RON HENGGELER

September 24, 2020

This Was San Francisco, by Albert Tolf

In 2016, during a visit to the University of California in Berkeley, I found a small collection of old cartoons at Moe's Bookstore on Telegraph Avenue. These depictions of bygone days in San Francisco were created by the well-known Bay Area illustrator Albert Tolf. They had appeared in The San Francisco News in 1956, 1957, and 1958. This thin old paperback book that I'd found at Moe's was in bad shape. The pages were dog-eared and the cartoons were dark and yellowed with age. I spent several days scanning each one, then repairing, restoring, and making them look fairly new again. When I posted these cartoons as a newsletter on my web site in May 2016, then notified my mailing list of them, the posting unexpectedly went viral. Editors from two of our local papers had seen the cartoons posted, and by providing a link to my site, shared them with their readership. The page of cartoons was quickly visited over 47,000 times within 24 hours.

This weekend is San Francisco History Days in the Bay Area. I am reposting the Albert Tolf cartoons as my bit part in this weekend's on-line activities.

To learn more about the scheduled events this weekend, click here: https://sfhistorydays.org

To learn more about the scheduled events this weekend, click here: https://sfhistorydays.org

 

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