RIP Franchises of our youths

[Drunk Monk]

4s & 9s kinda look the same without my glasses.

It was also the long lost mythical land of AFS where geography was irrelevant.

[Drunk Monk]

Westfield, San Francisco's Premier Mall, to Abandon Downtown Loan, Adding to SF's Exodus of the Largest Hotel, Nordstrom, & Others


Source: Wikimedia Commons / Westfield SF Centre Market St. Entrance
By Tony Ng - Published on June 12, 2023.
San FranciscoUnion Square
Recent developments have painted a worrying picture for San Francisco's once-thriving commercial real estate market, with retail giants like Nordstrom announcing closures and Westfield now making the shocking decision to abandon its iconic San Francisco mall in the wake of declining sales, foot traffic, and a drooping retail landscape throughout the city, per an exclusive from The San Francisco Chronicle.
In a city that was once bustling with tourists and shoppers, the downtown area's desolation today raises serious concerns about its future viability, with crucial businesses like the 312,000-square-foot Nordstrom in Westfield Mall announcing that they're closing their doors when their leases expire later this year, according to Hoodline, amidst concerns over declining customers and a post-pandemic shift in shopping habits.
It seems the effects of remote work, a decline in tourism, and safety issues have hit downtown San Francisco and the nearby Mid-Market area hard, sending offices, apartment buildings, and hotels into default and foreclosure, impacting the city’s once prosperous economy. The Westfield Mall, located at 865 Market St, was a significant attraction in the city, but according to the San Francisco Chronicle, the company has stopped making payments on a $558 million loan and begun transferring control of the mall to its lender this month.
The San Francisco mall isn't the only property facing crisis - the city's largest hotel, Hilton San Francisco Union Square, is also going to be surrendered to its lender by its owner, Park Hotels & Resorts, due to the impact of a weakened market and a slow return of conventions, as reported by SFist. These rapidly unfolding events indicate a deepening crisis in the city's real estate landscape.
With San Francisco's office market ending 2022 with a massive 32.1% vacancy rate and a record negative absorption of over 4.5 million square feet, according to Crexi, the challenges faced by the retail industry are becoming increasingly apparent as even previously resilient businesses buckle under the strain of the current economic climate. The recent closure of a Whole Foods Market in the city due to safety concerns and an increase in crime, mentioned in a New York Times article, signals that even the most well-established brands may not be immune to the turbulence shaking up San Francisco's retail and commercial sectors.
However, there are voices of optimism amidst the uncertainty. Venture capital firm President Garry Tan of Y Combinator sees the potential for San Francisco to rebound, citing the city's spirit of resilience as showcased in its rich history, as outlined in a New York Times interview. Mayor London Breed is also taking proactive steps to address the city's homelessness and drug dealing problems, with plans to speed up the construction of new housing units and push for legislation allowing easier access to mental illness treatment.
In the end, it will be the people of San Francisco who will play an essential role in forging new paths and redefining the city for the post-pandemic era, creating fresh opportunities amidst the challenges and pioneering an exciting, adaptive future for the Golden City by the Bay.

Such a bummer. I've spent a lot of time here, mostly waiting for screeners at the Metroen next door, grabbing a bite in the food court and window shopping.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Shopping malls were in decline before covid. I remember the stat that 2/3 to 3/4 of malls would be closed in 5 years (this was 2019, I think). SF Chron & conservative City-Haters ( same thing, really) love to blame this all on homelessness and Progressive politics, when it is mostly down to the Mayor giving huge perks to tech to move their HQs into the city, which created a monoculture. Now that culture has been decimated, with thousands of techies moving out of the city/area.

Of course, SF companies just received $2 billion for AI dev, so maybe those assholes are coming back.

[King Bob]

I haven't been to that mall in years, but to echo the Yeti's comments, it was always 1/3 to 1/2 empty, so it was never really thriving.

