Drive-by shootings: a cabbie, a camera and a disappearing San Francisco

Walter Mackins, taxi driver No. 63440, was piloting his red, white and blue Luxor Crown Vic along Potrero Avenue and there he was: a man, framed by the photogenic backdrop of Mackins’ native San Francisco, pushing a shopping cart — and, precariously balanced in that shopping cart, was a surfboard.

It was, Mackins recalls, the perfect shot. “Well,” he says all these years later while seated at his kitchen table, “there’s my Pulitzer-winner.”

Mackins remembers every last detail, including where his camera was. Namely: not on the seat next to him, as it was most every day he drove out of the taxi lot. He shakes his head. “I will always see that guy with his surfboard, rolling up Potrero. What a shot that would’ve been.”

Mackins drove a cab in San Francisco for many years. But that was just a means to an end. And that end was snapping thousands upon thousands of pictures of his home city, and the people within it.

“Being a cabdriver,” he says with a smile, “became secondary to having a vehicle, literally and figuratively, to take me around, so I could take photographs of different parts of the city.”

Four people are on a city sidewalk; one uses a wheelchair, and the others stand nearby. A storefront and street signs are visible. A quartet of men on 18th and Mission, May 2026. Photo by Walter Mackins

Was Mackins a cabdriver who took photos or a photographer who drove a cab? The answer, of course, is yes.

Would Mackins drive out to Fort Point or Ocean Beach for the photogenic scenery? Also yes. “But maybe six times out of 10 I’d get a customer coming back,” he says. Cabdrivers learn the tricks: “You realize people staying downtown walk to Fort Point to see the Golden Gate Bridge. And then they realize how far they are.” Mackins, as he likes to say, “rescued” a fair few of them.

Mackins knew a camera would be part of his life ever since he sat on his grandmother’s settee and pawed through copies of Life magazine. Margaret Bourke-White stands out in his memories, but war photographer Robert Capa was his favorite. Capa’s most famous line was, “If your photos aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” Capa’s photos were most certainly good enough — until he got just a bit too close to a landmine in French Indochina in 1954 at age 41.

Mackins was older than that when he came to his career as a cabbie. He obtained his first driver’s license at age 40 and didn’t slip behind the wheel of a red, white and blue Crown Vic until he was nearly 50. His career change was necessitated by what Mackins describes as a “central tremor,” which made working as a hospital clerk, his profession for many decades, untenable.

You can drive a car with a shaky hand. But taking pictures? How do you do that? At this, Mackins laughs. “Technique, my friend! Technique!”

Technique and a heavy camera. Mackins notes that today’s mirrorless machines weigh nothing, and nobody lacking the dexterity of a Marine Corps sniper can truly hold one steady. He prefers cameras bulky enough to double as doorstops — or, more in line with his lived experience, heavy enough to trigger the seatbelt warning when you place it in the passenger seat.

Because you never know when you’ll see the perfect shot.

