Will Little Brainy Bobby be the Stockbroker Man? 1960's Graduations in San Francisco

It's Graduation season! That special time every June when incredibly smart, infinitely younger people than you grab a piece of paper and transition effortlessly into middle class. I moonlight as a server in a brewery, so—for me—graduation season means parties of 10-20 who get wasted, pay on a single credit card, and hopefully overtip beyond the mandatory 18% gratuity.

I'd like to showcase this smart series of vintage graduation snapshots I found in my mystery box of photographs.

This was Lena Vasilev—one of the Seoul Sisters—graduating outside the Opera House in San Francisco's Civic Center district in 1960. Apparently, back in the olden days when Lowell High School was located in the Panhandle, they held their commencement ceremonies in style. Is it just me, or is there a huge argument happening behind her?

*

I love these rooftop graduation pics. That's a Mayfair Market sign in the background. Judging by the geography, I think it belonged to their former location at 355 Ocean Avenue in San Francisco. If anyone can pin-point this rooftop, I'll PayPal ya ten bucks.

If you're interested in the boozy side of graduation—and, let's face it, who isn't—check out this vintage snapshot collection of what these kids did afterward.

Fast Times at Lowell High: San Francisco in 1959

The third week in April is Organize Your Files Week. Since I'm not a big fan of organization, I peeked into my overflowing box of eclectic snapshots to see if any had organized themselves—and I was lucky to find this small collection, dated February 1959. I love it when photo developers from 57 years ago do the work for me.

Since it's also National Zucchini Bread Day, I thought I'd start today's post off with some vintage cheesecake. Now, that may be what Hannibal Lector would call a ham-handed segue, but they're both made from eggs and sugar. So they're sort of vaguely related. Anyway, this is the youngest of the Seoul Sisters, Lena—the one who later became a model. Here she is on vacation in Beautiful Downtown Burbank.

The rest appear to have been taken at the old campus of Lowell High School in San Francisco, California. Before it was re-established on the "outer dunes" of Lake Merced in 1962, Lowell High was located at 1860 Hayes Street in the Panhandle. The move was ostensibly prompted by the building being seismically unsafe, yet it somehow survived—and is now known as the John Adams Center, part of the extended City College of San Francisco campus.

*

Although the precise year is never mentioned in the musical and film Grease, its polarizing sequel Grease 2 retcons events to about 1959. That seems about right. These girls don't look like Pink Ladies or paper shakers, though. More like studious background dancers. I suppose, at a school like Lowell, you'd have to be.

*

Lowell is one of the two public schools in the San Francisco Unified School District (along with Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts) that only enrolls students who meet special admission requirements. The admission process is based on test scores, GPA, extracurricular activities, and a writing sample. In other words, these were some smart-ass kids.

As Dana Carvey's classic "Grumpy Old Man" character on SNL might say: "In my day, we didn't have fancy camera phones! We didn't have Instagram, and the Facebook! When we wanted to take pictures, we saved our allowance, and bought Brownie Hawkeyes! Then we had to buy film! And we didn't get to see how we looked right away, oh no! We took that film to get developed, and we waited and waited! And when the pictures came back, it was a month later—and we didn't even remember who we posed with! We didn't get to 'tag' and 'share' our photos! You know what we did? We took one look, and then put them away in an album for 57 years! And we only got to see them again half a century later, if some blogger put them on the internet! That's the way it was, and we liked it!"

Picture Day at Dudley Stone School: San Francisco, 1953

Here's a cool artifact: a Dudley Stone School class photo, taken in 1953.

The historic Dudley Stone building is located at 1250 Waller Street in San Francisco. You can read about its history, namesake, and various incarnations (as the William R. De Avila School, and ultimately the Chinese Immersion School at De Avila) here. According to the changeable letter board, this was Dudley Stone School, Room 207, Grade L6, and taken on September 29, 1953.

And, of course, it was snapped by Plymouth Pictures / Golden Gate Studio, formerly of 1007 Market Street. As you may remember, they had a monopoly on the San Francisco class photo racket for quite some time.

Many thanks to anyone who can tell us why the front-row children are wearing seat belts.