Life of La Vida » International Creative Photography Capturing Real Life Moments, La Vida Creations Photography

Betsy has been feeling a little left out of the blog-writing process here at La Vida Creations, so we thought it would be fun for her to post one of her favorite personal projects. Take it away Betsy!

Welcome to one of my favorite things in the urban world…STREETCARS!!!!

This is a long story, but I’ll try to keep it brief for the sake of our faithful blog readers

I volunteered this past fall to help out the San Diego Historic Streetcars group with their appearance at the Little Italy Festa Event.

Let’s start at the beginning and talk about how I was hell-bent on locating this group… we were sitting having coffee one day at LeStat’s in our ‘hood with our colleague Christina Fleming when we see one of these streetcars go by the big front windows of the coffee shop on a flat bed truck. I was kind of speechless since I had heard rumors of this project being dead for years… I was officially on a mission and had to get to the bottom of this!!

After some investigative googling and digging around online, I found a contact and enthusiastically volunteered to help however possible. I later found out that their group thought that I was either one of the most passionate volunteers they had encountered OR I was completely batty! I like to think it was the former…

Meet Streetcar 138, one of three surviving cars originally part of the San Diego system in University Heights.

These three lonely Class 1 Streetcars were saved from certain doom a decade ago by a very passionate individual who has been so committed to these, he’s protected them, restored them, and watched over them for the past 10 years on his own dime… and his own clock!

As you can see, they’re still very much a work in progress… there is a lot of work that still needs to be done to get them where they need to be and save this slice of history.

Once upon a time there was a little slice of midtown known as University Heights. As the city of San Diego was blossoming and growing, this historic area developed up the hill from downtown as a little safe haven from the downtown hustle and bustle, overlooking what is now Mission Valley, but used to be sprawling dairy and farmlands.
People would commute on the streetcars up to University Heights at the end of the day, perhaps to take a ride on an Ostrich (yep. Ostrich farm) or pick up a lovely new Ostrich plume for their Sunday hat. Well, sadly during the middle of the century, some corporate-minded individuals helped lobby the city to trash the streetcar concept and move towards buses, the wave of the future. {editor’s note… don’t get me started on THAT one! I’ll let you read the mass amounts of history of San Diego public transit on the Historic Streetcars’ website here. There is a WEALTH of knowledge there!}

Ding, ding, ding goes the trolley. Ring, ring, ring goes the bell…
Who doesn’t love to ring a bell? It’s a big hit when the streetcar comes out for a public appearance!

I’ve been starting to volunteer with this organization however possible to help get the word out about the Streetcar restoration project and hopefully help raise public awareness about the importance of saving this part of San Diego’s past.
The goal of the organization is to get these cars restored to their glory, get the historic route between downtown and University Heights going again, and get these beauties into regular service. Wouldn’t it be amazing to see these riding the historic Gold Line from Santa Fe Depot to Balboa Park again as it did for tourists coming to the PanAmerican Expo almost 100 years ago? The ultimate goal is get the cars and the historic lines restored for Historic Landmark status.

Love how there was a swing band playing the stage adjacent to the streetcar. Doesn’t get much better than that!

It was cool to see how much people just enjoyed hanging out inside the streetcar and talking about how awesome it would be to have these moving everyone around town.

And this family was so cute! The grandparents were telling the kids what life was like getting around on streetcars like these when they were young. History is awesome

Be sure to go over to their website and check it out! They also have a facebook page where they post upcoming events where you can meet a streetcar in person for yourself!