A barred window displays an American flag with a “Help Wanted” sign placed in front of it. ‘Help Wanted,’ Photo by Walter Mackins Black and white photo of cars, including San Francisco taxis, in city traffic with the Transamerica Pyramid building visible in the background. A shot from behind the wheel of the ‘Siege Perilous,’ Walter Mackins’ pet name for his cabs. The name derives from the empty seat at King Arthur’s Round Table, reserved for the knight who returned with the Holy Grail. Photo by Walter Mackins Rows of white headstones in a cemetery with a large ship on the water in the background, framed by trees and distant hills. The U.S.S. Midway cruises past the Golden Gate en route to Japan, 1973. Photo by Walter Mackins A man sits near vertical metal bars, with shadows from the bars creating striped patterns on his face and clothing. Two large trash bins are visible in the background. ‘The Brazilian’ takes a break for lunch, Bartlett and 22nd, 2014. Photo by Walter Mackins Close-up of an industrial metal machine component, surrounded by cables and hoses, in black and white. A train coupling. Walter Mackins has printed out and gifted framed copies of this shot to friends entering into marriage. Photo by Walter Mackins A tightly woven pattern created by overlapping black car tires, viewed from above in black and white. Tires at the taxi depot on Jerrold Street, 2013. Photo by Walter Mackins A man sits indoors with smoke partially obscuring his face. Ornate architectural details are visible in the background. ‘Daddy Walter,’ Walter Lee Mackins, the father of Walter Nelson Mackins. Photo by Walter Mackins, 1972 or 1973 Black and white photo of an older woman with short hair, wearing a light top and earrings, looking directly at the camera with a neutral expression. Myrtle Hooper from Donaldsonville, La. Photographed by her son, Walter Mackins, in the late 1970s Three newspaper vending machines and a bench with a seated person wearing a hat and backpack are on a city sidewalk; a van is visible in the background. Mission Street Graffiti-covered, boarded-up building with peeling paint is reflected in a large puddle on the ground in front of it. Sixteenth and Capp, 2016. Photo by Walter Mackins Person with a backpack stands at an outdoor escalator while a flock of birds flies overhead against a cloudy sky. Photo by Walter Mackins Four people are on a city sidewalk; one uses a wheelchair, and the others stand nearby. A storefront and street signs are visible. A quartet of men on 18th and Mission, May 2026. Photo by Walter Mackins A person with a backpack walks through a graffiti-covered tunnel in an urban setting, surrounded by colorful street art and tags. The Division Street skate park. Photo by Walter Mackins A cluster of doll heads is mounted on a wooden pole, surrounded by metal rods with black ends, against a background of buildings and sky. Clarion Alley Shipping containers and cranes at a dockyard are silhouetted against a cloudy sky at sunset, with the sun low on the horizon. ‘A Sedge of Cranes,’ Photo by Walter Mackins A yellow building with a white fire escape and curved windows. Birds fly overhead, casting shadows on the wall against a clear blue sky. On Valencia, Photo by Walter Mackins Two people sit at a bus stop; only their legs are visible. One person has a prosthetic leg. Sunlight casts shadows on the pavement. ‘Still standing,’ Photo by Walter Mackins A group of people viewed from behind, many wearing hats, with a focus on one person in a cowboy hat, facing bleachers in an outdoor setting. Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, 2015. Photo by Walter Mackins A group of musicians, dressed in traditional attire, stand outdoors in a line playing violins. The image is in black and white. Sunday Streets musicians, 2018. Photo by Walter Mackins A woman wearing a headscarf and long dress walks down a city sidewalk in daylight; a car and pedestrians are visible further down the street. On Valencia, 2011. Photo by Walter Mackins Tall trees in a dense forest stand silhouetted against heavy fog, with low visibility and an overcast sky. The Presidio. Photo by Walter Mackins A surfer rides a wave near large red bridge supports on a misty day, with choppy water and a concrete pier in the background. Surfing the Golden Gate, 2014. Photo by Walter Mackins Black and white photo of passengers sitting inside a San Francisco Municipal Railway streetcar, viewed through its windows. Market Street, San Franciso, Calfornia A cityscape view of San Francisco with the Coit Tower on a hill, dense buildings, power lines, and cloudy skies. North Beach. Photo by Walter Mackins An elderly person sits alone on a bench by a quiet, sunlit sidewalk, casting a long shadow across the pavement. Mission District, 2009. Photo by Walter Mackins A plastic storage bin sits on a sidewalk near a white fence, containing newspapers and a doll’s head, partially concealed. ‘A face in the box by the curb,’ 21st Street. Photo by Walter Mackins A ginger cat sits on a window ledge behind a curtain made from an American flag, with sunlight filtering through the window. Guerrero Street, Sept. 12, 2001. Photo by Walter Mackins A person sits on a crate outside a liquor store in bright sunlight, looking down, with stacked boxes and a shadow cast on the sidewalk. Tenderloin scene, 2010. Photo by Walter Mackins A streetlamp glows at night, illuminating falling rain. Two building rooftops and a traffic light are faintly visible in the dark background. Guerrero Street Black-and-white photo of an industrial waterfront site with large steel structure, warehouses, and tall grass in the foreground under a partly cloudy sky. Old Hunters Point Shipyard. Photo by Walter Mackins Two men in uniforms stand by a streetlamp on a cobblestone hill, with parked cars and a woman walking away in the background. Paris, 1977. Photo by Walter Mackins Man with glasses and a green bandana around his neck stands indoors with a group of people in the background. Walter Mackins continues his lifelong quest for the perfect shot

Mackins’ grand little plan to photodocument San Francisco while on the day shift as a cabdriver worked for many years. But that was in a San Francisco where there were cabdrivers. Or, for that matter, plentiful homes for people like Walter Mackins.

“We got our official Ellis Act eviction on the day before Thanksgiving,” he says of the unwelcome present his landlord handed him last year. But now the smile is forced. “Bless their hearts.”

For Mackins, now a 74-year-old retiree, and his wife of nearly 20 years, a public school teacher, this was not a picture-perfect development. But Mackins has not wasted his crisis. Going back to the years when Joe Alioto was mayor, Mackins has snapped tens of thousands of photos of this city. But it took an eviction notice to spur him to hold an exhibition. It was held over the weekend in the garage of his soon-to-be former apartment of 25 years on Guerrero, and featured his photos, mostly of this city, from 1973 to 2025.

