
Pictures of ordinary street life from long ago are fascinating. Look at this picture. It’s New York in the 1880s. Everyone is wearing hats. It probably smells god-awful. And part of you wants to enter that picture and walk the streets for a few hours. Not long enough to contract typhoid, but just for a little while, to see how people walk and talk and what they wear. Right?
This is the same impulse that creates period films and practices creative anachronism. I loved the Sherlock Holmes stories and read all 4 novels and 56 short stories. Same thing.
So sometimes when I’m walking down the street in 2010, I like to remember that I’m walking through a future past. My great grandson (not yet born) would love to switch places with me for a few hours and see what life was like back in 2010.
His interest is attenuated by the huge number of archived youtube videos from this period, but today’s video capture technology will look pathetic compared to what they’re recording in 100 years, and certainly won’t compare to being there. He’ll feel like he’s missing the full picture.
Sometimes it feels like we’re living in the future, so it’s nice to remember that we’re also walking through the past.




