2022 Rx 

Station to Station


Ancients, in their be­lief that Earth was flat, imagined the Sky reaching down to her every night, and re­lin­quish­ing hea­ven to Night. In­to this world astron­o­my was born, by us­ing Earth as a begin­ning point to draw the Eclip­tic, a ‘celes­tial belt’ to help ref­er­ence move­ments of the Sun, Moon, Mer­cury, Venus, Mar, Jupi­ter, Saturn -- the orig­inal seven Planets, by pin­ing them to a 20° wide lat­i­tude. Tak­ing notes, as­tron­o­mers ob­served Plan­ets cross­ing from west to east and, some­times, east to west. This abil­i­ty to change direc­tions at first per­plexed astron­omers, be­cause their orbi­tal dura­tions re­mained con­stant. This abil­i­ty to or­bit back­wards and for­wards, mas­sag­ing Time, chal­lenged astrol­og­ers to de­rive prob­a­bil­i­ties for horo­scope fore­cast­ing in zig­zag­gy Space.

Med­i­cine-god As­clep­ius, who does not ret­ro­grade, con­vened this year’s an­nual gath­er­ing of the Celes­tial Court, held at the House of Hes­tia, where he was head phy­si­cian. The most con­tro­versal item on the cal­en­dar was the on­go­ing de­bate of the origin of Kuiper belt ob­ject Eris: twin-sister to Mars -- or daugh­ter to Night. Every­one was up­dat­ed on the brew­ing multi­machia break­ing out for suprem­acy be­tween the uni-gods and the binary-beings, joined by the trin­i­ties, sid­ing with nei­ther side. There were two an­nounce­ments. The first was apollo-aster­oid Nereus, fly­ing un­com­fort­ably near to Earth in Decem­ber of last year. Egg-shaped, made of nickel, iron and cobalt, the ancient fish-tailed marine-god is the lat­est threat to life on Earth. The sec­ond was about the numer­ous hives of centaur-aster­oids, and wheth­er they can re­draw the map of hea­ven as it cur­rent­ly exists, bal­anced on the Eclip­tic, and ush­er in As­trol­o­gy 3.0.


 Chaos Rx   Chaos, “the dark majesty and mystery of creation incarnate”, is chanting with many lips while she twice per­forms the retro-rite, book­end­ing the year, and study­ing omens relat­ing to a domi­cile is­sue. Jan-Mar, Nov-Dec :Gem-Can Both retro­grades re­ceive a light driz­zle from the oc­cult, this is when the ‘orig­i­nal god­dess’ solid­i­fies, and sep­a­rates the phys­i­cal from the psy­cho­log­i­cal. Around the holi­days, the moth­er to Tar­tarus, Eros and Earth al­lows a glimpse of what home­life for “a shape­less, un­wrought mass of dis­con­nect­ed ele­ments all heaped to­geth­er in an­ar­chic dis­ar­ray” can look like.


 Uranus Rx   Pri­mor­dial sky-god Uranus will al­so ret­ro­grade twice. NYD to Jan.17 + Aug.24-Dec.31 :Tau Dur­ing the first seven­teen days: when some­thing goes miss­ing. And dur­ing the last four months, as he picks up the trail of the miss­ing arti­cle; some­thing non-tech. Ex­pect tight-fisted run-ins w/ ‘the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of hea­ven’ over trans­ac­tions that have lost value. Uranus is sib­lings w/ love, hell, and moth­er Earth. He is al­so spher­i­cal, blue-green and at­tacked by solar winds, be­cause the avatar to the zodiacal Wheel is flat on his back, wrapped in iced waters stained w/ dark or­gan­ics, all the while ex­hal­ing stu­pen­dous fumes.


 Iris Rx   Rainbow-goddess Iris ret­ro­grades all year, jug­gling heart ver­sus head conun­drums. 2022 :Can The daugh­ter to Pontos ‘sea’ and Earth is in hurt, and un­der the min­is­tra­tions of her sis­ters, the Harpies.


 Orcus Rx   Orcus will retrograde twice in 2022. Jan-May, Dec :Vir The etruscan infernal-god is still worming his way out of hell, and getting ready to surface sev­er­al years hence. To find his cur­rent loca­tion, con­tact his god­dess-moon Vanth, guide to the etruscan Under­world. Orcus first sur­faced in 2004. The ‘pun­ish­er of bro­ken oaths’ was oblique in a cape of faint tho­lins, ap­pliqued w/ iced crys­tal­line water w/ a high col­lar shoot­ing out what looks like dew drops of ammonia.


 Diana Rx   Some­one might, out in pub­lic, be­come a spec­ta­cle, as Diana ret­ro­grades in 2022. Aug-Nov :Pis The fer­til­i­ty-god­dess fell into ennui when the year be­gan, sit­ting list­less­ly by the win­dow sill, eye­ing the quiver while play­ing w/ the match­book. An un­avoid­able deci­sion, a gen­er­a­tion­al thing, and which might very well be good for­tune in dis­guise, has to be faced as Thanks­giv­ing ap­proaches. Diana al­so hosts a crater on the Moon, and is men­tored by Phoebe, a ring-moon from the House of Saturn. In 1863, Diana dashed into reali­ty, dark and prim­i­tive.


 Saturn Rx   Boun­dar­ies shift, and could end up re­ar­rang­ing real es­tate, dur­ing elder-god Saturn’s 170-day ret­ro­grade. Jun.4-Oct.22 :Aqu A deci­sion is side­lined fol­lowed by some dis­rup­tion. What once was rou­tine is now op­pres­sive to the god of duty. How this feels will de­pend on what he can ac­com­plish the oth­er 195 days. Be aware of the thick hide and loose talk of this son to Sky and Earth, scat­ter­ing wis­dom and mis­an­thro­py. Early sky watch­ers ob­served an un­usual plan­et w/ a sickle sur­round­ing it, and so named it af­ter Saturn, usurp­er of hea­ven 1.0. The ‘king of the titans’ is nev­er warm­er than minus 240 de­grees, and his many moons and rings con­tin­ual­ly send to his sur­face or­gan­ic build­ing blocks in froz­en packaging.


 Juno Rx   A barbed incident precipitates Juno’s retrograde. Jul.25-Oct.22 :Pis Someone who once bailed on her now crosses paths w/ the marriage-goddess. In a four-months long voyage, the queen of the gods is adrift in a signed-on-the-dotted-line squall, equipped with an oar resembling a sharp tongue. Find­ing har­bor for the young­est daugh­ter to Saturn & Cybele is not an op­tion. Help comes from sky-god­dess Iris and wise-god­dess Pallas; both are al­so in ret­ro­grade. The seventh wife to Jupi­ter finds she can now navi­gate, re­ceiv­ing direc­tion from one and bal­last from the oth­er. Brought up by the Four Sea­sons, Juno is nat­ur­al­ly prone to dis­trac­tions. And this was be­fore news came that her greco-half lives just six­ty-four aster­oids away.


 Jupiter Rx   Jupiter could let it all hang out while ret­ro­grad­ing in 2022. Jul.28-Nov.22 :Ari-Pis The ‘chief of hea­ven’ can turn pre­sump­tions on its head, can even be a show-off. Pri­vate­ly the ‘father of light’ suf­fers self-doubt, can­not relate, while under­going pun­ish­ing dreams. Baby­lon­ian sky watch­ers paid close atten­tion to Jupi­ter and his twelve-year long return, us­ing this span of Time as a 7th-cBCE struc­ture to de­scribe the Zodiac, pin the con­stel­la­tions, and be­gin the map for a hypo­thet­i­cal heaven.


 Ceres Rx   Agri­cul­tu­ral-god­dess Ceres spends the first thir­teen days of the year in ret­ro­grade, con­clud­ing fence-mend­ing and other chores. NYD to Jan.13 :Tau (Un­fin­ished busi­ness she will hand over to Mer­cury, whose ret­ro­grade be­gins.) The moth­er to Per­seph­o­ne will spend the rest of the days un­de­cid­ed be­tween pa­tience and re­bel­lion, and ends 2022 by tak­ing one baby step. Ceres is the pre­mier aster­oid dei­ty, step­ping in­to view at the Ob­ser­va­tory of Paler­mo on the first day of 1801. The ‘good god­dess’ is spher­i­cal, wear­ing a pock­marked swim­suit thread­ed w/ salt­ed pearls and sla­thered in or­gan­ic build­ing blocks. She is do­ing laps in a water world.


 Chiron Rx   Chiron has low-esteem dur­ing his retro­grade. Jul.19-Dec.22 :Ari The stu­dent to Apol­lo is an astrol­oger, so can be some­what fatal­is­tic, shun­ning mir­rors, and pre­sent­ing as shy rather than as mod­est. The off­spring to Saturn & okea­nide Phylyra is the first of his kind: collec­tives of cen­taur-aster­oids w/ comet tails patrol­ling the Celes­tial Court, and who are usual­ly behold­en to elder-god Saturn and sky-god Uranus. On Novem­ber 22, this ‘wis­est and just­est of all the cen­taurs’ will fly near­est to Jupi­ter, and start be­com­ing again a binary-being pos­sessed of two­fold strength.


 Vesta Rx   Ex­pec­ta­tions can turn out un­real­iz­a­ble during the ret­ro­grade of hearth-god­dess Vesta. Jul.7-Oct.5 :Pis-Aqu In­stead, the eld­est Olym­pian at­tends to a fraught social sea­son, mined with respon­si­ble re­spect, and ab­sence of safe­ty zones during its low­est phase. As the ‘guar­dian to the first flame’ exits ret­ro­grade, she has a brief ren­dez­vous w/ Juno, roil­ing in tur­bu­lent waters, to give her sails a gen­tle nudge. The resul­tant glow re­veals the ven­er­a­ble fire-god­dess to be bean-shaped, and wear­ing a cape of cooled lava stitched by a nickel needle us­ing basalt thread. The whole studded w/ spears of achon­drites tipped in three meteor­ites: dio­gen­ite, eu­crite and howardite.


 Hephaistos Rx   Fire-god Hephaistos is heart­brok­en while retrograde all year long, as the hard-earned labor of the son to Jupi­ter & Juno gets stuck in obliv­ion. 2022 :Tau Dur­ing Jan­uary, Hephais­tos could en­coun­ter push-back. For three weeks in May the ‘god of cere­mo­nies’ as­sesses the dam­age, and come Septem­ber pre­sents an out­line to engin­eer a truce.


 Hekate Rx   A plunge into domestic adventuring is avert­ed at the end of 2022, when infer­nal-god­dess Hekate ret­ro­grades, usher­ing the ‘crone of the Under­world’ into 2023. Nov-Dec :Can Until that can be, the con­cerns for the daugh­ter to titans Perses ‘destroy­er’ and Asteria ‘star­ry one’ are over mat­ters of mind, heart, family.


 Neptune Rx   Nep­tune can resort to ad­dic­tions while ret­ro­grad­ing for five months. Jun.28-Dec.3 :Pis This can ruin his health, yet the god of water is un­per­turbed by his vis­age in the look­ing glass. The worst might come on the last day in Octo­ber. Alter­na­tive­ly, the ‘lord of all marine-deities’ might in­stead take a break from party­ing, dwell on ideal regi­mens. The best oppor­tu­ni­ty to re­deem his health might be­gin come the last day in No­vem­ber. The ‘liquid liege’ had chos­en the date of his re­sur­fac­ing in­to his­tory by send­ing a dream, in 1846, to a sleep­ing math­e­ma­ti­cian. The woke mor­tal re­turned to the New Ber­lin Ob­ser­va­tory, en­tered a set of co­or­di­nates, and locat­ed the prem­ier sea-god sit­ting on his tri­dent throne.


 Salacia Rx   Marine-goddess Salacia strives for stillness during her retrograde. Aug-Nov :Ari The ‘god­dess-queen of the sea’ will be a re­cluse, soak­ing in a rest­less bath­tub filled w/ a case of the blues. Sala­cia had given birth in 2006 to Actaea. The sea-nymph sat­el­lite is now her social secre­tary, keep­ing track of serial dance duets, be­tween her primary and ‘king of kings’ Jupi­ter, gas giant Uranus, and her mother’s con­sort Nep­tune, dur­ing Sala­cia’s 274-year lap around the Sun.


 Mars Rx   Military-god Mars spends the last eight weeks of 2022 in retrograde. Oct.30-Dec.31 :Gem During the first week of November, the twin-bro to Eris just might draw a line on climate solutions in the U.S. in­fra­struc­ture plan. Oth­er­wise, the son to Juno & Jupi­ter, hav­ing taken off his rose-tint­ed hel­met, inter­venes in a de­cep­tive divorce case, and at home dur­ing the holi­day sea­son has dressed the table w/ teeth and a billy­club.


 Eris Rx   Eris is shackled to just one degree of the Zodiac, as the dissonance-goddess stays ret­ro­grade all year long; in effect she is now a sta­tion­ary trans-Nep­tune ob­ject. 2022 :Ari Ex­pect Eris to be in a snit the first two weeks. Later on, the risk-god­dess livens up the holi­day sea­son w/ games of truth-or-dare. Most im­por­tant­ly, the twin-sis to Mars could lay waste to pseudo-science dur­ing May. While the 21st-century was still young, Eris stepped out of the Scattered disc, 1444-miles in diameter and fully formed. The military-goddess is sheathed in white-white methane ice, shedding miasmas.


 Phaëthon Rx   ‘Radiant’ Phaëthon’s year-long retro­grade breeds a hope­less tug-of-war be­tween what is ac­tual and what is made-up, leav­ing a trail 12 mil­lion miles long and 60,000 miles wide. 2022 :Tau Only three-and-a-half mile wide, the son to the Sun hur­tles close by Earth, re­in­car­nat­ed as an apollo-aster­oid, a posse of poten­tial­ly haz­ard­ous space rocks also threat­en­ing Mars, Venus and Mercury.


