Check out this three-minute video of a streetcar making its way north on Oxford and east on Hearst shot in 1906. The streets are rudimentary, (in fact Hearst east of Euclid is still a hill, not a street,) there’s not a lot of housing, (except you can see the chancellor’s white house in the segment showing Hearst) and people don’t seem to be in a hurry.

The best part of the video comes towards the end, when the conductors get in a dust-up with a passenger who won’t clear the tracks. A woman in a white cotton lawn dress even gets involved in the fracas.

Warning: the video takes a few minutes to load, but it’s worth it

Hat tip: Steven Donaldson.

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Frances Dinkelspiel, Berkeleyside and CItyside co-founder, is a journalist and author. Her first book, Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California, published in November...