Mackins, the former driver, loves signage. He has whole albums of stop signs and neon wording and road directions. And the first shot in his exhibit is a big picture of a sign with an arrow reading “ENTRANCE.” And the last reads “EXIT.” And the 48 in between?

Those are what you get when you spend 52 years hunting for the perfect shot.

A shot from the dash of the ‘Siege Perilous,’ Walter Mackins’ pet name for his cabs. The ‘Siege Perilous’ was the empty seat at King Arthur’s Round Table, reserved for the knight who returned with the Holy Grail. Photo by Walter Mackins

Walter Nelson Mackins was born in San Francisco General Hospital in 1952, the son of Walter Lee Mackins and Myrtle Hooper.

There’s “Daddy Walter,” as photographed by the younger Walter in 1972 or 1973, calmly blowing smoke after his shift as an institutional environment maintenance technician at Stanford Hospital (Mackins, with a wry smile, notes that the more quotidian term for this job is “janitor”). There’s Hooper, sometime in the 1970s, when she wasn’t working as a presser at an industrial laundry servicing the city’s hospitals and hotels. If you look closely, you can see the young Mackins reflected in his mother’s eyes as he took this shot.

So, those are two of the shots between “ENTRANCE” and “EXIT.” How did he go about finding the rest? Well, as someone old enough to recall where he was when Kennedy was shot or when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, Mackins is entitled to love puns. He does, and sometimes the opportunity to couple one with a photograph is impetus enough to take the snap.

For many years, taking the photos was enough for Mackins. There certainly was no exhibition. It was only relatively recently, in 2021, that he began submitting his delightful shots of San Francisco life to Mission Local’s SNAPs page. Before that, he was a bit like Auggie Wren in the movie “Smoke,” who put the utmost care into the taking and keeping of photos of his corner of the world — but almost none into showing them to anyone. Not unless they asked.

So, yes, sometimes it’s puns. But sometimes it’s something more. It’d be hard to miss the deeper meanings of this shot from 1973 of the U.S.S. Midway decamping for Japan, framed by the headstones of the honored dead. But, most of the time, it’s nothing so choreographed. And, like Auggie Wren, the experience of Mackins’ photos is cumulative. What, after all, is a snapshot but a moment in time? When you add all of those moments together, you get San Francisco.

A surfer rides a wave near large red bridge supports on a misty day, with choppy water and a concrete pier in the background. Surfing the Golden Gate, 2014. Photo by Walter Mackins

When Mackins was taken home from San Francisco General Hospital in ’52, his family lived in the projects on the north side of Potrero Hill, a stone’s throw from the Anchor Brewery.

They’re not there anymore. Those buildings were torn down long ago.

Another Mackins family home in the Fillmore was razed during urban renewal. Mackins remembers rats the size of cats who patrolled the carriage houses in the backyard; one even killed the neighbor’s Pomeranian. As the Fillmore was remade from what it was to what it is, it was not unheard of to see houses literally being moved. For the less fortunate, their homes would simply be demolished, sometimes with remarkable speed.

These were the Vietnam years, and Mackins used to darkly joke that the near-overnight disappearance of homes along his bus route was hastened by a squadron of B-52 bombers.

So, more than most, Mackins is aware of how Malthusian a city this can be. Where in San Francisco should a retired hack and a public school teacher live? The answer: the past.

And yet, Mackins’ San Francisco story doesn’t end here: Improbably, the “EXIT” will come another day. Instead, Mackins and his wife took refuge in the place prior generations of San Franciscans fled to in times of trouble, as surely as they’d eventually reside in Colma.

And that, of course, is the Excelsior.

On a recent Wednesday, Mackins was clad in a sturdy photographer’s vest. It was bright and sunny in the Mission and such outerwear would be extraneous. But in the Excelsior it was moist and foggy. The architectural styles of adjoining homes wending their way up and down the hills seem to have been chosen by a contentious committee of sight-challenged people digging through bags of Monopoly structures. This was the view out Mackins’ new back window. There was an apple tree and an avocado tree; in a few short years it might be possible for him to grab an avocado without even leaving the room.

Shrouded by the fog, McLaren Park beckoned. There were new San Francisco streets to explore between here and Mission to the west or Geneva to the south. There’s no cab anymore. But, this time, Mackins’ camera is on the seat next to him.

He may never find that perfect shot. But, you never know: He may yet end up living in one.

Man with glasses and a green bandana around his neck stands indoors with a group of people in the background. Walter Mackins continues his lifelong quest for the perfect shot

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