San Diego photologs from the 1970s

The Les Girls sign has stood at the same place basically unchanged until a few months ago, iconic. I remember when I first came across these videos I was living in an area of the city that was hardly developed and mostly dirt roads it was baffling. But aftwards I moved to the center of the city and it was baffling for the opposite reason, the storefronts and buildings were basically the same. Looking comparing street view and this though, at least in downtown, there's a lot more trees.

Edit:

Looks like the author only has a reference to a subset of the originals on archive.org. There's tons more for more rural parts of SD you can find them on the city website:

https://www.sandiego.gov/digitalarchives/film-audio/street-v...

Your color correction is incredible - the frames you selected look much better than the original video.

The matrix of vehicles is my favorite part. If you drive down these same streets today it's a sea of black, white and grey.

You'll be happy to know that Les Girls is still there today, advertising burlesque, go go dancers and "full nude". They finally replaced the sign earlier this year, but it still looks very much the same.

Les Girls is the feature of a fascinating podcast, too: https://www.kpbs.org/podcasts/stripper-energy

It is shocking how quickly California developed from agriculture to this, and how it basically stopped developing further after hitting this point. These photos could just as believably be van nuys in 2026. No wonder why we have a housing crisis. Progress and building to meet demand has been refused for almost 60 years.

Color is magnificent and I can't believe we've lost so much joy on our relentless march to hyper-optimized profit. I recently read another article about how everything has gotten more monochrome, will try to find it again.

In scanning some slides from the 1970s, I was struck by the colors of the pants! Bright! Stripes! Fun! I sew shirts and gravitate towards bright prints, and everything tends to stand out because clothing in general doesn't seem as varied today.

EDIT - Found many articles along the same lines, some even with the same images. This isn't the original one that I was thinking about, but it is equivalent

https://uxmag.com/articles/why-is-the-world-losing-color

I drove down Garnet and Grand so many times as a teenager on the way to the beach. Beings back a few memories. Most of that was thirty years ago, and the videos are from way earlier. But it's kind of interesting that some of it seems familiar.

I actually don't really think cities should be like that though. They should evolve more freely. No point in trying to explain it though.

Cool project

Nice you could choose if you would like your gasoline with or without service :-) (4:00).

Why was the chain called "Der Wienerschnitzel" and not "Das Wienerschnitzel". It is (was) a proper noun, but why the wrong article? (5:02)

A small part appears twice (from 8:51--9:06).

more cyclists than I see in current streetview footage

Coca-Cola delivery vans where yellow?

Les Girls is still there. I chuckle every time I pass it on the way to the rehearsal space my band uses. I always suspected that it had been a bigger deal in some bygone era; glad to see that confirmed via photographic evidence.

IMHO comparably, cars today look depressing. So soulless, so similar, so boring. White/grey/silver/black, maybe a few boring blue or burgundy.

The commentary on hand-created signage was especially fascinating. The observations about the use of computers "enshitifying" design sort of eerily echo a lot of the commentary about AI now, including the (not unfounded) fear of the loss of human inconsistency, and the beauty it can bring.

>"Hypno-Sex-Ism"

50 years early to the "gooning" trend, I see...

Can't forget California smog and haze that varied between yellow, orange, and brown.

So many Volkswagen Beetles! The original ones, not the 1990s version.

As someone born and raised in san diego since the 70s, this is really nice!