San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Climb aboard to rediscover what makes city a fun ride
Simple joy of decorating cable car for Christmas
If children obsessed with buses and trains and all manner of public transportation could envision their dream office, it would be San Francisco’s cable car barn. Many of the people who work there grew up in the city, loved riding the cable cars as kids, and can’t quite believe they make their living tending to a fleet that doubles as a national historic landmark.
In our rapidly changing city, in which new towers seem to sprout every day as beloved institutions close, it’s a bit of a miracle that the hulking cable car barn at Washington and Mason streets lives on, serving as a one-of-a-kind maintenance and repair shop by day and housing 38 cable cars overnight.
The jobs here are of the type that can be described in one word. Mechanic. Painter. Carpenter. That’s refreshing in a San Francisco where nobody quite knows what anybody else does all day. That new Salesforce Tower — can you say how the thousands of people inside spend their long hours? I certainly can’t.
I got to spend all of Tuesday at the cable car barn, which is closed to the public but occasion-
ally open to pesky journalists. The occasion was the final 2018 project for #TotalSF, the program that Chronicle pop culture critic Peter Hartlaub and I devised to celebrate what’s still great about ever-changing San Francisco.
In April, we rode every Muni bus, street car, train and cable car line for #TotalMuni2018. We spent a day in September venturing to tourist traps. We surveyed readers to identify the most San Francisco Halloween costume, which resulted in Hartlaub dressed as a giant It’s-It. And on Tuesday we decorated a cable car for the holidays in Chronicle paraphernalia.
The idea came from Val Lupiz, a longtime cable car gripman we met during #TotalMuni2018. He helms an annual project decorating cable cars for the holidays and invited The Chronicle to participate. Car No. 1 now sports signs on its roof and backside reading “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” Scores of little Chronicle ornaments hang from garlands inside the car, and yards of Chronicle ribbon are looped throughout.
The best trimmings hang inside: miniature replicas of famous front pages. We avoided anything too depressing because there’s enough of that in the news these days. We also avoided reprinting the 1955 banner headline, “Cable car runs wild as brakes fail — 20 injured.” San Francisco is already scary enough for tourists.
Among our picks? Our first front page from Jan. 16, 1865. “The Golden Gate Bridge” — the headline from May 28, 1937, when the span opened for business. “Peace!” on Aug. 15, 1945, marking the end of World War II. “Men on the Moon,” the self-explanatory headline from July 21, 1969. “WE DO” — the simple, lovely headline from June 27, 2015, marking the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision guaranteeing a right to samesex marriage nationwide.
Not to brag, but Car No. 1 looks ahhh-mazing. It’s on the rails now and will stay decorated until early January. If you spot it, take a picture and email it to me, or post it on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #ChronicleCableCar. We’ll send you a framed photo of renowned Chronicle columnist Herb Caen standing next to a cable car (while supplies last).
Between taping front pages and hanging ornaments, I got to take a close-up look at how the barn works and the raft of workers it takes to maintain the 1873 technology. There’s a superintendent. Two supervisors. Seventeen mechanics. Two painters. Three carpenters. Six custodians.
The 27 cars in rotation each day begin rumbling along the tracks inside the barn and swoop out through the huge door and down Washington Street beginning at 5:32 a.m. The last ones return by 1:30 a.m. The rest are held back for renovation and repair.
Each cable car is inspected every 15 days, parked over “the pit” where mechanics can stand beneath it. The grips wear out quickly and are swapped out every three days.
“It’s like the Indy 500 — same idea. But we can’t change wheels and tires out that fast,” joked Arne Hansen, the superintendent, who said he loves his job because he’s working with so many enthusiastic people.
“People come to work here because they want to,” he said. “People riding the cable cars aren’t angry people on their way to work. They’re tourists coming from all over the world wanting a one-of-a-kind thrill ride.”
Dan Hicks was born in Alabama but moved with his family to the Bay Area when he was 3 weeks old. He worked for many years at auto body shops and car dealerships painting actual cars, but scored his dream job painting cable cars three years ago. The perfectionist wasn’t thrilled with the way former painters chose their colors and is carefully restoring each car to its intended shade.
“We’re trying to get back to the original colors that look pristine, you know?” he said. “I’m just trying to get things back like they’re supposed to be.”
As we were decorating, a couple of gripmen came by to check out our work. They said tourists love the decorated cars — and sometimes wait longer in line to ride them. Some of them, including our Car No. 1, even have strands of twinkling holiday lights.
“You turn on the lights as we’re turning the car around the table, and people say, ‘Oooohhh!’ ” said gripman Ryan Banks.
He and gripman Rico Ellis are San Francisco natives and remember riding the cable cars as boys. They vividly remember the smell of pizza wafting from the Woolworths next to the Powell Street cable car turnaround and describe their jobs as childhood dreams come true.
“I never thought as a kid I’d be driving one of these,” Ellis said. “It’s exciting, it’s fun — the smell of the car, the clangclang-clang, all the noise.”
Banks agreed, saying, “It’s really not a job anymore.”
I feel the same way about my job — most days anyway. Thanks for reading and making it such a fun ride. And let me know if you spot Cable Car No. 1. You truly can’t miss it.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf