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Showing 6 posts tagged swing

Lindy Hoppers Al Minns and Leon James have been seen dancing to the Charleston in a viral Daft Punk version, but this is the original that shows what it would have been like to watch them perform on television in the 1950s.

Minns and James were a well known for their performances at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom in the 1930s and 40s. You can watch them break down the Shim Sham here and the Shimmy, Snakehips, and the Lindy Hop here on the DuPont Show of the Week in 1961: 

From the Marin County Free Library, cars, boats, trains and a motorless gravity car in 1920s California.

The Mount Tamalpais and Muir Woods Railroad ran from 1896 until 1929 between downtown Mill Valley to near the summit of Mt. Tamalpais, with a second line descending the West side of Mt. Tamalpais to Muir Woods beginning in 1907. 

The first part of this film from 1926 depicts the journey taken from the San Francisco Ferry Building (notice the cars boarding the ferry), across the bay, to Sausalito. From there, passengers would board a passenger train to Mill Valley. At the Mill Valley depot, an open-aired train traveled up the mountain, on the “Crookedest Railroad in the World.” At the terminus was a tavern; the one pictured here was the third incarnation, rebuilt after a fire in 1913.

The second part of this film begins at the Tavern of Tamalpais where, travelers depart on a motorless gravity car, which traveled down to Muir Woods.