant design. From the outside, the PCCs look like butter dishes on wheels. Their sleek lines and tastefully understated deco interiors set the standard for the industry, and were the iron workhorses in many U.S. cities from the late 1930s until most streetcar systems were scrapped.