Bullitt starring Seve McQueen is one of my favorite movies with one of my favorite actors.  I watched for about 8th or 9th time on TCM last evening.

Of course I like the car chase scene.  And San Francisco is the city of my birth and where I was raised up to the age of 17.  So seeing locations I am intimately familiar with is fun.  I could tell the car chase scene was filmed in segments and edited by someone without regard for continuity of chase as it instantly jumped to places several miles apart.  But that doesn't take away from excitement of the chase.

Lieutenant Bullitt's character is interesting.  He is his own man and it's evident that he is given a job and then left alone to do it.  He resented Chalmers (the Robert Vaughn character) interfering and telling him what to do so Bullitt just ignored him and got the job done.  

Back to the scenery.  When I was in the Colorado Air Guard one of the units we supported was the 6th US Army Headquarters at the Presidio of San Francisco.  Sometimes when we went there TDY people from other units who had never been to San Francisco were fair game.  When we went out to lunch or dinner we would let them drive the rental car and steer them to a specific hill that led down to the Marina District.  When they got to the crest of that hill they would stop, look down, and say something like "Holy word not allowed!" and just inch the car down the hill.  Or drive up one of the streets to the top of Russian Hill and have to stop for a stop sign looking almost up to the sky.  It's no problem now with automatic transmissions but in the days of manual transmissions and clutches it could be challenge trying to get started up the hill again without rolling backwards.  It called for some fancy footwork.

I do wish, though, they had chased down Lombard Street (The Crookedest Street in the World).  When I was a kid every Wednesday afternoon and Saturday morning I delivered the Shopping News down that street.  My route covered Lombard Street from Hyde Street to Stockton avenue and back.  The first block was the crookedest street in the world.

I was there just two summers ago when my youngest daughter took me to San Francisco for a long weekend.  She wanted to see where I grew up.  We walked down Lombard Street and back to Fisherman's Wharf where we were staying.

If you ever visit San Francisco waling down that street is a must.  And for great seafood Scomas on the Wharf.  The only one of my three favorite seafood restaurants still standing...O'Brikey's in Baltimore and Bookbinders in Philadelphia are gone now.

I love to watch movies that are shot on locations I am intimately familiar with.

Noel 

Edited March 4, 20224 yr by birdguy

Bullitt. One of the greatest mistakes in my life. Let me explain.

Back in 1999 were were traveling with a small group of folks in Egypt. One of the ladies in the group lived in Carmel, California. Since my wife and I grew up in nearby Monterey we had lots of things in common. After talking for a while I learned that her husband (deceased) was involved in movie productions. When she learned I was working in San Francisco in the 1960's she asked me if I ever saw a movie called Bullitt. Of course I had. It turns out that her husband, among other duties, was responsible for procuring numerous prop items for that movie. Including the cars.

There were actually three identical 1968 Mustangs available for use in the movie. Steve McQueen only drove one of them. The other two were sold immediately after production had finished. And my friends husband bought one of them. At the time I met her, it had been sitting in storage in Carmel for almost 30 years. And she offered to sell it to me for US$10,000. And I turned it down.

As I look back now I made a huge mistake. The one Mustang that McQueen drove was "lost" for almost 40 years. It recently resurfaced and sold for US$3.4 million. But the possible value of one of the other two isn't what makes me sad. It's knowing that I could own an exact duplicate of the most famous, and the most expensive, Mustang in the world. Sigh...........

 

Edited March 4, 20224 yr by W2DR
Kant spel

Having lived in the Bay Area all my life (until a year ago) Bullitt was always a special favorite of mine.   Seeing Late 60's San Francisco and the technology they used back then is such a treat - like a time capsule.  I was born in 67 so I don't quite have any memories myself of that era but it wasn't too far away when I was growing up.   I worked in downtown SF for 7 years before the pandemic  -  and its clearly not the same place I grew up in in many of the areas of the city of San Francisco (and the bay area in general).

My growing up in San Francisco was the early 30s to the early 50s.

But when I went back to the old neighborhood with my daughter not much had changed.  The stores on Polk Street had different names but the storefronts were the same.  The old Royal Theater was a furniture store and the old Alhambra Theater was a fitness center.  But the houses were all the same.  The house I had grown up in hadn't changed.  Nor had Muni Pier where I went fishing or Aquatic Park.  The empty lot at the end of Larkin Street is now some apartment buildings but my old schools haven't changed a bit.  Sometimes you can go home again.

Noel

2 hours ago, birdguy said:

Lombard Street (The Crookedest Street in the World)

https://blogs.chapman.edu/huell-howser-archives/2011/11/08/crookedest-street-californias-gold-13011/

And on an aviation note Steve McQueen was also a glider pilot. He did not however fly the Schweizer SGS 1-23 in the Thomas Crown Affair.

Thank you for that Mike.  I can't say anymore I delivered papers on the crookedest street in the wolrd, or in San Francisco.  I never even thought there might be another one.

From the top of the Lombard Street hill I delivered those papers down the right hand side of the street.  At Stockton I crossed over and came back up the left hand side of the street.

Noel

4 minutes ago, FBW737 said:

And on an aviation note Steve McQueen was also a glider pilot.

I was working toward my sailplane rating in Hobbs New Mexico.  I never did solo a sailplane.  I had a quarterly eye exam and they discovered I had glaucoma so I couldn't get my medical renewed.  I just gave up flying after that.  Although I have a friend who flew Airbuses for American and a couple summers ago came to visit us for the weekend in their own plane, an American Yankee.  He took me up and I got some stick time.

Noel

8 minutes ago, birdguy said:

Thank you for that Mike.  I can't say anymore I delivered papers on the crookedest street in the wolrd, or in San Francisco.  I never even thought there might be another one.

From the top of the Lombard Street hill I delivered those papers down the right hand side of the street.  At Stockton I crossed over and came back up the left hand side of the street.

Noel

Here's visual comparison Noel. Hard to tell the difference with the naked eye. I've driven down Vermont. Once. Over 50 years ago. And I didn't remember any of it.    

 

6 hours ago, birdguy said:

Of course I like the car chase scene.

Canadian police car chase for comparison:

 

 

Edited March 4, 20224 yr by charliearon
embed video

I was about 16 year old when I saw Vertigo for the first time. At the end I sprang up and declared that was the best movie I've ever seen. My mother, shocked, said "better than Star Wars?"

Eventually, I stayed in the Hotel Room were the penny dropped for Jimmy Stewart (Scottie) when he helping Judy (Kim Novak) put on Carlotta Valdes' necklace.

I don't know what came over me but while helping my wife put on her necklace in that room I strangled her and took her body out to the Mission San Juan Bautista

and threw it out the church bell tower to make it look like a suicide! 🙄

It's all true except the strangulation and cover up bit.

Edited March 4, 20224 yr by FBW737

I was in San Francisco in 67, 68. Very interesting time. I wanted to take my wife to see the city but I'm not sure I want to go back. Too much has changed. 

That Canadian car chase was funny.

I've been to Mission San Juan Batista several times.  Near the turnoff to the mission on Highway 101 is a rock formation where Joaquin Marietta used to hold up stage coaches.

Noel

 

13 hours ago, Mike A said:

https://blogs.chapman.edu/huell-howser-archives/2011/11/08/crookedest-street-californias-gold-13011/

Thanks it cleared up a mystery for me, why Lombard Street is so crooked. 🤔 Howser show explains it's for the same reason the footpath from Yosemite Valley up to the top of Yosemite falls is so crooked (about a 3 hour hike). Switchbacks cut down on the slope. 1920's cars could not drive from one end of the street to the other without switchbacks.