Kids having fun on the Streets of San Francisco 1950's & 1960's

[green papaya]

these teens have some type of homemade cart with roller skate wheels / skate board wheels? They used a piece of rope to steer, and notice his feet are on a pieces of wood to use as the brakes?

going down a steep street in North Beach San Francisco in the 50's - 60's

the other group are fishing off the dock at Fisherman's Wharf, notice the leather jacket he's wearing? leather jackets or flyer's style jackets were also popular with kids back then.

 

[2jakes]

This is the basic kit.

Nothing was wasted, if the skates broke or not.

All that was needed was a bit of creativity to have fun on the streets.

We were big on ww2 style jackets & boots.
Which Sears Roebuck Co. & Monkey Wards were happy to supply.

We mostly wore Converse or P.F. Flyers & blue jeans.
The jeans were very long on the cuffs on purpose.
My preference was the Levis with the rivets on the back
pockets made in the U.S.A. Now discontinued.
I would save my brown military combat boots for school.

G-1 style jackets came in various qualities.

(I swear, this kid had mean yellow eyes.)

The only thing I never got was the "Davy Crockett" coon's cap
which was the rage in '55.

Mom said it was made from diseased dead cats and that was that!

 

[GHT]

All that was needed was a bit of creativity to have fun on the streets.

Absolutely. We had hours of fun going down a steep hill on nothing more than a book balanced on a roller skate. Some of the kids had the new rubberised wheels, but the steel wheeled skates made the best noise, akin to one of London's underground trains.
The county of Kent, where we had relatives, had unsightly slag heaps. Slag was the name given to the detritus that remained after mining for coal. Those heaps of waste might have been an eyesore, but for a young boy, out with his cousin, an old sheet of corrugated metal, bent up on one end, made for a great sled to ride down the dust slides of a coal slag heap.

 

[2jakes]

Let us pause for a moment & pay homage to ....

 

[GHT]

An old tyre, a length of rope, tie the tyre to one end of the rope. Tie the other end to the bough of a tree, best if the tree is beside a river or other water site, and you have the makings of a great swing. Leaping on to that swing from the river bank, especially when four other kids were already hanging on.............................
Can you imagine the health & safety brigade of today? They would have an apoplectic fit.

 

[2jakes]

The "happy tire swing".

As seen through rose colored glasses by Mike Martin.

 

[BlueTrain]

When Carter was elected President, an editorial cartoon appeared in the local paper, The Washington Post, showing a tire swing and an old pickup truck with no wheels on the lawn in front of the White House. I thought it was very funny but others wouldn't see the humor.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There was a gnarled, misshapen old apple tree in my grandparents' back yard with a swing on it made out of old rope and a short plank. It had been my mother's when she was a kid, but it was still there twenty years later when I was small and rampant. Unfortunately, the way the tree had grown and sagged over the years left the swing at kind of a slant, so that whenever I tried to ride it I slammed full-face into the tree trunk.

I learned a lot about life from that swing.