San Francisco Cable Car Museum

One of the old cable cars on display. All pics sourced from the wiki page.

San Francisco's Cable Car Museum is another great memory of my youth in the bay area.  I also had the opportunity to go back there again in 2004, perhaps the highest point of the cleanliness era for the peninsula before the dark times that are now. One thing I have to say about San Francisco is that no matter how crappy the people are there, there is always something really cool or interesting to see or do there no matter how long you stay (even permanently).  

The immense pully system is both impressive and reliable enough to be run today.

The museum itself is pretty darn awesome, with a plethora of info on the cable car system that started in 1873 to the most recent operations. There are also a collection of cable cars that date back to the original operations in the 1870s, but the big showcase there is the massive power and pully systems that were the heart of the cable car system. You really forget the grand achievement of engineering it was until you really see it in person, and you can do so when it is open most days at 10 AM to 5 PM, except holidays. 

A pic of the main entrance to the museum. 

In the same vein, some people forget that the very invention of the cable car itself was in San Francisco in 1869, with the intention of saving horses from being whipped to pull buggies uphill. Today, the number of running cable car lines have been drastically cut from their heyday, but are still running the remaining few lines consistently today.