[thatguy]

Valco was in decay and finally got a raze. The Capitola Mall has been a zombie for years, but is still going (Dawn of the Dead reference). When my daughter was going to Humboldt State, the big mall in Eureka (next town over) was in pretty sad shape, too. 

The Marketplace program on NPR has an ongoing bit where they call some mall manager from middle America to check the pulse of malls. Malls have a dependency on anchor stores. When they go, mall management scrambles to put something else in at least for window dressing. IIRC, their particular mall was trying to bring in other types of business: call centers, health care. 


Not sure what is next, but the mall ecosystem is pretty borked. 

--tg

[Drunk Monk]

Malls are more viable in places that have weather. Where there's more extreme hot or cold, or rain or snow, malls do better. Here, not so much. Now it's mostly strip malls that are so vast that you have to drive across the parking lot to get to all the stores you want to shop at.

Like I said, I enjoyed Westside a lot but I didn't buy much there, unless you count the food court. They used to have a Loving Hut there that I frequented, but that died during the pandemic. Now if I go to a screener at Metreon, I'll be hard pressed to find some decent quick eats.

I remember when Vallco was first erected. I went there a lot through high school as it was in walking distance of my folk's home. I drove by it yesterday on the way to Marukai. Now it's just a field, surrounded by cyclone fence. I feel as if I saw the entire life cycle of that mall. 

Newpark mall in Fremont was a go to as well. I was there at least once a week for the food court because it was so close to Tiger Claw. I'd grab lunch in the food court and then walk that mall to see what was trending. I keep thinking I should go back for old times sake someday.

[Drunk Monk]

Iconic Raging Waters in SJ announces permanent closure after nearly 40 years

ByABC7 Bay Area Digital Staff  

Wednesday, September 6, 2023 6:47PM

EMBED <>MORE VIDEOS 
[url=https://abc7news.com/watch/][/url]
San Jose's Raging Waters, an iconic summer destination for Bay Area families, announced its permanent closure Wednesday after nearly 40 years.
SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) -- San Jose's Raging Waters, an iconic summer destination for Bay Area families, announced its permanent closure Wednesday after nearly 40 years.
"We are thankful for the San Jose community and for our outstanding Team Members for helping us bring Northern California's Largest Water Park to life for nearly four decades. Thank you for all the wonderful memories, San Jose!" the water park announced on social media, just days after its "Last Splash" event on Labor Day, which closed out the season.
Boasted as "Northern California's Largest Waterpark," Raging Waters' 23-acre aquatic attraction was located inside the borders of East San Jose's Lake Cunningham Regional Park. It opened its gates to families in summer 1985.

 
Only went there once. It was a dormouse event. That was a miscalculation for several reasons. Maybe ED was there too?

[Greg]

I'm in my local library to look for the Papa Lynch book. I would like a card catalog to know where to locate the book. They don't have one. How are you supposed to find what you are looking for? (Don't do the obvious U2 joke)

[Drunk Monk]

Twisselman Enterprises opened Hot Dog On A Stick at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in 1934. 
(Via Yelp)
‘Very much a shock’: Twisselman Enterprises booted from Boardwalk after 90 years in business

BY LILY BELLI
Source:  Lookout Santa Cruz 

Quick Take

After 90 years in business, Twisselman Enterprises is ending its operations at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk after its lease was unexpectedly not renewed by the Santa Cruz Seaside Company. Twisselman Enterprises operated four concession stands serving food, including the iconic Hot Dog On A Stick, which opened in 1934. 

Published 4 Hours Ago 



After 90 years in business, Twisselman Enterprises, the operator of the iconic Hot Dog On A Stick and three other concession stands at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, will end operations after its landlord, the Santa Cruz Seaside Company, abruptly decided not to renew its lease.
“It was very much a shock,” Allison Twisselman told Lookout. She and her sister were preparing to become the fourth generation to operate the family-run business. “We’ve always performed strong with improved sales year over year.”
The Seaside Company did not disclose its reason for not renewing Twisselman’s lease.
“Like every successful business, our model and approach are constantly evolving for a variety of reasons. The ability to adapt has been essential to our success for 116 years and will be part of our approach for the next 100 years,” the Seaside Company said in a statement.

