GROWING UP IN SAN FRANCISCO Coasting Through San Francisco in the 1930s,
and other thrills.
by Bill Roddy
THE COASTER
In the 1930s kids had no skateboards, motorized scooters and the like, so we had to make our own form of sidewalk transportation ... The Coaster.
The main parts were four ball-bearings about five inches in diameter, a couple of two by fours, and a plank about two and a half feet wide and four long. To get the ball-bearings we went to auto repair shops. I don't know what cars use today, but then the axles had ball bearings that were rugged and could roll like the dickens. The mechanics would give us four of them and we started construction.
We put a ball bearing over a two by four and traced a pencil line around the hole in the center. Then we chiseled the wood from around the two by four and pounded the ball bearing into place. We did that for all four of them. One two by four went on the back of the plank. To steer we drilled a hole in the front of the plank and attached the other two by four. We used a rope to steer and drag the coaster up a hill. We had no brakes. To stop we dug our Keds into the sidewalk. The resulting extra wear on the heels got me into a lot of trouble with my mother.
As you know San Francisco has a lot of hills... but we had to find one that was not too steep. Our favorite was Duboce Street, a few blocks from my Herman Street house. We started by the street car tunnel and could really roar down that sidewalk. The nice thing about Duboce was that it had a park on one side of the street, and if the coaster got out of control, we could always steer into a path and roll onto grass.
THE DUBOCE STREET CAR TUNNEL the "N" Line.
This was the second street car tunnel in San Francisco, opened in 1928.
We played a dangerous game with that tunnel.
Just before the cars entered the tunnel there was a small ditch under the tracks
to keep autos out. It was about three feet wide and four feet deep and spanned
the tracks.
When there were no cars coming we would run up to the ditch and jump down inside it, staying very still. Finally we could hear a street car approaching the tunnel. It got louder and louder and finally the car was above us. We looked up and saw the bottom of the car roaring by, occasionally sparks would fly down from the motors. It was scary, but not as scary as when the motorman saw us. It did not happen often, but when it did, he would stop the car and the conductor would get down and chase us out of the ditch.
I never told my poor mother about this game. She had enough to worry about.