 Pallas Rx   Dreams drown and cam­a­ra­de­rie can cur­dle dur­ing De­cem­ber, when ‘god­dess w/ many names’ Pal­las goes ret­ro­grade, and is dimin­ished under a grim light. Nov.30-Dec.31 :Can These days, the daugh­ter to Jupi­ter & Metis is a triple-aster­oid god­dess who ar­rived in 1802, the sec­ond Main belt ob­ject to be re­vealed to astrol­ogers. Pal­las’ roman-frag­ment showed up 65 years later, while her greco-shards came out in 1917.


 Pluto Rx   Letting go the reins of his golden chariot while in retro­grade, the ‘king of shadows’ is allow­ing his four black horses to go where they will, there­by end­ing up at the field of para­noia by the brook of betrayal. Apr.29-Oct.7 :Cap After­wards ‘the rich one’ will con­tinue his level­ing of the play­ing field. Pluto was deemed a planet when he was dis­cov­ered. Now the ‘king of the Under­world’ is bet­ter known as the sha­dow har­bing­er of sev­er­al pan­the­ons pay­ing heed to the Sun.


 Persephone Rx   Infernal-goddess Persephone cannot make headway dur­ing a year-long ret­ro­grade, ig­nor­ing duties ‘she who de­stroys the light’ was tasked to dis­pense, and might re­sult in up­end­ing domes­tic­i­ty come 2023. 2022 :Gem The ‘empress of the Underworld’ likes to chit­chat, and any­one talk­ing back could end up be­ing a blabber-mouth.


 Typhon Rx   When ‘supreme serpent’ Typhon exits ret­ro­grade is when high-fire sea­son will be­gin. Feb-Jul :Sco An act of cow­ard­ice pre­cip­i­tates a five-month period as the ‘larg­est mon­ster ever born’ slow­ly dis­sem­bles for want of deci­sion-mak­ing, paus­ing the woes he gifts. Even if so, the spawn to Tar­ta­rus and Earth is far from harm­less. Typhon is an air-deity, is the wind, and takes over 200 years to race around the grav­ity throne.


 Venus Rx   ‘Foam-born’ Venus ret­ro­grades on­ly for the first twenty-eight days. NYD to Jan.28 :Cap The ‘bring­er of peace’ had been duti­ful and now pli­abil­i­ty returns. First catc­hing up on per­sonal busi­ness, the love-god­dess will, come Sep­tem­ber, re­sume her so­cial calendar.


 Mercury Rx   The grandson to Atlas performs three retrogrades, 95% of the time in Earth signs. Mer­cu­ry might then, be­ing the ‘shep­herd of men’, use blunt word­ing to cor­ral his charges. The first quick­ens an on­go­ing de­bate that the ‘patron of thieves’ has been wag­ing w/ stu­pid­i­ty. Jan.14-Feb.3 :Cap The second ret­ro­grade can see the boun­dary-god sym­bol­ic­a­l­ly part the Red Sea. May.10-Jun.2 :Tau-Gem The third sees the com­plex-one giv­ing over-ex­pla­na­tions and in dan­ger of be­ing tan­gled up in words. Sep.10-Oct.1 :Vir-Lib Ques­tions on wheth­er the ‘con­duc­tor of souls’ is cur­rent­ly in re­tro­grade or not can be an­swered at Is Mer­cu­ry Ret­ro­grade?.


 Hygiea Rx +  Panacea Rx   Medicine-god­dess Hygiea hygiene, and sister-god­dess Pan­a­cea rem­edy, both relapse, one fol­low­ing the other, mid-spring into late sum­mer. Apr-Jun :Sco +Jun-Aug :Cap Bet­ter news comes in the au­tumn from their father, medi­cine-god Ascle­pius, who is pro­grade all year, and sea­son­ing his eyes on the prize. Hy­gi­ea stepped out of the Main belt in 1849, spher­i­cal and intact. Pan­a­cea is on­ly ten miles wide.

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Gunplay is common, but a scream is rare on TV’s The Un­touch­ables.

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  CABLE CAR 


San Francisco cable car

THE FINISHED PROTOTYPE, w/ a driver’s cab at either end, appeared on the California Street Line in 1899. Trams “ ... were decorated w/ scrollwork and gold trim, using ornate glass transoms and, for paint, maroon and cream.”

Beast of Burden

How San Fran­cis­co’s cable car came to be built will re­quire more than one stop on its tell­ing, wend­ing this way and that, and pass­ing land­marks of wealth and waste.

1869 public transportation Before the cable car, the task for get­ting to Nob Hill was rel­e­gated to pay­ing for a ride in a horse-drawn cab. On Octo­ber 11, 1869, this nec­es­sary yet wan­ton civic cruel­ty of us­ing ani­mals as beasts of bur­den changed for the good. The San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle had a front page arti­cle on the death of a wretch. It took place when a horse final­ly lost it on Cali­for­nia Street and, throt­tled, dragged down to its death. 		horse-drawn public transit When Andrew Hal­li­die read this, he paused and paced his in­ner office, re­flect­ing on what if any­thing he could learn from this. Hal­li­die was al­ready pros­pe­rous, al­though not yet famous. He had in­heri­ted a com­pa­ny from his father. The sen­ior Hal­li­die had inv­ent­ed and then patent­ed a Steel Cable: strands of wire lined up and brai­ded into a rope that was super strong, and proved in­dis­pens­able in the gold fields and gold mines.

1848 gold mining technology 		1872 cable car Hallidie took on a failed con­cern: to build a con­vey­ance cap­a­ble of con­quer­ing the city‘s hills. He bought the Clay Street Hill Rail­way Co., and by May 1873 had built tracks and a cable as­sem­bly up Clay from Ports­mouth Square to Nob Hill, a ver­ti­cal climb of seven blocks.
1873 cable car ticket
Early on August 2 1873, a proto­type was in place and, lantern-lit, Hal­li­die stepped on board. Acti­vat­ing a grip lever on­to a mov­ing cable, he as­cen­ded on that peril-prone mai­den voy­age. Few were awake to wit­ness, yet by open­ing day on Sep­tem­ber 1, the ser­vice was in de­mand. In 1880 over one mil­lion tic­kets were sold.
Locomotive Landmark

The first cable cars were tiny trams pow­ered by a patent­ed grip that alter­nate­ly holds, and releases, a con­tin­u­ous­ly mov­ing steel cable run­ning under the street. Power is sup­plied by huge drums housed at near­by power stations along the route.

1877 dummy and trailer The tram oper­a­tor is sta­tioned for­ward of the tram. He em­ploys the grip grabs and holds on to the mov­ing cable, the tram al­so moves. When grip is re­leased, tram stops, even on a hill, us­ing a gear inven­tion pre­vent­ing slip­page. Be­sides the tram oper­a­tor (grip­man) is the con­ductor. 		1877 cable car Andrew Smith Hallidie was born on March 17, 1837 in Lon­don, to An­drew Smith (b.1798 Dum­frie­shire, Scot­land) and Julia John­stone (Locker­bie). He died April 24 1900, in San Fran­cis­co. Six years later his cable car system would survive the 1906 Earth­quake.
Andrew Smith Hallidie 		1880 Funiculi, Funicula Cable cars then sprouted world­wide, from New York to Hong Kong. Naples crowned its open­ing by com­mis­sion­ing a song, “Funiculi, Funi­cula.”
1917 Hallidie Building
In 1917, Andrew Smith Hallidie had an inno­va­tive build­ing named for him. The Hal­li­die Build­ing (by Wil­lis Polk) has a facade rising eight stories and sheathed in glass.
City of Cubes

When news of the dis­cov­ery of gold in Cali­for­nia trav­eled back east, the brawn and brains of a young nation came west­ward, where notions of Free­dom waltzed hand-in-glove w/ great­ness as well as greed.

1848 California Gold Rush Accord­ingly, access from the gold mines to San Fran­cisco were sur­veyed. Roads, bridges and tracks were built wher­ever gold was found, w/ way­sta­tions estab­lished for res­pite and re­cre­ation. The min­ing meth­ods these men brought w/ them quick­ly evolved to meet the chal­lenges posed by the Com­stock Lode and its trib­u­ta­ries.
Hauling with wire 		1860 Deidesheimer Square Set The Indus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion cre­a­ted tools used in sci­en­tific pre­ci­sion­ing, al­low­ing in­no­va­ted mod­els to be test­ed and prof­it­ably man­u­fac­tured. Among these ideas was the in­ge­nuous “square set” cre­a­ted by ger­man en­gi­neer Philipp Deide­shei­mer. Grey Brechin picks up the um­bil­i­cal cord:
1860 Deidesheimer Square Set The Square Set intro­duced meth­ods of con­struc­tion. Deide­shei­mer’s gift went from con­struct­ing safe­ty zones to con­duct the back­break­ing busi­ness of min­ing into oth­er uses, in­clud­ing the abil­i­ty of a grid of steel beams and col­umns to al­low sup­port for more height. 		1870 Equitable Life Assurance Building NYC ❛Sky­scraper❜ came into usage in the 1880s; Amer­i­ca had fif­teen. These build­ings us­ual­ly came w/ mod­ern plumb­ing, elec­tri­cal out­lets in every room, a tele­phone line in every unit, cen­tral heat­ing, and an ele­vator.
1870 Jayne Building Philadelphia 1990 space elevator ❛ … NASA took a fresh look at the steel cable in light of a super ma­te­rial, car­bon nano­tube ... uber-strong, light and flex­i­ble. “Space Ele­vators: An Ad­vanced Earth-Space Infra­struc­ture for the New Mil­len­ium” is the feas­i­bil­i­ty paper of this new science, to erect a track run­ning on cables, from here to the Moon, a jour­ney of some 62,000 miles.❜


Philipp Deidesheimer
 Philipp & Mrs Deidesheimer
CABLE CAR NOTES

| Based on San Fran­cisco’s Golden Era by Lucius Beebe and Charles Clego (1060); Cable Car Days in San Fran­cisco by Edgar Myron Kahn (1940); The Head­light, March 1947, Western Pacific Club; Imperial San Fran­cisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin by Gray Brechin (1999); and on­line articles by Mary Bellis (“The History of Sky­scrapers”), Karen Barss (“Man­hat­tan’s Golden Age of Sky­scrapers”), and Meghan Neal (“Space Ele­vators Are Total­ly Pos­sible”) | A 1959 epi­sode of TV series Bonanza fea­tures a Phil­ipp Dei­de­shei­mer plot point. | Thank you Taryn Ed­wards, MLIS, Mechan­ics’ Institute. | Thank you Penelope Houston, SF Public Library.

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  WALT WHITMAN  Walt Whitman
The main shapes arise, shapes of democracy total, result of centuries, shapes ever projecting other shapes, shapes of tur­bu­lent manly cities, shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth, shapes bracing the earth and braced with the whole earth.
In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay, on sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor’d near the shore, an old, dismasted, gray and batter’d ship, disabled, done. After free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul’d up at last and hawser’d tight, lies rusting, mouldering.


  HISTORIC CENTER RECIPIENT 

Agadez, Niger

Starting point for a journey across the Sahara, taking in “ports of call” to Timbuktu, Ghat, then Ghadames, and finally Tripoli, on the shores of the Mediterranean.

Seat of a Tuareg sultanate which was established in 1449. Occupied by the French since the early 1900s, and known of rebellion ever since. The Tuareg people are the original Canaanites from the Bible, inhabiting ancient Palestine and Phoenicia, and its lingua franca is the Hausa language, a subgroup of the Chadic languages group, and therefore a part of the Afroasiatic language family.
Started in the 1400s to serve as the south gateway into the Sahara, the Historic Centre of Agadez in Niger is now a Historic Center Recipient and a 2013 UNESCO World Heritage Site. This desert town was founded to become a center of commerce for the trans-Saharan trade, and by the 1500s the populace was 30,000. 2013 UNESCO Historic Center Recipient In 1976, area mining for uranium allowed the local economy to established a school, the Ecole des Mines de l’Air.
The 2011 census counted a total of 124,324 people living in Agadez and the European language they speak is French. There is an international airport named after a Tuareg leader, Mano Dayak, but due to the ongoing Tuareg rebellion in the region, Agadez is unsafe for travel.


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  SUPER CARS +

“Our last arrow! We’ll fire it to stop the get­away car – then end our careers as Green Arrow and Speedy!” “Yes, with our se­cret iden­ti­ties ex­posed, we’re use­lss against crim­i­nals!”
Francisco Mattos

Francisco Mattos Immortal Dane Whit­man brought his time-test­ed skills as the Black Knight to the early days of film­making, creat­ing a phantas­ma­gorical chariot race for Fritz Lang’s 1929 silent sci­fi Woman in the Moon. These days, he still does stunts for Holly­wood.

Francisco Mattos Although he owns a Legion flight ring from the 30th cen­tury, when not in a hur­ry to get some­where Michael Jon Car­ter pre­fers to drive. He comes from the future, sheathed in a super-suit boast­ing futur­is­tic tech, but the feel of rub­ber on road gives Booster Gold a jolt un­like any other.

Francisco Mattos Little is known about this shape­shift­ing foe of Bat­man Be­yond. Her fluid body al­lows Inque to seep in­to and out of her liq­uid limo. 		Francisco Mattos Jimon Kwan’s car is parked be­hind the world’s first eco-fire sta­tion. She’s there to give a dem­on­stra­tion – in her capacity as Silver of China Force – on her mutant abil­ity to drain heat and then con­vert it into light.

Francisco Mattos Before he went to war as the Fight­ing Amer­i­can, Nel­son Flagg’s father gave him a 1915 Ford Speed­ster – it later crashed and burned. The orig­inal is al­so shown, fresh off the assem­bly line.

