ROTARY LUNCHEON: Rick Laubscher on Market Street and its historic street cars

One of Rick Laubscher’s earliest memories, he said, is of riding as a 5-year-old with his mother on one of San Francisco’s old streetcars down Market Street on the way to see a circus. Laubscher, now 75, says he doesn’t remember a thing about the circus, but he vividly recalls the rumble and roar and the gonging bells of the trolley that took him there. “The whole thing was just magical to me, and I never forgot it,” said Laubscher, who has spent the last 42 years working to keep vintage streetcars and cable cars a working part of San Francisco’s transit system.

Laubscher earned a master's degree from the Columbia School of Journalism and received a Pulitzer Fellowship. Upon graduation, he used the fellowship to spend a year traveling and reporting from different locations around the world. In 1977, he returned to San Francisco to report for KRON-TV. In 1978, Laubscher was one of the first reporters on the scene at the Moscone–Milk assassinations. His coverage of the event earned an Emmy award. He also covered the Jonestown massacre the same year.

In 1981, Laubscher left reporting and transitioned to a public relations career as an executive with the Bechtel Group. After 18 years with the Bechtel Group, he left to found his own communications company, Messagesmith.

In 1982, The City was planning to retire its surface streetcars in favor of new SFMTA trains and buses. Laubscher, a fourth-generation San Franciscan, was chair of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce’s transportation committee. He organized a streetcar festival as a visitor’s attraction. The historic trolley festival he launched with then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein the next summer was so popular that it ran for five summers, and its service was later made permanent.

Rick is the founding Board Chair of The City Club of San Francisco, a business-social organization located in the historic Stock Exchange Tower. He currently serves as Board Chair of Union Square Foundation, supporting Union Square Alliance with arts, music, and safety activities.

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