{"id":441947,"date":"2026-08-24T12:12:48","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T12:12:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/441947\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T12:12:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T12:12:48","slug":"drive-by-shootings-a-cabbie-a-camera-and-a-disappearing-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/441947\/","title":{"rendered":"Drive-by shootings: a cabbie, a camera and a disappearing San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2019 native San Francisco, pushing a shopping cart \u2014\u00a0and, precariously balanced in that shopping cart, was a surfboard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was, Mackins recalls, the perfect shot. \u201cWell,\u201d he says all these years later while seated at his kitchen table, \u201cthere\u2019s my Pulitzer-winner.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mackins<\/a> 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. \u201cI will always see that guy with his surfboard, rolling up Potrero. What a shot that would\u2019ve been.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing a cabdriver,\u201d he says with a smile, \u201cbecame secondary to having a vehicle, literally and figuratively, to take me around, so I could take photographs of different parts of the city.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"FourA quartet of men on 18th and Mission, May 2026. Photo by Walter Mackins<\/p>\n

Was Mackins a cabdriver who took photos or a photographer who drove a cab? The answer, of course, is yes<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Would Mackins drive out to Fort Point<\/a> or Ocean Beach for the photogenic scenery? Also yes. \u201cBut maybe six times out of 10 I\u2019d get a customer coming back,\u201d he says. Cabdrivers learn the tricks: \u201cYou realize people staying downtown walk to Fort Point to see the Golden Gate Bridge. And then they realize how far they are.\u201d Mackins, as he likes to say, \u201crescued\u201d a fair few of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mackins knew a camera would be part of his life ever since he sat on his grandmother\u2019s settee and pawed through copies of Life magazine. Margaret Bourke-White<\/a> stands out in his memories, but war photographer Robert Capa<\/a> was his favorite. Capa\u2019s most famous line was, \u201cIf your photos aren\u2019t good enough, you\u2019re not close enough.\u201d Capa\u2019s photos were most certainly good enough \u2014\u00a0until he got just a bit too close to a landmine in French Indochina in 1954 at age 41<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mackins was older than that when he came to his career as a cabbie. He obtained his first driver\u2019s license at age 40 and didn\u2019t 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 \u201ccentral tremor,\u201d which made working as a hospital clerk, his profession for many decades, untenable.<\/p>\n

You can drive a car with a shaky hand. But taking pictures? How do you do that? At this, Mackins laughs. \u201cTechnique, my friend! Technique!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Technique and a heavy camera. Mackins notes that today\u2019s 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 \u2014\u00a0or, more in line with his lived experience, heavy enough to trigger the seatbelt warning when you place it in the passenger seat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Because you never know when you\u2019ll see the perfect shot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A\u2018Help Wanted,\u2019 Photo by Walter Mackins\"BlackA shot from behind the wheel of the \u2018Siege Perilous,\u2019 Walter Mackins\u2019 pet name for his cabs. The name derives from the empty seat at King Arthur\u2019s Round Table, reserved for the knight who returned with the Holy Grail. Photo by Walter Mackins\"RowsThe U.S.S. Midway cruises past the Golden Gate en route to Japan, 1973. Photo by Walter Mackins\"A\u2018The Brazilian\u2019 takes a break for lunch, Bartlett and 22nd, 2014. Photo by Walter Mackins\"Close-upA train coupling. Walter Mackins has printed out and gifted framed copies of this shot to friends entering into marriage. Photo by Walter Mackins\"ATires at the taxi depot on Jerrold Street, 2013. Photo by Walter Mackins\"A\u2018Daddy Walter,\u2019 Walter Lee Mackins, the father of Walter Nelson Mackins. Photo by Walter Mackins, 1972 or 1973\"BlackMyrtle Hooper from Donaldsonville, La. Photographed by her son, Walter Mackins, in the late 1970s\"ThreeMission Street\"Graffiti-covered,Sixteenth and Capp, 2016. Photo by Walter Mackins\"PersonPhoto by Walter Mackins\"FourA quartet of men on 18th and Mission, May 2026. Photo by Walter Mackins\"AThe Division Street skate park. Photo by Walter Mackins\"AClarion Alley\"Shipping\u2018A Sedge of Cranes,\u2019 Photo by Walter Mackins\"AOn Valencia, Photo by Walter Mackins\"Two\u2018Still standing,\u2019 Photo by Walter Mackins\"ABill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, 2015. Photo by Walter Mackins\"ASunday Streets musicians, 2018. Photo by Walter Mackins\"AOn Valencia, 2011. Photo by Walter Mackins\"TallThe Presidio. Photo by Walter Mackins\"ASurfing the Golden Gate, 2014. Photo by Walter Mackins\"BlackMarket Street, San Franciso, Calfornia\"ANorth Beach. Photo by Walter Mackins\"AnMission District, 2009. Photo by Walter Mackins\"A\u2018A face in the box by the curb,\u2019 21st Street. Photo by Walter Mackins\"AGuerrero Street, Sept. 12, 2001. Photo by Walter Mackins\"ATenderloin scene, 2010. Photo by Walter Mackins \"AGuerrero Street\"Black-and-whiteOld Hunters Point Shipyard. Photo by Walter Mackins\"TwoParis, 1977. Photo by Walter Mackins\"ManWalter Mackins continues his lifelong quest for the perfect shot<\/p>\n