Francisco Mattos It takes two of Jamie Madrox, the Multi­ple Man, to con­trol this wide jeep be­cause it’s sure-as-hell gon­na be a bumpy ride. 		Francisco Mattos The grandfather and great-grand­father of James Jesse were from the world of vau­de­ville, which is why their spawn con­tin­ued their forays into self-pow­ered loco­motion and built a por­ta­ble air-cooled en­gine, hooked up to an ac­cel­era­tor switch, an engine cut-off switch, and single-horse­pow­ered roller skates, and later tor­ment­ing the Flash w/ wea­pon­ized toys as the Trickster.

Francisco Mattos An inside-out refrig­er­a­ted truck driven by Leonard Snart, com­mit­ing crime as Cap­tain Cold using an ex­pe­ri­men­tal gun based on stol­en sci­ence and shoot­ing ab­so­lute-zero blasts that solid­i­fy as ice.

Francisco Mattos H.G. Wells jumped at the chance to take a spin in an ex­pe­ri­men­tal con­trap­tion that his Amer­i­can friend and fel­low futur­ist, the head of Stark Indus­tries, brought over to Lon­don. The author of The Invis­i­ble Man is photo­graphed sit­ting in the back seat as the self-driv­ing car crosses Tow­er Bridge.

Francisco Mattos This tasty USSR-era Trabant was on dis­play in a Bel­grade art gal­lery when Harle­quin, the “mer­ry men­ace”, hap­pened by, took one look, and prompt­ly brought it home.

Francisco Mattos This rarely seen Bugat­ti Type 57 Atlan­tic be­longs to Arthur Curry (Aqua­man) and is nick­named the Drop be­cause he al­most nev­er has need for it.

Francisco Mattos Im­per­a­tor Furio­sa’s go-to wheels when she’s off the clock. 		Francisco Mattos Even super-heroes driv­ing sports cars have to stop and pay toll, as the Thing heckles John­ny Storm’s toss­ing chops. “Let’s get go­ing, Torchy! Hey! Ya missed the coin buc­ket!” “But I threw it okay! It wasn’t my fault! The buc­ket moved!”

Francisco Mattos After punching Hitler in his de­but, the city of Man­hat­tan award­ed Steve Rogers w/ a spank­ing red 1937 Ford, and he prompt­ly took off to drive cross-coun­try. Then he made up for lost years w/ a Cor­vette. These days, his ride is a 1960 Chev­ro­let, al­ways parked on the street; re­peat­ed­ly stol­en then re­turned be­cause it was a badge of hon­or to leave the keys in the igni­tion. 		Before his life was im­bued w/ Bahd­ni­sian pow­ers and he took con­trol of the human thun­der­bolt, John­ny Thun­der was in Europe, hav­ing won a music schol­ar­ship while in high school. With some of his prize mon­ey he bought a sec­ond-hand Minor Mor­ris con­ver­tible.

Francisco Mattos Bent­ley Witt­man, nar­row­ly es­cap­ing the Human Torch, is chauf­feured back to his man­sion on Long Island and his life as the Wizard. “Fire is a power­ful wea­pon! But I pos­sess the great­est wea­pon of all – the world’s great­est brain!”

Francisco Mattos No way is the myste­rious Dolphin a land­lubber, so when­ever ad­ven­tures take her ashore she al­ways rides in her 1962 Shark road­ster, w/ its aqua­rium pod and oth­er aquatic must-haves al­low­ing her safe pas­sage.

Retiring as the Sor­ce­rer Su­preme, Steven Strange’s men­tor, the Ancient One, mas­ter of mys­tic arts, drove home to Kamar-Taj in Tibet, cross­ing rivers w/ the aid of local vil­lag­ers, ever grate­ful for deliv­er­ance from the evil Kaluu.
Francisco Mattos

Francisco Mattos Suddenly, the hover­ing air-car is jolt­ed by a fan­tas­tic wave of force … and that is when Nick Fury sees an awe­some fig­ure who stands wait­ing to con­front the dy­nam­ic director of SHIELD … Francisco Mattos A surreal episode of the Knights of the Galaxy is just start­ing. “For King Arthur and Brit­ain.” (Mys­tery In Space #8 (June-July 1952))

Francisco Mattos To have a bit of fun while Super­man is recov­er­ing from their latest en­coun­ter, Mr Mxyzptlk, the imp from else­where, uses fifth-dimen­sional sci­ence to re­arrange this car and pro­ceeds to demon­strate how to oper­ate it.

Francisco Mattos Vic Sage blends into his camou­flage car, ephem­eral behind a pseudo­derm mask, dur­ing the time he joined Blue Beetle, Cap­tain Atom and Night­shade as the Ques­tion in the orig­in­al Sen­ti­nels of Justice. 		Francisco Mattos When insect-female hybrid Queen Zaz­za­la of planet Korll re­turned for a re­match w/ the Justic League, she went first to the Citroen museum in Aulnay-sous-Bois near Paris, and took pos­ses­sion of an ex­pe­ri­men­tal 1940s light-weight hover­car which she used as a bee­hive-nest. Bad­ly dam­aged and aban­doned, it still os­cil­lates when touched, await­ing new in­struc­tions from the Queen Bee.

Francisco Mattos The nomadic Roy Har­per, leav­ing be­hind his Speedy per­sona, took to the road in an oft-van­dal­ized there­fore oft-dis­guised van. When he land­ed in Eng­land, the for­mer bat­tling bow­man per­suad­ed Bank­sy to let him take the famous SWAT van for an ex­ten­ded spin as Arsenal.
Francisco Mattos Random page from the mid-cen­tury port­folio of bil­lion­aire in­dus­trial­ist Tony Stark: 1958 Nucleon, Nor­man Bel Ged­des proto­type, 1949 Tabot Iago, 1959 Fire­bird.

Francisco Mattos Sue Rich­ards fetched Agatha Hark­ness, her boy Frank­lin’s new gov­ern­ess, in a cus­tom-built His­pano-Suiza, pre­vi­ous­ly owned by an heir to the Dubon­net for­tune. It was a regal ride be­fit­ting the lead-witch of New Salem, who has brought along a mys­tical rock­ing sea­horse as a baby present. Francisco Mattos
Francisco Mattos An early electric car proto­type from the morbid mind of Os­wald Hu­bert Loo­mis, aka the Prank­ster. 		Francisco Mattos When her mom asked if her new car was safe, Jen­ni­fer Wal­ters sent this blurr­y pix of her un­usual find while in col­lege. It proved ideal for camp­ing, and that was when she got into an ac­ci­dent, need­ed a blood trans­fu­sion from her cou­sin Bruce, and be­gan a new exis­tence as the ravish­ing rough She-Hulk.

Francisco Mattos In 1923, Tony Stark’s dad vis­it­ed the Fiat Fac­tory in Turin and open­ly ad­mired their roof treat­ment. When what later be­came the Avengers Man­sion was built, he put a race-car track on the roof.

Francisco Mattos Besides lending his oc­cult skills to com­bat evil, Gio­van­ni Zatara per­forms as a stage magi­cian, and is the rea­son he drives a 1959 Lin­coln, which has a sturdy trunk to fit all his stage props.

Francisco Mattos Tony Stark awarded his exec­u­tive assis­tant Pep­per Potts w/ this pink 1954 Ford in rec­og­ni­tion for her aid in their first caper to­geth­er, bat­tling “The Mad Pharaoh”. 		Francisco Mattos Kent Allard’s elu­sive 1957 Lin­coln Prem­iere, which he drove as the Shadow, caught on a U.S. post­age stamp.

Francisco Mattos Blackhawk’s 1949 Hud­son, later owned by Jack Kerouac when he was do­ing a lot of driving. Re­stored and no long­er driven.

Francisco Mattos Carter Hall was so smit­ten when Hal Jor­dan drove up in a Phan­tom Cor­sair that the test-pilot prompt­ly gifted this one-off auto­mobile to the extra­terres­trial detec­tive, known to Earth as the Hawk­man, for a planet-warm­ing pres­ent.

Francisco Mattos An ex­pe­ri­men­tal float­ing for­tress from the malev­o­lent minds at Ad­vanced Idea Mechan­ics.

Francisco Mattos Although a haunt­ed horse ac­com­pa­nies his cursed exis­tence, the ghost of high­way­man James Crad­dock also owns a train, break­ing the law as the Gentle­man Ghost, and trav­el­ing the world w/ out a home.

Francisco Mattos Long after the own­er of Goth­am Broad­cast­ing Co. Alan Wel­ling Scott, was vis­it­ed by the Green Flame of Life (“Three times shall I flame green! First to bring death! Sec­ond to bring life! Third to bring pow­er!”) and fought evil­doers as the Green Lan­tern, he would con­tin­ue to tool around in his trust­ed 1939 Chev­ro­let clunk­er.

Francisco Mattos Prof. X’s band of super-human teen­agers are driv­en to the air­port in a spe­cially-built Rolls Royce w/ dark-tint­ed win­dows. “Boy! It musta tak­en a heap of green stamps to buy a chariot like this!” “No jok­ing, please! Con­cen­trate on your mis­sion! Re­view your pow­ers! Our foe is cer­tain to be high­ly danger­ous!”

Francisco Mattos Brain­iac 5 re­tooled an an­tique and cre­ated the “fris­bee”, armed w/ repel-rays, as a com­bat suit for Chuck Taine, the Bounc­ing Boy.

Francisco Mattos Hook­ing up to his Ply­mouth Bar­ra­cuda’s bat­teries to re­charge his pyro-cos­tume, Gar­field Lynns un­leashes a color crime­wave based on rain­bow rays as the Human Fire­fly. 		Francisco Mattos Ted Grant’s ride when he’s fight­ing crime as Wild­cat, im­mor­tal­ized on a U.S. pos­tage stamp.

Francisco Mattos Brainiac 5 con­struc­ted this bi-cycle for Luor­nu Durgo Taine (Duo Dam­sel) to aug­ment her super-power.

Francisco Mattos With wealth to spare, social­ite Wes­ley Dodds had a taste for dan­ger and cars. Which is why he could im­peril his 1935 Bugat­ti Aero­lithe by taking it out to strike ter­ror among wrong­doers as the Sand­man, de­clar­ing “There is no land be­yond the law, where tyrants rule w/ un­shak­able pow­er! It’s but a dream from which the evil wake to face their fate … their ter­ri­fy­ing hour!”

Francisco Mattos A gift from Brain­iac 5, this ex­pe­ri­men­tal bike al­lowed Lana Lang to ap­ply 30th-cen­tury tech­nol­o­gy to her 20th-cen­tury life. While fid­dling around w/ the tele­porta­tion but­ton dur­ing a ride in the country­side, she man­aged to trade bodies w/ all the in­sects in a near­by field, be­com­ing for a spell the Insect Queen. 		Francisco Mattos Socialite Kathy Kane, in her first ap­pear­ance as a masked crime­fighter, lead­ing the Bat­mobile into the fray on her Bat Bike. “Hur­ry, Bat­man – the Bat­woman is beat­ing us on this mis­sion!” (Detec­tive Com­ics #233 July 1956)

Francisco Mattos The keys to this ex­pe­ri­men­tal car from Stark In­dus­tries were hand­ed to Matt Mur­dock, giving add­ed com­fort to his forays as Dare­devil in­to exis­ten­tial evil.

Francisco Mattos Sam­uel Jo­seph Scud­der drove this solar lab­o­ra­to­ry on wheels in his first ap­pear­ance in Flash #105, “The Mas­ter of Mir­rors”.

Francisco Mattos This in­noc­u­ous van offers stor­age for Rory Regan’s col­lec­tion of mys­ti­cal rags, al­low­ing Rag­man, the tatter­demalion of jus­tice, to find respite a­fter a jolt of elec­tric­i­ty ran into his body and which by all ac­counts hasn’t exit­ed yet.

Francisco
The second Shield, Lance­lot Strong, drove a 1970 AMC Rebel for a short period un­til its color scheme gave him away to every bad actor on every city block.

Francisco Mattos Model kit from Auro­ra for Britt Reid’s spe­cial-built 1965 Chrysler, fea­tur­ing a 413 engine. Bruce Lee as Kato drove the Black Beauty to fight crime w/ the Green Hor­net, ever ready to de­ploy a pair of hood-mount­ed machine guns, a flame throw­er, and sting­er missles.

Francisco Mattos Sow­ing feline felony in Goth­am City w/ her Cat Mobile, Selina Kyle leads a law­less life as the Cat­woman.

Francisco Mattos Wins­low Schott, the ter­ri­ble Toy­man, had his ful­ly func­tion­al dwarf Cadil­lac sur­round­ed by in­dig­nant town­folk hop­ing to save Doll Man and Doll Girl from a threat they were not yet aware of. 		Francisco Mattos The seldom driven Joker Mobile is de­ployed to track down a double-cross­ing mob­ster. “The whole job – the safe-crack­ing, the get­away - all bear the stamp of Dink Devers! The cops think he died – but he’s right here in town, at the Blake Hotel! Ha-HA-HA!” “Gosh, Joker – I bet you’re right!”

Francisco Mattos A proficiency in auto mechan­ics as well as min­ia­turi­za­tion land­ed Ray Palmer a plum po­si­tion as a team mem­ber re­hab­ili­ta­ting a Fer­ra­ri 375 Plus. Pal­mer kept tin­ker­ing some more on the rac­ing car, giv­ing it a cap­abil­i­ty of be­ing shrunk, and con­sti­tutes the first step in his quest, as the Atom, to jump into, then out of, the quan­tum realm at will. 		Francisco Mattos While parked on a cloud, the Ghost Patrol are active­ly bored ... “Ho Hum! An­oth­er quiet day. Noth­ing do­ing on our sec­tor of earth late­ly.” “Strange! This is us­ual­ly the most trou­ble­some of the plan­ets!” “What’s that ahead? Why – it’s a horse!”

Francisco Mattos King T’chal­la of Wakan­da’s elusive jeep parked in San Fran­cis­co’s South of Mar­ket neigh­bor­hood, where he was on a secret mis­sion as the Black Panther.