The Twisselman family in front of Hot Dog On A Stick in 1999. 
(Via Facebook)
Twisselman Enterprises opened Hot Dog on a Stick in 1934, and also operates BoardWok, the World Grill and California Wraps and Bowls. The Seaside Company will take over operations of the four businesses in November.
Twisselman was one of six concessionaires at the Boardwalk, including 70-year-old Whiting’s Foods — the largest, with 25 different food service locations; Marini’s at the Beach; O’Neill Surf Shop and Sunshops, which both offer merchandise; and two small concessionaires that do caricatures, face painting and henna tattoos. These businesses are all tenants of the Seaside Company.

Although Twisselman Enterprises is known for its food, Twisselman says her family takes the most pride in the thousands of young people that it has employed over the years. “We are so blessed to have had the opportunity to impact so many young people as they enter the workforce and to help guide them through a critical stage of their life,” the company wrote in a post on Facebook and Instagram announcing the closure.

The Seaside Company, which formed in 1915, operates all the rides, games, arcade and miniature golf and several merchandise locations, as well as more than a dozen locations offering food and drinks. In total, there are 42 food locations at the Boardwalk.

Despite its long tenure at the Boardwalk, Twisselman Enterprises had an annual lease for its restaurants, which was renewed every season. “The leases have always been one year, which isn’t common for restaurants. But we’ve had 90 years of leases,” said Twisselman.

Aren't Twisselmen the arch enemies of Kettlemen and who keep them in check on I5?

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Oh. Yes, they are. The Seaside Company must have been taken over by Kettlemen.

[Drunk Monk]

I've never eaten at Hot Dog on a Stick. I used to be amused watching the employees pump the lemonade at the food court at the mall back in my Fremont days. 

I'm sure all those eateries are now Kettleman programming delivery systems. Gotta get those probe implants in your body somehow.

[King Bob]

At Valley Fair the fries at Hot Dog on a Stick were good. One of the two best places for fries in the mall when I worked there. I forget the name of the other place.

[Drunk Monk]

This probably means nothing to most of you. Maybe KB & tg remember...

Berkeley’s Annapurna is closing after a half-century as a counterculture institution
The head shop’s closing symbolizes another piece of Berkeley’s progressive cultural past disappearing on Telegraph Avenue.
By Joanne FurioAug. 3, 2023, 3:38 p.m.

Al Geyer in his store as he prepares to close in the coming weeks,Aug. 3, 2023. Credit: Joanne Furio

Back when cannabis was called pot, and you could “get busted” in every state for selling a pipe to smoke it in, the head shop Annapurna was like a north star for hippie newcomers to Berkeley during the 1960s and ’70s and subsequent generations of seekers and free thinkers, from UC Berkeley students and professors to members of the intelligentsia.
Known for being stocked to the rafters like an old-fashioned five-and-ten — only with incense burning and the Velvet Underground playing — Annapurna is the brick-and-mortar incarnation of its gregarious owner Al Geyer, who during the 1970s and 80s became a state and national advocate for shops like his that sold so-called “drug paraphernalia” for cannabis smokers.
The store he opened in 1972 has become such an institution, it is a required stop for tourists eager to learn the history of Berkeley counterculture and promoted by Visit Berkeley and the Telegraph Business Improvement District. Annapurna is both a source of cannabis supplies and irreverent gifts some might consider shocking, like a couple fornicating on a Sagittarius ashtray or the store’s most popular bumper sticker, “Read a Fucking Book,” which Geyer said teachers loved. 

AL GEYER“We started to be not viable about a year ago. It’s starting to come back, but I’m 78 years old. It’s time to move on.”

