Originally published at: Colorized film of daily life from the early 20th Century | Boing Boing
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I’m so thankful for people in the past who thought to film the mundane; it is so fascinating 100+ years later. This looks like an Edward Gorey illustration brought to life, “L is for Lionel, bifurcated by a tram.”
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I’m just always amazed by how much urban space there used to be anytime I see these sort of things! It just makes me realize how crowded things are nowadays.
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All that parking space; mind-boggling!
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Finally, somewhere to tether my velocipede!
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Tried to gain a sense if these city streets were right-hand or left-hand drive (1907 Vancouver a bit more emotionally connected to ol Blighty?), and it kinda seems like there’s enough room for either? maybe the trams are left-hand drive?
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Some day in the distant future archeologists will use fossilized social media posts to reconstruct the diet of early 21st Century humans.
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Kittens… it was kittens! The monsters! 
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Early 21st Century humans were known to ritually consume a concoction they called “Tide Pods”. It is unknown today what ingredients made up this mixture, but it is thought to have been taken both as a display of strength and as a gateway to mystical experiences. Evidence leads to the conclusion that ingesting this substance was extremely unpleasant and even dangerous, but it was recorded that many apparently “liked” doing it.
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As you can see, it was pretty casual (thank dog for wide streets) but officially Canadians drove on the left until the 1920s when we switched to the right, on the grounds that we were more likely to drive to the US than to Britain.
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I have followed NASS’ work for some time. I’m captivated by the glimpses these videos provide into daily life “back in the day.” Even though the colors are guesses, having them adds extra life to the b&w originals. It’s fun trying to pinpoint in which year a video was made by examining ads, theater marquees, license plates, and the like. So far the biggest surprise was to discover that even in the late 1930s Los Angeles streets didn’t have lines to mark traffic lanes. On some of the wider streets people seemed comfortable making up their own lanes.
The bummer is that comments on NASS’ videos inevitably are full of people whining about how much cleaner things were, and crime-free and homeless-free and whiter…oops, they weren’t supposed to say that part out loud.
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Also notable, the Assay office is labelled Dominion Of Canada, as this was only 40 years after Confederation. So many little details to date this. Amazing footage.
This will be pretty distorted by the lens, though. This is likely a very wide angle lens (based on the distortion of signage around the edges) to capture as much visual interest as possible, which makes things look a lot more spacious than they actually were. It was probably pretty bustling and dense. Cities built for walking were built densely!
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Looked pretty loosey-goosey as far as enforcement went since there were a lot of people driving on the right side too. I guess it’s not quite as important to get everyone on the same page when most vehicles are doing 20mph or less but it’s a good reminder of why per-capita road deaths in urban areas were actually a lot higher back then than they are today.
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