Francisco Mattos This “fire” truck, de­signed by Stark In­dus­tries, later pat­ent­ed by Gen­eral Motors as the Futur­liner, was used to house JIm Ham­mond, an and­roid spawned in the mind of Prof. Phin­eas T. Hor­ton. This lab-on wheels is re­mote­ly con­trolled, in­su­lat­ed in­side to with­stand the in­tense fire gen­er­at­ed by the golden age Human Torch.


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  WHAT HE SAID  Spielberg's Lincoln has a dream: It's nighttime. Ship's moved by some terrible power at a terrible speed. And though it's imperceptible in the darkness I have an intuition that we're headed towards a shore. No one else seems to be about the vessel. I'm very keenly aware of my aloneness. I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.  
  METAL MEN  Wild Wild West

Illustrated w/ collages, drawings, maps, paintings, photographs, prints and quotes

| ⁋ |  Out west, when 1848 was on­ly twenty-four days old, mechan­ic James Marshall was mak­ing a rou­tine in­spec­tion on the grounds of a saw­mill he man­aged for his em­ploy­er. That was when the New Jer­sey native noticed some odd-look­ing ore in a water chan­nel of the South Fork of the Amer­i­can River. It was “... bright, yet mal­le­a­ble. I then tried it be­tween two rocks, and found that it could be beaten in­to a differ­ent shape, but not broken.”

 | ⁋ |  Nine days after Marshall emerged from the waters w/ his find, the Treaty of Guada­lupe Hidal­go was signed, trans­fer­ring a large tract of Mex­ico to the United States.  | ⁋ |  These concurrent events to­geth­er pre­cip­i­ta­ted the Cali­for­nia Gold Rush of 1849, when folks came from all over, bring­ing dreams while pray­ing to the god and god­dess of wealth for a show of “colour”  | ⁋ |  The first came from Mon­te­rey, San Fran­cis­co, San Jose and So­no­ma: when clerks, doc­tors, labor­ers, law­yers, mechan­ics, ranch­eros left their jobs. Sail­ors de­ser­ted their ships. Soldiers de­ser­ted the Mex­i­can War. As word spread more came from Hawai‘i, Mex­ico and Ore­gon.  | ⁋ |  Gold seekers showing up near the saw­mill of John August Sut­ter, where gold was first dis­cov­ered, had no need for milled lum­ber, and his busi­ness went into de­cline. All the while, a new settle­ment grew across the Amer­i­can Riv­er to be­come Colo­ma, the first gold rush town. Near­by stands a mon­u­ment, by the Native Sons of the Golden West, to mark the grave of James Wil­son Marshall, the “dis­cov­er­er of gold.”



Westward-Ho!

Panama 1849

One can cross Pan­a­ma to get to Cali­for­nia rather than sail around Cape Horn. Up Chagres riv­er to the town of Cule­bra; then don­keys to Gulf of Pan­a­ma, elev­en miles away.
Maps were consulted and what became the Cali­for­nia Trial be­gan w/ exis­ting routes. Emi­grants showed up along the Mis­sou­ri riv­er and towns in Illi­nois or Iowa. Wagon trains hitched, they head­ed out, cross­ing land­apes of grass­lands, prai­ries, steppes, val­leys and riv­ers to Wyo­ming and Fort Lara­mie.
Fort Laramie 1834  | ⁋ |  The only way to cross the Rock­ies was a cor­ri­dor be­yond Fort Lara­mie, lev­el and broad. South Pass af­ford­ed sev­er­al routes pas­sage to Cali­for­nia. At a fork in the road soon after, the Ore­gon Trail veers right while the Mor­mon Trail turns south to­ward Fort Bridger.

Fort Bridger 1842  | ⁋ |  Overland travelers chose routes de­pen­dent on start­ing point and final des­ti­na­tion. Oth­er factors were the con­di­tion of their wagons, live­stock, and the avail­ability of water.
Gold Country 1850  | ⁋ |  From California, one can get to Ore­gon on the Apple­gate Trail (1846), an alter­native to the haz­ard­ous last leg of the Ore­gon Trail.

 | ⁋ |  The Oregon Trail be­gins in Mis­sou­ri and leaves ei­ther Fort Leav­en­worth, Inde­pen­dence or Saint Jo­seph for a two thou­sand mile trek to the Ore­gon Ter­ri­tory. Past the Great Plains, then the Rock­ies, head­ing west north­west to the Snake river, Fort Boise, Wit­man Mis­sion, The Dales, Fort Van­cou­ver, the Colum­bia river, and the coast.

The Santa Fe Trail starts off in Mis­sou­ri, rolls through Kan­sas and a cor­ner of Colo­rado. Cross­ing the Arkan­sas river be­fore drop­ping to New Mex­ico, the trail loses its iden­tity some­what in San­ta Fe, where it is braid­ed to the Gila Trail, a local 16th-c. com­merce and trav­el high road, bring­ing trade from in­land to the coast.
 | ⁋ |  The Mormon Trail, gathers in Illi­nois and wends by Iowa and Nebras­ka be­fore join­ing estab­lished trails in Wyo­ming. To­geth­er they cross the Rock­ies, then the Mor­mon Trail con­tin­ues south south­west to Utah Ter­ri­tory to end up in Los Angeles. Be­sides the over­land­ers there were al­so sea­farers.

O Pioneers! 1849 Cape Horn 1849  | ⁋ |  An eight-month sea route from New York to San Fran­cis­co would in­volve a haz­ard­ous round­ing of Cape Horn.

Atlantic Ocean 1852

Gold Fever
A 49er carries pick­axe, shov­el and pan. Can add a rock­er and a hop­per; some also con­duct hy­draul­ic ex­pe­ri­ments. A water wheel would be jim-dan­dy, to pick up indi­vid­ual quan­ti­ties of gold-bear­ing grav­el and sand.

Gold Mining 1949
49er 1848 Personal gear: pair of blan­kets, fry­ing-pan, flour, salt pork, bran­dy (or other sanc­ti­fy­ing spirit). Field gear must-haves: pick­axe, shovel and pan. Some pro­cure a mule.
toolbox  | ⁋ |  Gold miners w/ no finan­cial back­ing learn to con­gre­gate along moun­tain roads and wait for sup­ply wagons pass­ing through, bring­ing food and tools and carry­ing out gold dust. Satur­day nights were for saloon­ing and carous­ing. Sun­day is a holi­day – laun­dry, tool re­pair, swap­ping stories, writ­ing let­ters, nap­ping.

49ers 1854
gold pan  | ⁋ |  A twelve inch shal­low sheet-iron pan to rinse soil w/ water and lo­cate the gold. rocker  | ⁋ |  A rock­er is a rec­tan­gu­lar wood­en box mount­ed on two rock­ers and set at a down­ward angle.
hopper  | ⁋ |  The hop­per is a box sit­ting on top of the rock­er, lined w/ a sheet of per­for­a­ted iron. Be­neath is an area called the “riddle-box.”
long tom  | ⁋ |  The long tom is an im­proved rock­er plus hop­per, reach­ing to twen­ty feet in length. A long sheet of per­for­a­ted iron lines the bot­tom and be­neath that iw the riddle-box.
 | ⁋ |  Women too had gold fev­er, com­ing from Mex­ico, Chile, Peru, Eng­land, France, New York and New Orleans. James Marshall tests his discovery’s quality in Mrs Wimmer’s kettle of boiling soap  | ⁋ |  Depicted in history as adven­turess, courte­san, har­lot, pick­pocket, pros­ti­tute and the demi­monde, these women were al­so book­keep­ers, cooks, laun­dress­es, shop-keep­ers, maids, wives. When moun­tain roads im­proved suffi­cient­ly to make trav­el be­tween towns feas­i­ble, they set forth as per­form­ers. Golden Girls 1849  | ⁋ |  Mrs Clappe came west in 1851 w/ her hus­band. In her let­ters home she gives an ac­count of the era, about geol­ogy and a vis­it to a rural doctor’s rude of­fice of pine shin­gles and cot­ton cloth.

City of Gold
saloon chandelier
Sydney Duck “Eng­lish Jim” Stuart was hanged for rob­bery and mur­der on July 11 1851.

San Francisco 1851
Yerba Buena 1847 1848 Yerba Buena was a ham­let on the San Fran­cis­co penin­sula w/ an ex­cel­lent har­bor. The Span­iards es­tab­lished a mari­time trad­ing post and built the Mis­sion of San Fran­cis­co de Asis. Ships dock­ing in its cove dis­charged sea­far­ers to a Span­ish-style pla­za known as Ports­mouth Square.
Eureka! 1848
 | ⁋ |  On arrival gold seek­ers rent­ed lodg­ings in shan­ties and tent towns, and stayed long enough to buy tools and pro­vi­sions be­fore head­ing out.

Sydney Ducks 1848  | ⁋ |  Brought over from Aus­tra­lia to perform labor, Eng­lish con­victs de­ser­ted en masse and in­stead formed a gang. Soon a fron­tier patch of law­less­ness, Sydney Town, sprout­ed at the base of Tele­graph Hill. The Sydney Ducks preyed on peo­ple and prop­er­ty, aug­men­ted by a gang of lady pick­poc­kets, and wil­ling­ly com­mit­ted mur­der to survive.
Post Office  | ⁋ |  The embers of Syd­ney Town re­kin­dled and gave birth to the Bar­bary Coast, chock-a-block w/ bars, saloons, broth­els, con­cert halls, dance halls; where “get­ting shang­haied” was first re­hearsed. Sur­vived the 1906 Earth­quake and Fire, by 1917 the red-light dis­trict was no more.

San Francisco 1848 1849 19850 1851 Mint of San Francisco

Gold Mountain
Coloma Valley 1849
Sutter’s Mill on the South Fork of the Amer­i­can River.
Sutters Mill 1848 Coloma, next to Sut­ter’s Mill, was the first gold min­ing town. A post of­fice and jail were add­ed in 1852 – both proved pop­ular. Gold min­ing also took place north at Bid­well’s Bar, Cut Eye Fos­ter’s Bar, Down­ie­ville, Dutch Flat, Good­year’s Bar, Grass Val­ley, Hell­town, Illinois­town, Iowa Hill, Kana­ka Flat, Lousy Level, Marys­ville, Mur­der­ers Bar, Neva­da City, Plu­mas City, Poker Flat, Rough and Ready, Wash­ing­ton, Whis­key Flat, Wis­con­sin Hill, and You Bet.
 | ⁋ |  South at Angels Camp, Chi­nese Camp, Dog­town, Fair Play, Hor­ni­tos, Jack­son, Moke­lum­me Hill, Mor­mon Bar, Raw­hide, Rich Gulch, Shaw’s Flat, Sonora, Vol­cano.
 | ⁋ |  Gold was found along trib­u­ta­ries to the San Joa­quin and Sac­ra­men­to riv­ers. At Au­burn, Dia­mond Springs, Grizz­ly Flats, Mis­sou­ri Flat, Placer­ville.

Miwok 1851  | ⁋ |  Home to Native Amer­i­cans incl. the Miwok, the Sier­ra Neva­da was rude­ly af­fect­ed by the Gold Rush. In 1849 an incident oc­curred along the Mid­dle Fork of the Amer­i­can River when some 49ers died and some indi­genes killed. An un­easy truce ob­tained when Native Amer­i­cans were hired on as labor­ers and paid in tin, but by 1900 their pop­u­la­tion had de­clined to only ±16,000.

Hollywood 1935  | ⁋ |  Be­fore James Cag­ney was the Fris­co Kid and Ed­ward G. Robin­son drama­tized life in the Bar­bary Coast era, there was a 1913 fea­ture, The Last Night of the Bar­bary Coast, now a lost film.
pair of jeans The 1849 state cen­sus count­ed 42,000 over­land­ers and 35,000 sea­far­ers caught up by gold fev­er; to­geth­er w/ 3,000 sail­ors who had deser­ted ships.

 | ⁋ |  Coloma is now a ghost town in­side Marsh­all Gold Dis­cov­ery State His­toric Park.

Chinatown 1852 Like all who seek a bet­ter to­mor­row, the Chi­nese too came to the Cali­for­nia Gold Rush, formed a fra­tern­i­ty in Colo­ma, squat­ted spent claims and worked as a team over the “tail­ings” left be­hind. In 1880 this gold-min­ing China­town was lost to fire.

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  2022 Rx 

Station to Station


Ancients, in their be­lief that Earth was flat, imagined the Sky reaching down to her every night, and re­lin­quish­ing hea­ven to Night. In­to this world astron­o­my was born, by us­ing Earth as a begin­ning point to draw the Eclip­tic, a ‘celes­tial belt’ to help ref­er­ence move­ments of the Sun, Moon, Mer­cury, Venus, Mar, Jupi­ter, Saturn -- the orig­inal seven Planets, by pin­ing them to a 20° wide lat­i­tude. Tak­ing notes, as­tron­o­mers ob­served Plan­ets cross­ing from west to east and, some­times, east to west. This abil­i­ty to change direc­tions at first per­plexed astron­omers, be­cause their orbi­tal dura­tions re­mained con­stant. This abil­i­ty to or­bit back­wards and for­wards, mas­sag­ing Time, chal­lenged astrol­og­ers to de­rive prob­a­bil­i­ties for horo­scope fore­cast­ing in zig­zag­gy Space.

