In a ceremony at the F-line Castro terminal on October 28th, PCC streetcar No. 1051 was dedicated in honor of Supervisor Harvey Milk in his role as transit advocate. Milk’s nephew Stuart Milk joined San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) Executive Director Nathaniel P. Ford, Sr. and several other dignitaries including Market Street Railway Director Jamison Wieser in severing a ribbon across the car’s front door, after which guests streamed through the car to see a series of displays celebrating the life and work of Harvey Milk.
Speakers at the event included Assemblyman Mark Leno, who has supported the F-line since the first Trolley Festival in 1983, San Francisco Supervisors Tom Ammiano, Bevan Dufty and Ross Mirkarimi, City Treasurer Jose Cisneros, SFMTA Vice Chair Tom Nolan, Market Street Railway President Rick Laubscher, and friends of Harvey Milk including Cleve Jones, Dan Nicoletta, and Anne Kronenberg. Kronenberg, who was Milk’s campaign manager for his successful 1977 run for Supervisor, recalled how Milk used the PCC streetcars as a “mobile campaign platform.” Milk would board a car at Castro “and walk up and down the aisle, introducing himself and handing out campaign brochures,” she added.
The event was capped with a ride to Market & Van Ness on Car No. 1051, retracing the daily commute of Milk from his Castro Street camera store to City Hall in the last year of his life. Milk usually rode PCC cars in the identical ‘simplified’ green and cream Muni livery used in the 1970s, but in those days, the PCCs were on the K and L lines emerging from the Twin Peaks Tunnel (M-line service was suspended from 1974 to 1978), then running along 17th and Church Streets instead of upper Market because of subway construction.
Harvey Milk has of course gained global fame as a pioneering advocate for gay rights, but his passion for improving urban quality of life, particularly transit, has gained little public notice until now. The display panels on the car point out that Milk was the strongest voice in city government for better Muni service. He was the first city official to use a Muni Fast Pass every day, and is shown here, as in the streetcar display, promoting the then-new Fast Pass with Muni General Manager Curtis Green. In fact, Milk was the only member of the Board of Supervisors at the time who rode Muni every day.
Car No. 1051 becomes the second Muni streetcar dedicated to a person. Car No. 130 was dedicated several years ago to Herb Caen, the legendary newspaper columnist, whose musings about the ‘Muniserable Railway’ over six decades of chronicling San Francisco kept the pressure on Muni to improve service. Excerpts from Caen’s columns about Muni are featured in the car display, along with his observations of places along the route of the F-line on Market Street and The Embarcadero.
According to SFMTA Executive Director Nat Ford, future streetcar dedications are possible, but will be focused on people who, like Milk and Caen, have made meaningful contributions to public transit in San Francisco.
Click on these links to view the Milk displays and Caen displays here at streetcar.org.
