A Crabby Coincidence - San Francisco, California

Two different cards, but I'm betting that the two pictures were taken within a minute or two of each other. Check out the man in the hat; I think it's the same man in both pictures.  I also think the two ladies in the first card have their backs turned to us in the second card. Yes, I know the man's hat is a different color and so are theirs (and their coats too), but that's the beauty of hand-tinted cards; you can make them any color you want. That's why you often see brightly-colored awnings and cars on linen cards from the 1930s and 40s. My guess is that most of those cars were black. Notice that the awnings in these cards are also colored differently; the one on top has some unconvincing stripes.

Here are the backs of the two cards. They are both from the Scenic View Card Co. in San Francisco, but the second one seems to have been printed by Tichnor Bros.

The message on the card, sent in 1946, reads:

Dear Betty and Dick

This is where we just had dinner  it was swell. Wish you were with us. Going home tomorrow Aug 15th - love and best wishes Bev.

Beverly had a time of her life. XX

Split, Croatia

Three lovely old views of Split, Croatia. I saw that Lay Hoon posted a contemporary postcard of Split yesterday on the Travel Postcard blog. It's interesting to look at that aerial view and be able to recognize these places.

Jump Off Joe - Newport, Oregon

I've  lived in Oregon all this time and I had never heard of Jump Off Joe in Newport, Oregon. You have to love the internet, because it can answer just about any question you ask of it. Thanks to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) website, I now know that Jump Off Joe was a sea stack composed of middle Miocene concretionary sandstone of the Astoria formation. I had no idea!

Jump Off Joe was a popular tourist attraction before World War I. It formed a barrier across the beach and forced beach walkers to climb over it and jump off the other side. That, of course, is where it got its name. It was also reputed to play an important role in Native American mythology, but that itself may be mythology.

What's particularly interesting about the USGS site is that it shows pictures of  Jump Off Joe over time and pretty much explains why I have never seen or heard of it. The postcard above shows Jump Off Joe (the rock formation with the arch in it) in about 1900. By 1910, it already looked drastically different. By 1920, it was severely diminished, and by 1970, it was virtually gone.
See the USGS pictures here.