I posted this on Facebook on April 18, the anniversary of the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco. This is a scan of a very small photo, taken shortly after the earthquake and fire. It is Jersey Street, in San Francisco's Noe Valley, where my grandmother and all her sons were born.

The strange looking things in the street are makeshift kitchens that most people had to set up, as almost everyone's chimney was damaged. It was a good thing people checked - fires from damaged chimneys were responsible for much of the damage following the earthquake.

My grandmother's family was lucky, though - their chimney was NOT damaged.
My great-grandmother ended up cooking for many of the neighbors.

The picture is very rough, as it was printed on heavily textured paper. I'm hoping that some day I might find the original negative so I can get a better scan!

Old photos!

This is a picture from about 1919. I have hundreds of old negatives, and this was one of the negatives I scanned, then cleaned up in Photoshop. I had never seen the picture (though I later actually found an original print in another box of old photos!).

Left to right are my father, his fraternal twin brother, and their older brother. They were born in San Francisco, and moved to Richmond in 1920.

These pictures are too, too cool!