No matter what you think of all that, it’s coming to an end. Geyer expects to close between now and the end of the summer, but may stay open as late as December. It’s all up in the air because Geyer does not have a lease and the five-story building, which also contains apartments, is under contract to be sold.
Geyer’s landlord read about the store’s closing in Berkeleyside and wanted to put in a provision in the contract that Geyer be granted a lease, but the buyer did not agree to that. So Geyer assumes that his soon-to-be new landlord is “not interested in having a smoke shop in this location.” 
“I could get a phone call and close any day,” Geyer said.
Right now, everything in the store is half-price.
Geyer also blamed the closing on rising inflation after Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago. Customers simply do not have the discretionary income to purchase anything but necessities.
“We started to be not viable about a year ago,” he said. “It’s starting to come back, but I’m 78 years old. It’s time to move on.”
The store’s closing symbolizes another piece of Berkeley’s progressive cultural past disappearing on Telegraph Avenue. During the pandemic, longtime street vendor Tamai Pearson, 71, who sold batiks, silkscreens and jewelry, left the corner of Telegraph and Durant avenues after almost 50 years due to illness. Geyer reminisced that the street was once full of vendors.
Eulogies for Annapurna began pouring into Berkeleyside as former employees, colleagues and customers learned the news. Customers are also stopping by the store daily to say goodbye, some of them in tears.
“Annapurna was central to the alternative culture world on Telegraph,” said Marc Weinstein, who founded Amoeba Records on Telegraph Avenue with David Prinz in 1990. “There are still a lot of smoke shops around, but they don’t have that association. You could smell it and feel it the minute you walked in there. It was like a living historical marker in Berkeley that will no longer be there, and that’s too bad.” 
Tom Dalzell, the author of the book Quirky Berkeley, said that few of the hundreds of posts on his blog gave him more pleasure than the one on Al Geyer and Annapurna, which is 120 pages and chock with period photos.
“Annapurna was part head shop, part imports, a sensory overload of colors and smells and textures. Geyer represents the best of what Berkeley was,” Dalzell said. “His shop made our lives better whether we knew about it or not.” 
A refuge for young people

Annapurna was stuffed with merchandise when author Tom Dalzell visited in 2019. Courtesy: Tom Dalzell

When Clifton Ross, a poet, author and filmmaker, arrived in Berkeley in 1976, disgusted by bicentennial celebrations that came a year after the end of “the national shame” of the Vietnam War, he looked for a head shop and found Annapurna.
“Head shops around the country were the only place where hippies like myself — when I was a young hippie — could find other hippies and find out how people were doing things and learning from each other and experimenting with all sorts of alternatives we were beginning to develop,” he said, from the peace movement to using plant medicines like LSD and cannabis. 

SIOBHAN BOULDIN“I came up here from the Central Valley to work specifically for Annapurna because it was such a huge part of letting you be who you are and the freedom to express who you are,” 

Head shops were seen as a refuge for young people disillusioned with the status quo who sought alternative ways of life. 
“You could walk in and smell the incense burning and hear the music playing and see someone who looked like you and feel welcomed,” he said. 
Annapurna’s reputation as a magnet for young seekers was still going strong in 2000, when Siobhan Bouldin of Fresno applied for a job after discovering the shop while visiting her sister in Oakland. 
“I came up here from the Central Valley to work specifically for Annapurna because it was such a huge part of letting you be who you are and the freedom to express who you are,” she said. Because she was 17 when she applied for the job, Geyer called Bouldin’s mother to make sure it was OK. She turned 18 five months after he hired her.
Bouldin became one of the managers and a buyer of the shop from 2001-2004. She found the working conditions to be “incredible.” Employees got their birthday off with pay, and Geyer treated them to a meal. During the ’90s, employees chose an Employee of the Year who was sent to Maui with a partner for a week, car and condo compliments of Geyer. 
She described Geyer as being “so sweet and caring and understanding so much about people’s emotions and about who they are and what makes them them.” 
Nepal visit influenced stores’ name

Annapurna in the 1970s. Courtesy: Al Geyer

Geyer’s foray into head shops began after visiting Nepal in 1968 and smoking hashish there, which was legal. 
“That was the first time I ever got really high,” he said. “I loved it and thought it was very good to me.” Geyer’s been smoking cannabis ever since.  

