Fishing Fleet at Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, 1960s

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Fishing Fleet at Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, 1960s — Archive & Atlas

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Fishing Fleet at Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, 1960s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1960–1969

AA-2026-E14F93

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A gray fleet of small commercial trawlers sits tied up along a working pier, masts bare and radio antennas bristling like a forest that never leafs out. This is the working end of Fisherman's Wharf, back when the wharf still meant fishermen, and the boats hauling in rockfish and crab were the whole point of the neighborhood rather than a backdrop for one.

The ornate white building behind them, all gables and glass, belonged to a city that had already started dressing its industrial waterfront up for visitors, though the pilings and the peeling hulls hadn't gotten the memo yet. A partial sign reading FISHER, almost certainly the tail end of a much longer piece of wharf signage, hints at the commerce quietly setting up shop behind the working boats.

Someone has planted an actual tree in a pot at the rail, the kind of civic gesture that assumes tourists need greenery to feel they've had an outing. The lamppost beside it stands at attention like a maître d', waiting for the day, not far off, when this dock would sell more postcards than fish.

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