Mackins\u2019 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got our official Ellis Act eviction on the day before Thanksgiving,\u201d he says of the unwelcome present his landlord handed him last year. But now the smile is forced. \u201cBless their hearts.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 \u201cENTRANCE.\u201d And the last reads \u201cEXIT.\u201d And the 48 in between?<\/p>\n

Those are what you get when you spend 52 years hunting for the perfect shot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ViewA shot from the dash of the \u2018Siege Perilous,\u2019 Walter Mackins\u2019 pet name for his cabs. The \u2018Siege Perilous\u2019 was the empty seat at King Arthur\u2019s Round Table, reserved for the knight who returned with the Holy Grail. Photo by Walter Mackins<\/p>\n

Walter Nelson Mackins was born in San Francisco General Hospital in 1952, the son of Walter Lee Mackins and Myrtle Hooper.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s \u201cDaddy Walter,<\/a>\u201d 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 \u201cjanitor\u201d). There\u2019s Hooper,<\/a> sometime in the 1970s, when she wasn\u2019t working as a presser at an industrial laundry servicing the city\u2019s hospitals and hotels. If you look closely, you can see the young Mackins reflected in his mother\u2019s eyes<\/a> as he took this shot.<\/p>\n

So, those are two of the shots between \u201cENTRANCE\u201d and \u201cEXIT.\u201d 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<\/a> is impetus enough to take the snap.<\/p>\n

For many years, taking the photos was enough for Mackins. There certainly was no exhibition. It was only relatively recently, in 2021<\/a>, that he began submitting his delightful shots<\/a> of San Francisco life to Mission Local\u2019s SNAPs page<\/a>. Before that, he was a bit like Auggie Wren in the movie \u201cSmoke,\u201d<\/a> who put the utmost care into the taking and keeping of photos of his corner of the world \u2014\u00a0but almost none into showing them to anyone. Not unless they asked.<\/p>\n

So, yes, sometimes it\u2019s puns. But sometimes it\u2019s something more. It\u2019d be hard to miss the deeper meanings of this shot from 1973<\/a> of the U.S.S. Midway decamping for Japan<\/a>, framed by the headstones of the honored dead. But, most of the time, it\u2019s nothing so choreographed. And, like Auggie Wren<\/a>, the experience of Mackins\u2019 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ASurfing the Golden Gate, 2014. Photo by Walter Mackins<\/p>\n

When Mackins was taken home from San Francisco General Hospital in \u201952, his family lived in the projects on the north side of Potrero Hill, a stone\u2019s throw from the Anchor Brewery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They\u2019re not there anymore. Those buildings were torn down long ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And yet, Mackins\u2019 San Francisco story doesn\u2019t end here: Improbably, the \u201cEXIT\u201d 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\u2019d eventually reside in Colma<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

And that, of course, is the Excelsior<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On a recent Wednesday, Mackins was clad in a sturdy photographer\u2019s 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\u2019 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019s no cab anymore. But, this time, Mackins\u2019 camera is on the seat next to him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He may never find that perfect shot. But, you never know: He may yet end up living in one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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