Med­i­cine-god As­clep­ius, who does not ret­ro­grade, con­vened this year’s an­nual gath­er­ing of the Celes­tial Court, held at the House of Hes­tia, where he was head phy­si­cian. The most con­tro­versal item on the cal­en­dar was the on­go­ing de­bate of the origin of Kuiper belt ob­ject Eris: twin-sister to Mars -- or daugh­ter to Night. Every­one was up­dat­ed on the brew­ing multi­machia break­ing out for suprem­acy be­tween the uni-gods and the binary-beings, joined by the trin­i­ties, sid­ing with nei­ther side. There were two an­nounce­ments. The first was apollo-aster­oid Nereus, fly­ing un­com­fort­ably near to Earth in Decem­ber of last year. Egg-shaped, made of nickel, iron and cobalt, the ancient fish-tailed marine-god is the lat­est threat to life on Earth. The sec­ond was about the numer­ous hives of centaur-aster­oids, and wheth­er they can re­draw the map of hea­ven as it cur­rent­ly exists, bal­anced on the Eclip­tic, and ush­er in As­trol­o­gy 3.0.


 Chaos Rx   Chaos, “the dark majesty and mystery of creation incarnate”, is chanting with many lips while she twice per­forms the retro-rite, book­end­ing the year, and study­ing omens relat­ing to a domi­cile is­sue. Jan-Mar, Nov-Dec :Gem-Can Both retro­grades re­ceive a light driz­zle from the oc­cult, this is when the ‘orig­i­nal god­dess’ solid­i­fies, and sep­a­rates the phys­i­cal from the psy­cho­log­i­cal. Around the holi­days, the moth­er to Tar­tarus, Eros and Earth al­lows a glimpse of what home­life for “a shape­less, un­wrought mass of dis­con­nect­ed ele­ments all heaped to­geth­er in an­ar­chic dis­ar­ray” can look like.


 Uranus Rx   Pri­mor­dial sky-god Uranus will al­so ret­ro­grade twice. NYD to Jan.17 + Aug.24-Dec.31 :Tau Dur­ing the first seven­teen days: when some­thing goes miss­ing. And dur­ing the last four months, as he picks up the trail of the miss­ing arti­cle; some­thing non-tech. Ex­pect tight-fisted run-ins w/ ‘the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of hea­ven’ over trans­ac­tions that have lost value. Uranus is sib­lings w/ love, hell, and moth­er Earth. He is al­so spher­i­cal, blue-green and at­tacked by solar winds, be­cause the avatar to the zodiacal Wheel is flat on his back, wrapped in iced waters stained w/ dark or­gan­ics, all the while ex­hal­ing stu­pen­dous fumes.


 Iris Rx   Rainbow-goddess Iris ret­ro­grades all year, jug­gling heart ver­sus head conun­drums. 2022 :Can The daugh­ter to Pontos ‘sea’ and Earth is in hurt, and un­der the min­is­tra­tions of her sis­ters, the Harpies.


 Orcus Rx   Orcus will retrograde twice in 2022. Jan-May, Dec :Vir The etruscan infernal-god is still worming his way out of hell, and getting ready to surface sev­er­al years hence. To find his cur­rent loca­tion, con­tact his god­dess-moon Vanth, guide to the etruscan Under­world. Orcus first sur­faced in 2004. The ‘pun­ish­er of bro­ken oaths’ was oblique in a cape of faint tho­lins, ap­pliqued w/ iced crys­tal­line water w/ a high col­lar shoot­ing out what looks like dew drops of ammonia.


 Diana Rx   Some­one might, out in pub­lic, be­come a spec­ta­cle, as Diana ret­ro­grades in 2022. Aug-Nov :Pis The fer­til­i­ty-god­dess fell into ennui when the year be­gan, sit­ting list­less­ly by the win­dow sill, eye­ing the quiver while play­ing w/ the match­book. An un­avoid­able deci­sion, a gen­er­a­tion­al thing, and which might very well be good for­tune in dis­guise, has to be faced as Thanks­giv­ing ap­proaches. Diana al­so hosts a crater on the Moon, and is men­tored by Phoebe, a ring-moon from the House of Saturn. In 1863, Diana dashed into reali­ty, dark and prim­i­tive.


 Saturn Rx   Boun­dar­ies shift, and could end up re­ar­rang­ing real es­tate, dur­ing elder-god Saturn’s 170-day ret­ro­grade. Jun.4-Oct.22 :Aqu A deci­sion is side­lined fol­lowed by some dis­rup­tion. What once was rou­tine is now op­pres­sive to the god of duty. How this feels will de­pend on what he can ac­com­plish the oth­er 195 days. Be aware of the thick hide and loose talk of this son to Sky and Earth, scat­ter­ing wis­dom and mis­an­thro­py. Early sky watch­ers ob­served an un­usual plan­et w/ a sickle sur­round­ing it, and so named it af­ter Saturn, usurp­er of hea­ven 1.0. The ‘king of the titans’ is nev­er warm­er than minus 240 de­grees, and his many moons and rings con­tin­ual­ly send to his sur­face or­gan­ic build­ing blocks in froz­en packaging.


 Juno Rx   A barbed incident precipitates Juno’s retrograde. Jul.25-Oct.22 :Pis Someone who once bailed on her now crosses paths w/ the marriage-goddess. In a four-months long voyage, the queen of the gods is adrift in a signed-on-the-dotted-line squall, equipped with an oar resembling a sharp tongue. Find­ing har­bor for the young­est daugh­ter to Saturn & Cybele is not an op­tion. Help comes from sky-god­dess Iris and wise-god­dess Pallas; both are al­so in ret­ro­grade. The seventh wife to Jupi­ter finds she can now navi­gate, re­ceiv­ing direc­tion from one and bal­last from the oth­er. Brought up by the Four Sea­sons, Juno is nat­ur­al­ly prone to dis­trac­tions. And this was be­fore news came that her greco-half lives just six­ty-four aster­oids away.


 Jupiter Rx   Jupiter could let it all hang out while ret­ro­grad­ing in 2022. Jul.28-Nov.22 :Ari-Pis The ‘chief of hea­ven’ can turn pre­sump­tions on its head, can even be a show-off. Pri­vate­ly the ‘father of light’ suf­fers self-doubt, can­not relate, while under­going pun­ish­ing dreams. Baby­lon­ian sky watch­ers paid close atten­tion to Jupi­ter and his twelve-year long return, us­ing this span of Time as a 7th-cBCE struc­ture to de­scribe the Zodiac, pin the con­stel­la­tions, and be­gin the map for a hypo­thet­i­cal heaven.


 Ceres Rx   Agri­cul­tu­ral-god­dess Ceres spends the first thir­teen days of the year in ret­ro­grade, con­clud­ing fence-mend­ing and other chores. NYD to Jan.13 :Tau (Un­fin­ished busi­ness she will hand over to Mer­cury, whose ret­ro­grade be­gins.) The moth­er to Per­seph­o­ne will spend the rest of the days un­de­cid­ed be­tween pa­tience and re­bel­lion, and ends 2022 by tak­ing one baby step. Ceres is the pre­mier aster­oid dei­ty, step­ping in­to view at the Ob­ser­va­tory of Paler­mo on the first day of 1801. The ‘good god­dess’ is spher­i­cal, wear­ing a pock­marked swim­suit thread­ed w/ salt­ed pearls and sla­thered in or­gan­ic build­ing blocks. She is do­ing laps in a water world.


 Chiron Rx   Chiron has low-esteem dur­ing his retro­grade. Jul.19-Dec.22 :Ari The stu­dent to Apol­lo is an astrol­oger, so can be some­what fatal­is­tic, shun­ning mir­rors, and pre­sent­ing as shy rather than as mod­est. The off­spring to Saturn & okea­nide Phylyra is the first of his kind: collec­tives of cen­taur-aster­oids w/ comet tails patrol­ling the Celes­tial Court, and who are usual­ly behold­en to elder-god Saturn and sky-god Uranus. On Novem­ber 22, this ‘wis­est and just­est of all the cen­taurs’ will fly near­est to Jupi­ter, and start be­com­ing again a binary-being pos­sessed of two­fold strength.


 Vesta Rx   Ex­pec­ta­tions can turn out un­real­iz­a­ble during the ret­ro­grade of hearth-god­dess Vesta. Jul.7-Oct.5 :Pis-Aqu In­stead, the eld­est Olym­pian at­tends to a fraught social sea­son, mined with respon­si­ble re­spect, and ab­sence of safe­ty zones during its low­est phase. As the ‘guar­dian to the first flame’ exits ret­ro­grade, she has a brief ren­dez­vous w/ Juno, roil­ing in tur­bu­lent waters, to give her sails a gen­tle nudge. The resul­tant glow re­veals the ven­er­a­ble fire-god­dess to be bean-shaped, and wear­ing a cape of cooled lava stitched by a nickel needle us­ing basalt thread. The whole studded w/ spears of achon­drites tipped in three meteor­ites: dio­gen­ite, eu­crite and howardite.


 Hephaistos Rx   Fire-god Hephaistos is heart­brok­en while retrograde all year long, as the hard-earned labor of the son to Jupi­ter & Juno gets stuck in obliv­ion. 2022 :Tau Dur­ing Jan­uary, Hephais­tos could en­coun­ter push-back. For three weeks in May the ‘god of cere­mo­nies’ as­sesses the dam­age, and come Septem­ber pre­sents an out­line to engin­eer a truce.


 Hekate Rx   A plunge into domestic adventuring is avert­ed at the end of 2022, when infer­nal-god­dess Hekate ret­ro­grades, usher­ing the ‘crone of the Under­world’ into 2023. Nov-Dec :Can Until that can be, the con­cerns for the daugh­ter to titans Perses ‘destroy­er’ and Asteria ‘star­ry one’ are over mat­ters of mind, heart, family.


 Neptune Rx   Nep­tune can resort to ad­dic­tions while ret­ro­grad­ing for five months. Jun.28-Dec.3 :Pis This can ruin his health, yet the god of water is un­per­turbed by his vis­age in the look­ing glass. The worst might come on the last day in Octo­ber. Alter­na­tive­ly, the ‘lord of all marine-deities’ might in­stead take a break from party­ing, dwell on ideal regi­mens. The best oppor­tu­ni­ty to re­deem his health might be­gin come the last day in No­vem­ber. The ‘liquid liege’ had chos­en the date of his re­sur­fac­ing in­to his­tory by send­ing a dream, in 1846, to a sleep­ing math­e­ma­ti­cian. The woke mor­tal re­turned to the New Ber­lin Ob­ser­va­tory, en­tered a set of co­or­di­nates, and locat­ed the prem­ier sea-god sit­ting on his tri­dent throne.


 Salacia Rx   Marine-goddess Salacia strives for stillness during her retrograde. Aug-Nov :Ari The ‘god­dess-queen of the sea’ will be a re­cluse, soak­ing in a rest­less bath­tub filled w/ a case of the blues. Sala­cia had given birth in 2006 to Actaea. The sea-nymph sat­el­lite is now her social secre­tary, keep­ing track of serial dance duets, be­tween her primary and ‘king of kings’ Jupi­ter, gas giant Uranus, and her mother’s con­sort Nep­tune, dur­ing Sala­cia’s 274-year lap around the Sun.


 Mars Rx   Military-god Mars spends the last eight weeks of 2022 in retrograde. Oct.30-Dec.31 :Gem During the first week of November, the twin-bro to Eris just might draw a line on climate solutions in the U.S. in­fra­struc­ture plan. Oth­er­wise, the son to Juno & Jupi­ter, hav­ing taken off his rose-tint­ed hel­met, inter­venes in a de­cep­tive divorce case, and at home dur­ing the holi­day sea­son has dressed the table w/ teeth and a billy­club.


 Eris Rx   Eris is shackled to just one degree of the Zodiac, as the dissonance-goddess stays ret­ro­grade all year long; in effect she is now a sta­tion­ary trans-Nep­tune ob­ject. 2022 :Ari Ex­pect Eris to be in a snit the first two weeks. Later on, the risk-god­dess livens up the holi­day sea­son w/ games of truth-or-dare. Most im­por­tant­ly, the twin-sis to Mars could lay waste to pseudo-science dur­ing May. While the 21st-century was still young, Eris stepped out of the Scattered disc, 1444-miles in diameter and fully formed. The military-goddess is sheathed in white-white methane ice, shedding miasmas.


 Phaëthon Rx   ‘Radiant’ Phaëthon’s year-long retro­grade breeds a hope­less tug-of-war be­tween what is ac­tual and what is made-up, leav­ing a trail 12 mil­lion miles long and 60,000 miles wide. 2022 :Tau Only three-and-a-half mile wide, the son to the Sun hur­tles close by Earth, re­in­car­nat­ed as an apollo-aster­oid, a posse of poten­tial­ly haz­ard­ous space rocks also threat­en­ing Mars, Venus and Mercury.


 Pallas Rx   Dreams drown and cam­a­ra­de­rie can cur­dle dur­ing De­cem­ber, when ‘god­dess w/ many names’ Pal­las goes ret­ro­grade, and is dimin­ished under a grim light. Nov.30-Dec.31 :Can These days, the daugh­ter to Jupi­ter & Metis is a triple-aster­oid god­dess who ar­rived in 1802, the sec­ond Main belt ob­ject to be re­vealed to astrol­ogers. Pal­las’ roman-frag­ment showed up 65 years later, while her greco-shards came out in 1917.


 Pluto Rx   Letting go the reins of his golden chariot while in retro­grade, the ‘king of shadows’ is allow­ing his four black horses to go where they will, there­by end­ing up at the field of para­noia by the brook of betrayal. Apr.29-Oct.7 :Cap After­wards ‘the rich one’ will con­tinue his level­ing of the play­ing field. Pluto was deemed a planet when he was dis­cov­ered. Now the ‘king of the Under­world’ is bet­ter known as the sha­dow har­bing­er of sev­er­al pan­the­ons pay­ing heed to the Sun.


 Persephone Rx   Infernal-goddess Persephone cannot make headway dur­ing a year-long ret­ro­grade, ig­nor­ing duties ‘she who de­stroys the light’ was tasked to dis­pense, and might re­sult in up­end­ing domes­tic­i­ty come 2023. 2022 :Gem The ‘empress of the Underworld’ likes to chit­chat, and any­one talk­ing back could end up be­ing a blabber-mouth.


