1940s

The Southern Pacific’s Streamliner Coast Daylight was the West’s finest train in the 1940s, 50s, and early 1960s. It hugged the Pacific Ocean with great views. Linking Los Angeles and San Francisco on a glorious daylight trip, streaking along the edge of the Pacific Ocean for more than a hundred ... Read More »

Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) was a California airline headquartered in San Diego that operated from 1949 to 1988. It was the first large discount airline in the United States. PSA called itself “The World’s Friendliest Airline” and painted a smile on its airplanes’ nose, the PSA Grinningbirds. PSA was very successful and a ... Read More »

For first-class passengers aboard ocean liners and cruises, from the 1930s into the 1960s, the menu choices were staggering. On ships like the SS Europa, RMS Queen Mary, and the SS United States, dinner might have had 12 courses, with 8 to 10 options for each course. It is difficult ... Read More »

From 1949 until 1970, the California Zephyr operated daily during the 1950s and 1960s between Chicago and San Francisco. Over two days and nights, across prairies, through canyons, over (and through) mountains, on a timetable that maximized the impact of the scenery for tourists rather than meeting the schedule of ... Read More »

Chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr.’s twin interests in baseball and Catalina Island – he bought Catalina in 1919 and gained a controlling interest in the Chicago Cubs in 1921 – dovetailed nicely when he made the decision to have the Cubs train on Catalina starting in 1921.  In doing ... Read More »

Premiere Passenger Trains during the 1950s were the finest in the world. With excellent meals, suburb Pullman service, dinner in the diner, club lounges, train secretaries, barbershops, cocktail bars, observation cars… trains like the Super Chief, 20th Century Limited, and the California Zypher were world-famous.   New York Central’s streamlined ... Read More »

Speaking like BETTE DAVIS, CARY GRANT or FRASIER on “FRASIER”! During the Golden Era of classic Hollywood films, when sound films were first introduced, the silent stars who made the transition to the talkies were given lessons in diction and pronunciation. WATCH THE NEW VIDEO – SPEAKING TRANS-ATLANTIC They were ... Read More »

From the 1930s until his death in 1966, a self-proclaimed hedonist, he was the image of a celebrity. An author, journalist, historian, raconteur, gourmet, and bon vivant extraordinary – this amazing personality was one of the first gay men to have a publicly open relationship.   Columnist Walter Winchell called ... Read More »

Thirty-four years on Market Street, then destroyed by greedy developers and political hacks. Sound familiar? When the Fox Theater was built in 1929, it seemed as if there weren’t enough adjectives to describe the movie theater’s magnificence. The San Francisco Chronicle called the opening “a spectacle of such beauty and ... Read More »