Cable network

Annie Washington, born and raised in San Francisco, makes one thing clear as we step into the racing-green interior of her cable car. “This middle section belongs to me and me only,” she says, pointing to a large metal lever and a mass of cogs below. monocle’s request to try piloting Washington’s cable car is firmly rebuffed, which is almost certainly for the best. “I’ve driven a bus and a trolley but there’s nothing more difficult than this cable car,” says Washington, only the sixth woman to get behind the stick in the system’s 150 years. “I’ll tell you this: I don’t need to go to a gym.”

Washington pulls hard on the big lever and a tonne of metal creaks into life. With a clatter of bells from a co-pilot at the back of the car, we’re off, whisked forward out of the Hyde and Beach turnaround and down one of San Francisco’s pyramidal hills. We move at a clip, clattering through busy intersections with a vintage vigour that stops cars, pedestrians and a few self-driving taxis in their tracks.

In a city synonymous with tech, where the next generation of AI firms stare down from the billboards, the cable cars speak to San Francisco’s analogue soul. The network was founded by gold rush-era entrepreneur Andrew Smith Hallidie, who set out to build an alternative to the horse-drawn streetcar, and created the world’s first cable-car system.

It remains an incredible feat of engineering. In the Cable Car Barn, which is also a museum, four huge wheels are constantly winding mile after mile of metal cable that drips with hot oil. This cable is threaded beneath the city streets and when Washington pulls on her metal lever, she hooks the car onto the cable, which drags us forward funicular-style. For that reason, drivers are known as the “grip”.

Most passengers are tourists but the cable cars still serve as hop-on-hop-off commuter carriers. As we barrel our way downtown, Camilla, who is on her way to see her sister in the city, comes on board. “I was waiting for a rideshare car for ages, so now I’m cabling,” she says, settling on one of the wooden benches.

In Chinatown, monocle disembarks to join another cable car, where Dwayne Norfleet is training a new recruit in the “craft” of gripping. “You have to be able to handle these cars in any weather – and handle the public at the same time,” he says, directing trainee Shalissa Worlidge in the unenviable task of reversing a car down a particularly steep hill; a delicate balance of riding the grip and the brakes. “Just ease it out now,” says Norfleet.

At the rear of the car, conductor Brian Sickles is on the bells, directing the grip on this tricky manoeuvre. One ring means stop, he says, two means go and an insistent rhythm signals the grip to keep going.

“My father did this job for 31 years,” says Sickles, who grew up in Chinatown to the soundtrack of cable-car bells. He recalls the 1980s, when a dilapidated system was almost dismantled before then-mayor Dianne Feinstein stepped in to save it. “These cable cars are a moving landmark.” — L