San Francisco California

Awesome poster map ushering in the San Francisco of the 1970s.

This groovy view of San Francisco, California was illustrated by Henry Hinton and published in Los Angeles by Postermap in 1970. It presents an almost psychedelic representation of the city; vibrant colors and bold lines stylize urban density and exaggerate different features and locations of interest. Traffic is surprisingly light!

Caricatured figures are depicted in a variety of ways, reflecting contemporary stereotypical attitudes on race, sex, and gender. Of note: the only Black people shown on the map are relegated to the hold of a pirate ship, in the lower left, and presumably slaves. As noted in a 1980 article on Mapping Experience by Mark Treib, “A crazy quality of all those features for which San Francisco is known, this map evokes mood, but it does not depict topographic relationships. The map projects a tourist’s experience: to have seen these features is to have “seen” San Francisco.”

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