 Typhon Rx   When ‘supreme serpent’ Typhon exits ret­ro­grade is when high-fire sea­son will be­gin. Feb-Jul :Sco An act of cow­ard­ice pre­cip­i­tates a five-month period as the ‘larg­est mon­ster ever born’ slow­ly dis­sem­bles for want of deci­sion-mak­ing, paus­ing the woes he gifts. Even if so, the spawn to Tar­ta­rus and Earth is far from harm­less. Typhon is an air-deity, is the wind, and takes over 200 years to race around the grav­ity throne.


 Venus Rx   ‘Foam-born’ Venus ret­ro­grades on­ly for the first twenty-eight days. NYD to Jan.28 :Cap The ‘bring­er of peace’ had been duti­ful and now pli­abil­i­ty returns. First catc­hing up on per­sonal busi­ness, the love-god­dess will, come Sep­tem­ber, re­sume her so­cial calendar.


 Mercury Rx   The grandson to Atlas performs three retrogrades, 95% of the time in Earth signs. Mer­cu­ry might then, be­ing the ‘shep­herd of men’, use blunt word­ing to cor­ral his charges. The first quick­ens an on­go­ing de­bate that the ‘patron of thieves’ has been wag­ing w/ stu­pid­i­ty. Jan.14-Feb.3 :Cap The second ret­ro­grade can see the boun­dary-god sym­bol­ic­a­l­ly part the Red Sea. May.10-Jun.2 :Tau-Gem The third sees the com­plex-one giv­ing over-ex­pla­na­tions and in dan­ger of be­ing tan­gled up in words. Sep.10-Oct.1 :Vir-Lib Ques­tions on wheth­er the ‘con­duc­tor of souls’ is cur­rent­ly in re­tro­grade or not can be an­swered at Is Mer­cu­ry Ret­ro­grade?.


 Hygiea Rx +  Panacea Rx   Medicine-god­dess Hygiea hygiene, and sister-god­dess Pan­a­cea rem­edy, both relapse, one fol­low­ing the other, mid-spring into late sum­mer. Apr-Jun :Sco +Jun-Aug :Cap Bet­ter news comes in the au­tumn from their father, medi­cine-god Ascle­pius, who is pro­grade all year, and sea­son­ing his eyes on the prize. Hy­gi­ea stepped out of the Main belt in 1849, spher­i­cal and intact. Pan­a­cea is on­ly ten miles wide.



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  TV 
A screaming mouth dissolves into a trumpet playing, in a 1962 TV episode of The Untouchables.
Gunplay is common, but a scream is rare on TV’s The Un­touch­ables.

 ARMCHAIR TRAVEL 
New Haven Connecticut train depot
A train trip from Connecticut to New York.
by John Updike

After Providence, Con­nec­ti­cut ... the green de­fi­ant landscape, un­re­lieved except by ordered cities, smart and smug, in spirit villages, too full of life to be so called, too small to seem sin­cere. And then like Death it comes upon us: the plain of steaming trash, the tinge of brown that colors now the trees and grass as though ex­posed to rays sent from the core of heat – these are the signs we see in retro­spect. But we look up amazed and won­der that the green is gone out of our window, that horizon on all sides is segmented into so many tiny lines that we mis­take it for the profile of a wooded hill against the sky, or that as far as mind can go are build­ings, paving, streets. The tall ones rise into the mist like gods serene and watchful, yet we fear, for we have wit­nessed from this train the struggle to com­plex­i­ty: the leaf has turned to stone.

  FLASH FICTION 
 Flash Fiction

  DURING THAT SUMMER, when Jane and John drove cross country to San Francisco, a riot of sorts broke out in a drinking estab­lish­ment by Ocean Beach.   THEY HAPPENED to be driving by when news crew arrived and so ended up becoming part of local history on their first night in town. Spectators were interviewed and Jane is in the broadcast: Leather skirt and sci-fi hairdo, wearing boots that she finally lost down in the Salinas Valley where John’s band played and she had taken them off for only “ ... a new york minute I swear,” but all this happened much later.   A SONG WAS PENNED to commemorate that first night. John: ‘ ... by coincidence Jane and I were driving by and saw the whole thing. She even got interviewed for the local news. I forget what her answer was but it became the punchline. Anyway, I wrote this song the next day. It’s our second song, never performed it live.’   FROM A NEWS­PAPER CLIPPING dated July 17, 2004: ‘A melee broke out inside a tavern by the beach, a known hangout spot for musicians. It started around 1:30 a.m. just when last call was announced. Four squad cars con­verged within five minutes due to the seriousness of the situation; the police spokesperson would not elaborate further.’   IN ALL NINE­TEEN were taken into custody, in­clud­ing four females; no con­ven­tion­al weapon was found on any­one. The account in next day’s paper managed to get every name spelled wrong but had an accurate head count. Fourteen were booked and released the next morning, the others to be ar­raigned over un­spec­ified charges. Within a week the reporter was quietly let go. He went on to write a novel, Fact Into Fiction, eventually moved and was glimpsed late in life living next to the Straits of Herakles.   ACCORDING TO THE BARTENDER’s subsequent tes­ti­mo­ny, the riot appears to have been started over a mis­un­der­stand­ing: a special walking cane sup­posedly stolen from the person of W.S. Bur­roughs the day before (he was in town for a reading and his cane did go missing) was dis­played prom­i­nent­ly behind the bar.

Francisco Mattos

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-|  January 2022  |-


  CABLE CAR 


San Francisco cable car

THE FINISHED PROTOTYPE, w/ a driver’s cab at either end, appeared on the California Street Line in 1899. Trams “ ... were decorated w/ scrollwork and gold trim, using ornate glass transoms and, for paint, maroon and cream.”

Beast of Burden

How San Fran­cis­co’s cable car came to be built will re­quire more than one stop on its tell­ing, wend­ing this way and that, and pass­ing land­marks of wealth and waste.

1869 public transportation Before the cable car, the task for get­ting to Nob Hill was rel­e­gated to pay­ing for a ride in a horse-drawn cab. On Octo­ber 11, 1869, this nec­es­sary yet wan­ton civic cruel­ty of us­ing ani­mals as beasts of bur­den changed for the good. The San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle had a front page arti­cle on the death of a wretch. It took place when a horse final­ly lost it on Cali­for­nia Street and, throt­tled, dragged down to its death. 		horse-drawn public transit When Andrew Hal­li­die read this, he paused and paced his in­ner office, re­flect­ing on what if any­thing he could learn from this. Hal­li­die was al­ready pros­pe­rous, al­though not yet famous. He had in­heri­ted a com­pa­ny from his father. The sen­ior Hal­li­die had inv­ent­ed and then patent­ed a Steel Cable: strands of wire lined up and brai­ded into a rope that was super strong, and proved in­dis­pens­able in the gold fields and gold mines.

1848 gold mining technology 		1872 cable car Hallidie took on a failed con­cern: to build a con­vey­ance cap­a­ble of con­quer­ing the city‘s hills. He bought the Clay Street Hill Rail­way Co., and by May 1873 had built tracks and a cable as­sem­bly up Clay from Ports­mouth Square to Nob Hill, a ver­ti­cal climb of seven blocks.
1873 cable car ticket
Early on August 2 1873, a proto­type was in place and, lantern-lit, Hal­li­die stepped on board. Acti­vat­ing a grip lever on­to a mov­ing cable, he as­cen­ded on that peril-prone mai­den voy­age. Few were awake to wit­ness, yet by open­ing day on Sep­tem­ber 1, the ser­vice was in de­mand. In 1880 over one mil­lion tic­kets were sold.
Locomotive Landmark

The first cable cars were tiny trams pow­ered by a patent­ed grip that alter­nate­ly holds, and releases, a con­tin­u­ous­ly mov­ing steel cable run­ning under the street. Power is sup­plied by huge drums housed at near­by power stations along the route.

1877 dummy and trailer The tram oper­a­tor is sta­tioned for­ward of the tram. He em­ploys the grip grabs and holds on to the mov­ing cable, the tram al­so moves. When grip is re­leased, tram stops, even on a hill, us­ing a gear inven­tion pre­vent­ing slip­page. Be­sides the tram oper­a­tor (grip­man) is the con­ductor. 		1877 cable car Andrew Smith Hallidie was born on March 17, 1837 in Lon­don, to An­drew Smith (b.1798 Dum­frie­shire, Scot­land) and Julia John­stone (Locker­bie). He died April 24 1900, in San Fran­cis­co. Six years later his cable car system would survive the 1906 Earth­quake.
Andrew Smith Hallidie 		1880 Funiculi, Funicula Cable cars then sprouted world­wide, from New York to Hong Kong. Naples crowned its open­ing by com­mis­sion­ing a song, “Funiculi, Funi­cula.”
1917 Hallidie Building
In 1917, Andrew Smith Hallidie had an inno­va­tive build­ing named for him. The Hal­li­die Build­ing (by Wil­lis Polk) has a facade rising eight stories and sheathed in glass.
City of Cubes

When news of the dis­cov­ery of gold in Cali­for­nia trav­eled back east, the brawn and brains of a young nation came west­ward, where notions of Free­dom waltzed hand-in-glove w/ great­ness as well as greed.

1848 California Gold Rush Accord­ingly, access from the gold mines to San Fran­cisco were sur­veyed. Roads, bridges and tracks were built wher­ever gold was found, w/ way­sta­tions estab­lished for res­pite and re­cre­ation. The min­ing meth­ods these men brought w/ them quick­ly evolved to meet the chal­lenges posed by the Com­stock Lode and its trib­u­ta­ries.
Hauling with wire 		1860 Deidesheimer Square Set The Indus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion cre­a­ted tools used in sci­en­tific pre­ci­sion­ing, al­low­ing in­no­va­ted mod­els to be test­ed and prof­it­ably man­u­fac­tured. Among these ideas was the in­ge­nuous “square set” cre­a­ted by ger­man en­gi­neer Philipp Deide­shei­mer. Grey Brechin picks up the um­bil­i­cal cord:
1860 Deidesheimer Square Set The Square Set intro­duced meth­ods of con­struc­tion. Deide­shei­mer’s gift went from con­struct­ing safe­ty zones to con­duct the back­break­ing busi­ness of min­ing into oth­er uses, in­clud­ing the abil­i­ty of a grid of steel beams and col­umns to al­low sup­port for more height. 		1870 Equitable Life Assurance Building NYC ❛Sky­scraper❜ came into usage in the 1880s; Amer­i­ca had fif­teen. These build­ings us­ual­ly came w/ mod­ern plumb­ing, elec­tri­cal out­lets in every room, a tele­phone line in every unit, cen­tral heat­ing, and an ele­vator.
1870 Jayne Building Philadelphia 1990 space elevator ❛ … NASA took a fresh look at the steel cable in light of a super ma­te­rial, car­bon nano­tube ... uber-strong, light and flex­i­ble. “Space Ele­vators: An Ad­vanced Earth-Space Infra­struc­ture for the New Mil­len­ium” is the feas­i­bil­i­ty paper of this new science, to erect a track run­ning on cables, from here to the Moon, a jour­ney of some 62,000 miles.❜


Philipp Deidesheimer
 Philipp & Mrs Deidesheimer
CABLE CAR NOTES

| Based on San Fran­cisco’s Golden Era by Lucius Beebe and Charles Clego (1060); Cable Car Days in San Fran­cisco by Edgar Myron Kahn (1940); The Head­light, March 1947, Western Pacific Club; Imperial San Fran­cisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin by Gray Brechin (1999); and on­line articles by Mary Bellis (“The History of Sky­scrapers”), Karen Barss (“Man­hat­tan’s Golden Age of Sky­scrapers”), and Meghan Neal (“Space Ele­vators Are Total­ly Pos­sible”) | A 1959 epi­sode of TV series Bonanza fea­tures a Phil­ipp Dei­de­shei­mer plot point. | Thank you Taryn Ed­wards, MLIS, Mechan­ics’ Institute. | Thank you Penelope Houston, SF Public Library.

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  WALT WHITMAN  Walt Whitman
The main shapes arise, shapes of democracy total, result of centuries, shapes ever projecting other shapes, shapes of tur­bu­lent manly cities, shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth, shapes bracing the earth and braced with the whole earth.
In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay, on sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor’d near the shore, an old, dismasted, gray and batter’d ship, disabled, done. After free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul’d up at last and hawser’d tight, lies rusting, mouldering.


  HISTORIC CENTER RECIPIENT 

Agadez, Niger

Starting point for a journey across the Sahara, taking in “ports of call” to Timbuktu, Ghat, then Ghadames, and finally Tripoli, on the shores of the Mediterranean.

Seat of a Tuareg sultanate which was established in 1449. Occupied by the French since the early 1900s, and known of rebellion ever since. The Tuareg people are the original Canaanites from the Bible, inhabiting ancient Palestine and Phoenicia, and its lingua franca is the Hausa language, a subgroup of the Chadic languages group, and therefore a part of the Afroasiatic language family.
Started in the 1400s to serve as the south gateway into the Sahara, the Historic Centre of Agadez in Niger is now a Historic Center Recipient and a 2013 UNESCO World Heritage Site. This desert town was founded to become a center of commerce for the trans-Saharan trade, and by the 1500s the populace was 30,000. 2013 UNESCO Historic Center Recipient In 1976, area mining for uranium allowed the local economy to established a school, the Ecole des Mines de l’Air.
The 2011 census counted a total of 124,324 people living in Agadez and the European language they speak is French. There is an international airport named after a Tuareg leader, Mano Dayak, but due to the ongoing Tuareg rebellion in the region, Agadez is unsafe for travel.


