A sad, "innocence lost" side note, but there is no longer any way you can schedule dinner for 7:30, start eating a half-hour late, and still make it to the airport in time for a 10:45 international flight. So in some ways I wish the world was still like it was in 1967.
shareThe Drayton's seem like Nob Hill types. Evening traffic to SFO would not be heavy so it would only take twenty minutes or so to get to the airport. If you have TSA PRE status and are favored by the airline you could check in with scarcely an hour to spare. They do bend the rules for their best and most loyal travelers.
shareThey are not Nob Hill types. If you watch the taxi ride at the beginning, they clearly live in Cow Hollow, which is just to the East of the Presidio and between Pacific Heights and the Marina District. The view from their terrace is a set, but that view would be worth millions today.
shareAs someone who actually lived in SF at the time the movie was made I was thinking much the same thing throughout. Even back then traffic on the Bayshore Freeway (the 101) would have been very heavy and it would have been very difficult to get back and forth as they did in the movie (such as the Prentises arriving at the evening rush hour). There were no downtown freeways through SF at the time and no I-280 either.
Of course, there was no TSA then either so perhaps they could have driven the limo right onto the tarmac and boarded the plane directly. [/SARC=off]
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Why on Earth would they need "fasttrack access" at the airport? It was 1967-no TSA groping, no removing your shoes, no secondary screening. I don't think they even had metal detectors until hijackings started becoming more common in the very early 1970s. Once you had a boarding pass and your bags checked, there was one thing that determined how long it would take you to get to the gate, and that was how long it took you to walk to the gate.
shareAt about the time this movie was made, I was going out with a girl who said she really wanted one of those United Air Lines decks of cards that they gave away on airplanes. So one afternoon I dropped by Los Angeles International Airport, walked through the terminal to the United boarding area, and down the tunnel right into a plane. A friendly stewardess (that's what they were called then) asked if she could help me, and I offered to buy a deck of cards, but she just cheerfully handed me one for free. I thanked her and walked back out. I was in and out of the terminal within less than ten minutes, and other than the stewardess, nobody even seemed to notice me. There were far fewer regulations and much less micromanagement of people's activities than today. There was also much less traffic on the freeways. Other than "rush hours" in the morning and late afternoon/early evening, you could usually get where you wanted to go without much delay.
shareI love that story! Today you couldn’t get within 300m of the plane and if you tried what you said you’d get tased.
shareoh that's cute. I see what you did there.
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