Vintage Airline Posters That Lured Tourists to San Francisco

The golden age of aviation was a time of catered meals, high-thread-count blankets, business-class levels of legroom—and brightly colored, occasionally psychedelic graphic design. (It was also a time of higher fatalities, mile-high ticket prices, and neck-snapping turbulence in what were essentially smoke-filled metal death-tubes but, hey, we're focusing on aesthetics here!) Like the Technicolor-hued vintage postcards of our fair city, the San Francisco represented in the airline posters of yore is heavy on glamour shots of the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, and sometimes the Bay Bridge (Oakland is even mentioned once).