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  WHAT HE SAID  Spielberg's Lincoln has a dream: It's nighttime. Ship's moved by some terrible power at a terrible speed. And though it's imperceptible in the darkness I have an intuition that we're headed towards a shore. No one else seems to be about the vessel. I'm very keenly aware of my aloneness. I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.  
  METAL MEN  Wild Wild West

Illustrated w/ collages, drawings, maps, paintings, photographs, prints and quotes

| ⁋ |  Out west, when 1848 was on­ly twenty-four days old, mechan­ic James Marshall was mak­ing a rou­tine in­spec­tion on the grounds of a saw­mill he man­aged for his em­ploy­er. That was when the New Jer­sey native noticed some odd-look­ing ore in a water chan­nel of the South Fork of the Amer­i­can River. It was “... bright, yet mal­le­a­ble. I then tried it be­tween two rocks, and found that it could be beaten in­to a differ­ent shape, but not broken.”

 | ⁋ |  Nine days after Marshall emerged from the waters w/ his find, the Treaty of Guada­lupe Hidal­go was signed, trans­fer­ring a large tract of Mex­ico to the United States.  | ⁋ |  These concurrent events to­geth­er pre­cip­i­ta­ted the Cali­for­nia Gold Rush of 1849, when folks came from all over, bring­ing dreams while pray­ing to the god and god­dess of wealth for a show of “colour”  | ⁋ |  The first came from Mon­te­rey, San Fran­cis­co, San Jose and So­no­ma: when clerks, doc­tors, labor­ers, law­yers, mechan­ics, ranch­eros left their jobs. Sail­ors de­ser­ted their ships. Soldiers de­ser­ted the Mex­i­can War. As word spread more came from Hawai‘i, Mex­ico and Ore­gon.  | ⁋ |  Gold seekers showing up near the saw­mill of John August Sut­ter, where gold was first dis­cov­ered, had no need for milled lum­ber, and his busi­ness went into de­cline. All the while, a new settle­ment grew across the Amer­i­can Riv­er to be­come Colo­ma, the first gold rush town. Near­by stands a mon­u­ment, by the Native Sons of the Golden West, to mark the grave of James Wil­son Marshall, the “dis­cov­er­er of gold.”



Westward-Ho!

Panama 1849

One can cross Pan­a­ma to get to Cali­for­nia rather than sail around Cape Horn. Up Chagres riv­er to the town of Cule­bra; then don­keys to Gulf of Pan­a­ma, elev­en miles away.
Maps were consulted and what became the Cali­for­nia Trial be­gan w/ exis­ting routes. Emi­grants showed up along the Mis­sou­ri riv­er and towns in Illi­nois or Iowa. Wagon trains hitched, they head­ed out, cross­ing land­apes of grass­lands, prai­ries, steppes, val­leys and riv­ers to Wyo­ming and Fort Lara­mie.
Fort Laramie 1834  | ⁋ |  The only way to cross the Rock­ies was a cor­ri­dor be­yond Fort Lara­mie, lev­el and broad. South Pass af­ford­ed sev­er­al routes pas­sage to Cali­for­nia. At a fork in the road soon after, the Ore­gon Trail veers right while the Mor­mon Trail turns south to­ward Fort Bridger.

Fort Bridger 1842  | ⁋ |  Overland travelers chose routes de­pen­dent on start­ing point and final des­ti­na­tion. Oth­er factors were the con­di­tion of their wagons, live­stock, and the avail­ability of water.
Gold Country 1850  | ⁋ |  From California, one can get to Ore­gon on the Apple­gate Trail (1846), an alter­native to the haz­ard­ous last leg of the Ore­gon Trail.

 | ⁋ |  The Oregon Trail be­gins in Mis­sou­ri and leaves ei­ther Fort Leav­en­worth, Inde­pen­dence or Saint Jo­seph for a two thou­sand mile trek to the Ore­gon Ter­ri­tory. Past the Great Plains, then the Rock­ies, head­ing west north­west to the Snake river, Fort Boise, Wit­man Mis­sion, The Dales, Fort Van­cou­ver, the Colum­bia river, and the coast.

The Santa Fe Trail starts off in Mis­sou­ri, rolls through Kan­sas and a cor­ner of Colo­rado. Cross­ing the Arkan­sas river be­fore drop­ping to New Mex­ico, the trail loses its iden­tity some­what in San­ta Fe, where it is braid­ed to the Gila Trail, a local 16th-c. com­merce and trav­el high road, bring­ing trade from in­land to the coast.
 | ⁋ |  The Mormon Trail, gathers in Illi­nois and wends by Iowa and Nebras­ka be­fore join­ing estab­lished trails in Wyo­ming. To­geth­er they cross the Rock­ies, then the Mor­mon Trail con­tin­ues south south­west to Utah Ter­ri­tory to end up in Los Angeles. Be­sides the over­land­ers there were al­so sea­farers.

O Pioneers! 1849 Cape Horn 1849  | ⁋ |  An eight-month sea route from New York to San Fran­cis­co would in­volve a haz­ard­ous round­ing of Cape Horn.

Atlantic Ocean 1852

Gold Fever
A 49er carries pick­axe, shov­el and pan. Can add a rock­er and a hop­per; some also con­duct hy­draul­ic ex­pe­ri­ments. A water wheel would be jim-dan­dy, to pick up indi­vid­ual quan­ti­ties of gold-bear­ing grav­el and sand.

Gold Mining 1949
49er 1848 Personal gear: pair of blan­kets, fry­ing-pan, flour, salt pork, bran­dy (or other sanc­ti­fy­ing spirit). Field gear must-haves: pick­axe, shovel and pan. Some pro­cure a mule.
toolbox  | ⁋ |  Gold miners w/ no finan­cial back­ing learn to con­gre­gate along moun­tain roads and wait for sup­ply wagons pass­ing through, bring­ing food and tools and carry­ing out gold dust. Satur­day nights were for saloon­ing and carous­ing. Sun­day is a holi­day – laun­dry, tool re­pair, swap­ping stories, writ­ing let­ters, nap­ping.

49ers 1854
gold pan  | ⁋ |  A twelve inch shal­low sheet-iron pan to rinse soil w/ water and lo­cate the gold. rocker  | ⁋ |  A rock­er is a rec­tan­gu­lar wood­en box mount­ed on two rock­ers and set at a down­ward angle.
hopper  | ⁋ |  The hop­per is a box sit­ting on top of the rock­er, lined w/ a sheet of per­for­a­ted iron. Be­neath is an area called the “riddle-box.”
long tom  | ⁋ |  The long tom is an im­proved rock­er plus hop­per, reach­ing to twen­ty feet in length. A long sheet of per­for­a­ted iron lines the bot­tom and be­neath that iw the riddle-box.
 | ⁋ |  Women too had gold fev­er, com­ing from Mex­ico, Chile, Peru, Eng­land, France, New York and New Orleans. James Marshall tests his discovery’s quality in Mrs Wimmer’s kettle of boiling soap  | ⁋ |  Depicted in history as adven­turess, courte­san, har­lot, pick­pocket, pros­ti­tute and the demi­monde, these women were al­so book­keep­ers, cooks, laun­dress­es, shop-keep­ers, maids, wives. When moun­tain roads im­proved suffi­cient­ly to make trav­el be­tween towns feas­i­ble, they set forth as per­form­ers. Golden Girls 1849  | ⁋ |  Mrs Clappe came west in 1851 w/ her hus­band. In her let­ters home she gives an ac­count of the era, about geol­ogy and a vis­it to a rural doctor’s rude of­fice of pine shin­gles and cot­ton cloth.

City of Gold
saloon chandelier
Sydney Duck “Eng­lish Jim” Stuart was hanged for rob­bery and mur­der on July 11 1851.

San Francisco 1851
Yerba Buena 1847 1848 Yerba Buena was a ham­let on the San Fran­cis­co penin­sula w/ an ex­cel­lent har­bor. The Span­iards es­tab­lished a mari­time trad­ing post and built the Mis­sion of San Fran­cis­co de Asis. Ships dock­ing in its cove dis­charged sea­far­ers to a Span­ish-style pla­za known as Ports­mouth Square.
Eureka! 1848
 | ⁋ |  On arrival gold seek­ers rent­ed lodg­ings in shan­ties and tent towns, and stayed long enough to buy tools and pro­vi­sions be­fore head­ing out.

Sydney Ducks 1848  | ⁋ |  Brought over from Aus­tra­lia to perform labor, Eng­lish con­victs de­ser­ted en masse and in­stead formed a gang. Soon a fron­tier patch of law­less­ness, Sydney Town, sprout­ed at the base of Tele­graph Hill. The Sydney Ducks preyed on peo­ple and prop­er­ty, aug­men­ted by a gang of lady pick­poc­kets, and wil­ling­ly com­mit­ted mur­der to survive.
Post Office  | ⁋ |  The embers of Syd­ney Town re­kin­dled and gave birth to the Bar­bary Coast, chock-a-block w/ bars, saloons, broth­els, con­cert halls, dance halls; where “get­ting shang­haied” was first re­hearsed. Sur­vived the 1906 Earth­quake and Fire, by 1917 the red-light dis­trict was no more.

San Francisco 1848 1849 19850 1851 Mint of San Francisco

Gold Mountain
Coloma Valley 1849
Sutter’s Mill on the South Fork of the Amer­i­can River.
Sutters Mill 1848 Coloma, next to Sut­ter’s Mill, was the first gold min­ing town. A post of­fice and jail were add­ed in 1852 – both proved pop­ular. Gold min­ing also took place north at Bid­well’s Bar, Cut Eye Fos­ter’s Bar, Down­ie­ville, Dutch Flat, Good­year’s Bar, Grass Val­ley, Hell­town, Illinois­town, Iowa Hill, Kana­ka Flat, Lousy Level, Marys­ville, Mur­der­ers Bar, Neva­da City, Plu­mas City, Poker Flat, Rough and Ready, Wash­ing­ton, Whis­key Flat, Wis­con­sin Hill, and You Bet.
 | ⁋ |  South at Angels Camp, Chi­nese Camp, Dog­town, Fair Play, Hor­ni­tos, Jack­son, Moke­lum­me Hill, Mor­mon Bar, Raw­hide, Rich Gulch, Shaw’s Flat, Sonora, Vol­cano.
 | ⁋ |  Gold was found along trib­u­ta­ries to the San Joa­quin and Sac­ra­men­to riv­ers. At Au­burn, Dia­mond Springs, Grizz­ly Flats, Mis­sou­ri Flat, Placer­ville.

Miwok 1851  | ⁋ |  Home to Native Amer­i­cans incl. the Miwok, the Sier­ra Neva­da was rude­ly af­fect­ed by the Gold Rush. In 1849 an incident oc­curred along the Mid­dle Fork of the Amer­i­can River when some 49ers died and some indi­genes killed. An un­easy truce ob­tained when Native Amer­i­cans were hired on as labor­ers and paid in tin, but by 1900 their pop­u­la­tion had de­clined to only ±16,000.

Hollywood 1935  | ⁋ |  Be­fore James Cag­ney was the Fris­co Kid and Ed­ward G. Robin­son drama­tized life in the Bar­bary Coast era, there was a 1913 fea­ture, The Last Night of the Bar­bary Coast, now a lost film.
pair of jeans The 1849 state cen­sus count­ed 42,000 over­land­ers and 35,000 sea­far­ers caught up by gold fev­er; to­geth­er w/ 3,000 sail­ors who had deser­ted ships.

 | ⁋ |  Coloma is now a ghost town in­side Marsh­all Gold Dis­cov­ery State His­toric Park.

Chinatown 1852 Like all who seek a bet­ter to­mor­row, the Chi­nese too came to the Cali­for­nia Gold Rush, formed a fra­tern­i­ty in Colo­ma, squat­ted spent claims and worked as a team over the “tail­ings” left be­hind. In 1880 this gold-min­ing China­town was lost to fire.

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  SUPER CARS +

“Our last arrow! We’ll fire it to stop the get­away car – then end our careers as Green Arrow and Speedy!” “Yes, with our se­cret iden­ti­ties ex­posed, we’re use­lss against crim­i­nals!”
Francisco Mattos

Francisco Mattos Immortal Dane Whit­man brought his time-test­ed skills as the Black Knight to the early days of film­making, creat­ing a phantas­ma­gorical chariot race for Fritz Lang’s 1929 silent sci­fi Woman in the Moon. These days, he still does stunts for Holly­wood.

Francisco Mattos Although he owns a Legion flight ring from the 30th cen­tury, when not in a hur­ry to get some­where Michael Jon Car­ter pre­fers to drive. He comes from the future, sheathed in a super-suit boast­ing futur­is­tic tech, but the feel of rub­ber on road gives Booster Gold a jolt un­like any other.

Francisco Mattos Little is known about this shape­shift­ing foe of Bat­man Be­yond. Her fluid body al­lows Inque to seep in­to and out of her liq­uid limo. 		Francisco Mattos Jimon Kwan’s car is parked be­hind the world’s first eco-fire sta­tion. She’s there to give a dem­on­stra­tion – in her capacity as Silver of China Force – on her mutant abil­ity to drain heat and then con­vert it into light.

Francisco Mattos Before he went to war as the Fight­ing Amer­i­can, Nel­son Flagg’s father gave him a 1915 Ford Speed­ster – it later crashed and burned. The orig­inal is al­so shown, fresh off the assem­bly line.

Francisco Mattos It takes two of Jamie Madrox, the Multi­ple Man, to con­trol this wide jeep be­cause it’s sure-as-hell gon­na be a bumpy ride. 		Francisco Mattos The grandfather and great-grand­father of James Jesse were from the world of vau­de­ville, which is why their spawn con­tin­ued their forays into self-pow­ered loco­motion and built a por­ta­ble air-cooled en­gine, hooked up to an ac­cel­era­tor switch, an engine cut-off switch, and single-horse­pow­ered roller skates, and later tor­ment­ing the Flash w/ wea­pon­ized toys as the Trickster.

