Okay, so we admit it — as wonky as our members and friends can get about streetcars, here’s something we hadn’t thought of before. Streetcars as superheroes. Or at least anthropomorphized with some swagga.
Left to right, we’ve got 1912 Car No. 1, an orange Milan tram (love the designer look), Muni No. 162 in its 1950s “Wings,” the Blackpool “boat tram” (no hat, thank you), and Muni No. 130 in its 1940s blue and gold.
They’re the work of Julian Lozos, an artist who lives in Bernal Heights and creates anthropomorphic representations of a variety of San Francisco landmarks. It’s all chronicled by our board member Todd Lappin, impresario of Telstar Logistics among other talents, in his blog Bernalwood. Julian was raising money for a calendar of these images and he made his goal. So yes, we’re a little late on this one, but like Muni service, better late…
When a quartet of tracks carried rumbling old streetcars four abreast up and down the length of Market Street, they called it “Roar of the Four.” With a nod to that history and the cool appearance of Julian’s guys, we hereby dub this “Jive of the Five.”
UPDATE, November 13: We now have a limited supply of Julian’s 2012 calendars at our San Francisco Railway Museum. See John Hogan’s comment on this post for details.
I wouldn’t so much call it “Superheroes” so much as I would refer to it as “Anthropomorphism”.
As we did, twice in the story. Guess you don’t see the humor in 1) doing what this artist does in the first place, and 2) a streetcar blog putting tongue in cheek to “elevate” these costumed transit kings to superhero status.
Or do you know folks other than superheroes who stride up Market Street in getups like that (Halloween excepted of course).
😉
Julian just delivered the first copies of his 2012 calendar – featuring this image as well as other clever illustrations (the painted ladies” as beautiful ladies, Coit Tower as a lean fellow watching the famous parrots fly by, etc.) – we have a limited number now available at the San Francisco Railway Museum shop; they cost $16.00/$14.40 for MSR members.
John Hogan, Manager
SFRM