Francisco Mattos An inside-out refrig­er­a­ted truck driven by Leonard Snart, com­mit­ing crime as Cap­tain Cold using an ex­pe­ri­men­tal gun based on stol­en sci­ence and shoot­ing ab­so­lute-zero blasts that solid­i­fy as ice.

Francisco Mattos H.G. Wells jumped at the chance to take a spin in an ex­pe­ri­men­tal con­trap­tion that his Amer­i­can friend and fel­low futur­ist, the head of Stark Indus­tries, brought over to Lon­don. The author of The Invis­i­ble Man is photo­graphed sit­ting in the back seat as the self-driv­ing car crosses Tow­er Bridge.

Francisco Mattos This tasty USSR-era Trabant was on dis­play in a Bel­grade art gal­lery when Harle­quin, the “mer­ry men­ace”, hap­pened by, took one look, and prompt­ly brought it home.

Francisco Mattos This rarely seen Bugat­ti Type 57 Atlan­tic be­longs to Arthur Curry (Aqua­man) and is nick­named the Drop be­cause he al­most nev­er has need for it.

Francisco Mattos Im­per­a­tor Furio­sa’s go-to wheels when she’s off the clock. 		Francisco Mattos Even super-heroes driv­ing sports cars have to stop and pay toll, as the Thing heckles John­ny Storm’s toss­ing chops. “Let’s get go­ing, Torchy! Hey! Ya missed the coin buc­ket!” “But I threw it okay! It wasn’t my fault! The buc­ket moved!”

Francisco Mattos After punching Hitler in his de­but, the city of Man­hat­tan award­ed Steve Rogers w/ a spank­ing red 1937 Ford, and he prompt­ly took off to drive cross-coun­try. Then he made up for lost years w/ a Cor­vette. These days, his ride is a 1960 Chev­ro­let, al­ways parked on the street; re­peat­ed­ly stol­en then re­turned be­cause it was a badge of hon­or to leave the keys in the igni­tion. 		Before his life was im­bued w/ Bahd­ni­sian pow­ers and he took con­trol of the human thun­der­bolt, John­ny Thun­der was in Europe, hav­ing won a music schol­ar­ship while in high school. With some of his prize mon­ey he bought a sec­ond-hand Minor Mor­ris con­ver­tible.

Francisco Mattos Bent­ley Witt­man, nar­row­ly es­cap­ing the Human Torch, is chauf­feured back to his man­sion on Long Island and his life as the Wizard. “Fire is a power­ful wea­pon! But I pos­sess the great­est wea­pon of all – the world’s great­est brain!”

Francisco Mattos No way is the myste­rious Dolphin a land­lubber, so when­ever ad­ven­tures take her ashore she al­ways rides in her 1962 Shark road­ster, w/ its aqua­rium pod and oth­er aquatic must-haves al­low­ing her safe pas­sage.

Retiring as the Sor­ce­rer Su­preme, Steven Strange’s men­tor, the Ancient One, mas­ter of mys­tic arts, drove home to Kamar-Taj in Tibet, cross­ing rivers w/ the aid of local vil­lag­ers, ever grate­ful for deliv­er­ance from the evil Kaluu.
Francisco Mattos

Francisco Mattos Suddenly, the hover­ing air-car is jolt­ed by a fan­tas­tic wave of force … and that is when Nick Fury sees an awe­some fig­ure who stands wait­ing to con­front the dy­nam­ic director of SHIELD … Francisco Mattos A surreal episode of the Knights of the Galaxy is just start­ing. “For King Arthur and Brit­ain.” (Mys­tery In Space #8 (June-July 1952))

Francisco Mattos To have a bit of fun while Super­man is recov­er­ing from their latest en­coun­ter, Mr Mxyzptlk, the imp from else­where, uses fifth-dimen­sional sci­ence to re­arrange this car and pro­ceeds to demon­strate how to oper­ate it.

Francisco Mattos Vic Sage blends into his camou­flage car, ephem­eral behind a pseudo­derm mask, dur­ing the time he joined Blue Beetle, Cap­tain Atom and Night­shade as the Ques­tion in the orig­in­al Sen­ti­nels of Justice. 		Francisco Mattos When insect-female hybrid Queen Zaz­za­la of planet Korll re­turned for a re­match w/ the Justic League, she went first to the Citroen museum in Aulnay-sous-Bois near Paris, and took pos­ses­sion of an ex­pe­ri­men­tal 1940s light-weight hover­car which she used as a bee­hive-nest. Bad­ly dam­aged and aban­doned, it still os­cil­lates when touched, await­ing new in­struc­tions from the Queen Bee.

Francisco Mattos The nomadic Roy Har­per, leav­ing be­hind his Speedy per­sona, took to the road in an oft-van­dal­ized there­fore oft-dis­guised van. When he land­ed in Eng­land, the for­mer bat­tling bow­man per­suad­ed Bank­sy to let him take the famous SWAT van for an ex­ten­ded spin as Arsenal.
Francisco Mattos Random page from the mid-cen­tury port­folio of bil­lion­aire in­dus­trial­ist Tony Stark: 1958 Nucleon, Nor­man Bel Ged­des proto­type, 1949 Tabot Iago, 1959 Fire­bird.

Francisco Mattos Sue Rich­ards fetched Agatha Hark­ness, her boy Frank­lin’s new gov­ern­ess, in a cus­tom-built His­pano-Suiza, pre­vi­ous­ly owned by an heir to the Dubon­net for­tune. It was a regal ride be­fit­ting the lead-witch of New Salem, who has brought along a mys­tical rock­ing sea­horse as a baby present. Francisco Mattos
Francisco Mattos An early electric car proto­type from the morbid mind of Os­wald Hu­bert Loo­mis, aka the Prank­ster. 		Francisco Mattos When her mom asked if her new car was safe, Jen­ni­fer Wal­ters sent this blurr­y pix of her un­usual find while in col­lege. It proved ideal for camp­ing, and that was when she got into an ac­ci­dent, need­ed a blood trans­fu­sion from her cou­sin Bruce, and be­gan a new exis­tence as the ravish­ing rough She-Hulk.

Francisco Mattos In 1923, Tony Stark’s dad vis­it­ed the Fiat Fac­tory in Turin and open­ly ad­mired their roof treat­ment. When what later be­came the Avengers Man­sion was built, he put a race-car track on the roof.

Francisco Mattos Besides lending his oc­cult skills to com­bat evil, Gio­van­ni Zatara per­forms as a stage magi­cian, and is the rea­son he drives a 1959 Lin­coln, which has a sturdy trunk to fit all his stage props.

Francisco Mattos Tony Stark awarded his exec­u­tive assis­tant Pep­per Potts w/ this pink 1954 Ford in rec­og­ni­tion for her aid in their first caper to­geth­er, bat­tling “The Mad Pharaoh”. 		Francisco Mattos Kent Allard’s elu­sive 1957 Lin­coln Prem­iere, which he drove as the Shadow, caught on a U.S. post­age stamp.

Francisco Mattos Blackhawk’s 1949 Hud­son, later owned by Jack Kerouac when he was do­ing a lot of driving. Re­stored and no long­er driven.

Francisco Mattos Carter Hall was so smit­ten when Hal Jor­dan drove up in a Phan­tom Cor­sair that the test-pilot prompt­ly gifted this one-off auto­mobile to the extra­terres­trial detec­tive, known to Earth as the Hawk­man, for a planet-warm­ing pres­ent.

Francisco Mattos An ex­pe­ri­men­tal float­ing for­tress from the malev­o­lent minds at Ad­vanced Idea Mechan­ics.

Francisco Mattos Although a haunt­ed horse ac­com­pa­nies his cursed exis­tence, the ghost of high­way­man James Crad­dock also owns a train, break­ing the law as the Gentle­man Ghost, and trav­el­ing the world w/ out a home.

Francisco Mattos Long after the own­er of Goth­am Broad­cast­ing Co. Alan Wel­ling Scott, was vis­it­ed by the Green Flame of Life (“Three times shall I flame green! First to bring death! Sec­ond to bring life! Third to bring pow­er!”) and fought evil­doers as the Green Lan­tern, he would con­tin­ue to tool around in his trust­ed 1939 Chev­ro­let clunk­er.

Francisco Mattos Prof. X’s band of super-human teen­agers are driv­en to the air­port in a spe­cially-built Rolls Royce w/ dark-tint­ed win­dows. “Boy! It musta tak­en a heap of green stamps to buy a chariot like this!” “No jok­ing, please! Con­cen­trate on your mis­sion! Re­view your pow­ers! Our foe is cer­tain to be high­ly danger­ous!”

Francisco Mattos Brain­iac 5 re­tooled an an­tique and cre­ated the “fris­bee”, armed w/ repel-rays, as a com­bat suit for Chuck Taine, the Bounc­ing Boy.

Francisco Mattos Hook­ing up to his Ply­mouth Bar­ra­cuda’s bat­teries to re­charge his pyro-cos­tume, Gar­field Lynns un­leashes a color crime­wave based on rain­bow rays as the Human Fire­fly. 		Francisco Mattos Ted Grant’s ride when he’s fight­ing crime as Wild­cat, im­mor­tal­ized on a U.S. pos­tage stamp.

Francisco Mattos Brainiac 5 con­struc­ted this bi-cycle for Luor­nu Durgo Taine (Duo Dam­sel) to aug­ment her super-power.

Francisco Mattos With wealth to spare, social­ite Wes­ley Dodds had a taste for dan­ger and cars. Which is why he could im­peril his 1935 Bugat­ti Aero­lithe by taking it out to strike ter­ror among wrong­doers as the Sand­man, de­clar­ing “There is no land be­yond the law, where tyrants rule w/ un­shak­able pow­er! It’s but a dream from which the evil wake to face their fate … their ter­ri­fy­ing hour!”

Francisco Mattos A gift from Brain­iac 5, this ex­pe­ri­men­tal bike al­lowed Lana Lang to ap­ply 30th-cen­tury tech­nol­o­gy to her 20th-cen­tury life. While fid­dling around w/ the tele­porta­tion but­ton dur­ing a ride in the country­side, she man­aged to trade bodies w/ all the in­sects in a near­by field, be­com­ing for a spell the Insect Queen. 		Francisco Mattos Socialite Kathy Kane, in her first ap­pear­ance as a masked crime­fighter, lead­ing the Bat­mobile into the fray on her Bat Bike. “Hur­ry, Bat­man – the Bat­woman is beat­ing us on this mis­sion!” (Detec­tive Com­ics #233 July 1956)

Francisco Mattos The keys to this ex­pe­ri­men­tal car from Stark In­dus­tries were hand­ed to Matt Mur­dock, giving add­ed com­fort to his forays as Dare­devil in­to exis­ten­tial evil.

Francisco Mattos Sam­uel Jo­seph Scud­der drove this solar lab­o­ra­to­ry on wheels in his first ap­pear­ance in Flash #105, “The Mas­ter of Mir­rors”.

Francisco Mattos This in­noc­u­ous van offers stor­age for Rory Regan’s col­lec­tion of mys­ti­cal rags, al­low­ing Rag­man, the tatter­demalion of jus­tice, to find respite a­fter a jolt of elec­tric­i­ty ran into his body and which by all ac­counts hasn’t exit­ed yet.

Francisco
The second Shield, Lance­lot Strong, drove a 1970 AMC Rebel for a short period un­til its color scheme gave him away to every bad actor on every city block.

Francisco Mattos Model kit from Auro­ra for Britt Reid’s spe­cial-built 1965 Chrysler, fea­tur­ing a 413 engine. Bruce Lee as Kato drove the Black Beauty to fight crime w/ the Green Hor­net, ever ready to de­ploy a pair of hood-mount­ed machine guns, a flame throw­er, and sting­er missles.

Francisco Mattos Sow­ing feline felony in Goth­am City w/ her Cat Mobile, Selina Kyle leads a law­less life as the Cat­woman.

Francisco Mattos Wins­low Schott, the ter­ri­ble Toy­man, had his ful­ly func­tion­al dwarf Cadil­lac sur­round­ed by in­dig­nant town­folk hop­ing to save Doll Man and Doll Girl from a threat they were not yet aware of. 		Francisco Mattos The seldom driven Joker Mobile is de­ployed to track down a double-cross­ing mob­ster. “The whole job – the safe-crack­ing, the get­away - all bear the stamp of Dink Devers! The cops think he died – but he’s right here in town, at the Blake Hotel! Ha-HA-HA!” “Gosh, Joker – I bet you’re right!”

Francisco Mattos A proficiency in auto mechan­ics as well as min­ia­turi­za­tion land­ed Ray Palmer a plum po­si­tion as a team mem­ber re­hab­ili­ta­ting a Fer­ra­ri 375 Plus. Pal­mer kept tin­ker­ing some more on the rac­ing car, giv­ing it a cap­abil­i­ty of be­ing shrunk, and con­sti­tutes the first step in his quest, as the Atom, to jump into, then out of, the quan­tum realm at will. 		Francisco Mattos While parked on a cloud, the Ghost Patrol are active­ly bored ... “Ho Hum! An­oth­er quiet day. Noth­ing do­ing on our sec­tor of earth late­ly.” “Strange! This is us­ual­ly the most trou­ble­some of the plan­ets!” “What’s that ahead? Why – it’s a horse!”

Francisco Mattos King T’chal­la of Wakan­da’s elusive jeep parked in San Fran­cis­co’s South of Mar­ket neigh­bor­hood, where he was on a secret mis­sion as the Black Panther.

Francisco Mattos This “fire” truck, de­signed by Stark In­dus­tries, later pat­ent­ed by Gen­eral Motors as the Futur­liner, was used to house JIm Ham­mond, an and­roid spawned in the mind of Prof. Phin­eas T. Hor­ton. This lab-on wheels is re­mote­ly con­trolled, in­su­lat­ed in­side to with­stand the in­tense fire gen­er­at­ed by the golden age Human Torch.


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