Al Geyer in his Berkeley apartment in 1976, the year he was interviewed by Geraldo Rivera on Good Morning America. Courtesy: Al Geyer

A year later, he arrived in Berkeley and opened the head shop Kathmandu, selling cannabis paraphernalia and Nepalese lost-wax bronzes, incense, Black history and Native American postcards, and a book section featuring works by Carl Jung, Hermann Hesse and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The 200-square-foot shop was in the basement of the Berkeley Inn Hotel. 
The poet Alan Ginsberg patronized the store, snapping up lost-wax bronzes and borrowing Geyer’s Tibetan human thigh-bone trumpet to use in one of his recordings.
Kathmandu opened on a day that cemented Geyer to Berkeley’s counterculture history: April 20, 1969, the start of the People’s Park activism, when hundreds protested UC Berkeley’s plans to expand its facilities into People’s Park. 
On Dalzell’s website, Geyer recalled protesters marching down Telegraph to reclaim the park on May 15, known as Bloody Thursday, which would leave one student dead, another blind, and dozens injured as police clashed with student protesters. Some stood in front of Kathmandu to protect the windows from possible vandalism, and a Channel 9 reporter asked Geyer, “Is my life at risk?” 
Geyer opened Annapurna in 1972 in a 700-square-foot store at 2416 Telegraph Ave., what had been Virginia Cleaners. Like Kathmandu, the store was part head shop and part import store. 
Geyer had both stores for about 10 years, closing Kathmandu in 1976 after losing the lease. 
In addition to retail, Geyer also operated a wholesale company, Berkeley Pipeline, that started in the back of Kathmandu and then on Fourth Street, selling paraphernalia to stores in all 48 states in the continental U.S. and Europe from 1969 to1989.
In 1976, Geyer became the face of Berkeley’s cannabis community when Geraldo Rivera interviewed him for Good Morning America after the state adopted the Moscone Act, which reduced the penalty for possessing less than an ounce of marijuana from a felony to a misdemeanor. 
‘A corrupter of children’
Though head shops had become ubiquitous in cities across the country in the 1970s, by 1979, California and the federal government made selling drug paraphernalia illegal. 
A 1982 Supreme Court case put the kibosh on many head shops, then a $3 billion a year industry, by giving state and local governments the right to regulate or ban stores that sold drug paraphernalia. The idea of “community standards” prevailed, meaning that it was up to the community to decide whether it wanted a head shop.
“Nobody in Berkeley wanted to enforce against us,” Geyer said. “That was key to how we existed in Berkeley forever. Most everyone got out of the business because it became dangerous.”
From 1980 to 1992, Annapurna was the only head shop in Berkeley and one of few in Northern California that remained open. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan’s “just-say-no-to-drugs” campaign led to accusations that head shops were “corrupting children,” Geyer said. 
Because of the government campaigns, Geyer became a member and eventually board chairman of the California Progressive Business Association, which fought the paraphernalia laws.
During the Clinton administration, “the pressure was off,” Geyer said. “They basically didn’t enforce from the federal level. Locally, the state stopped worrying about it.”
As California took steps to legalize cannabis, first by allowing medical use in 1996 and then recreational use a decade later, going after head shops became a moot point. With legalization, Geyer saw a loss of interest in his products. “There were a million head shops all of a sudden,” he said. 
Annapurna’s rules
In his shop, Geyer promoted a diverse and tolerant atmosphere, “where Hell’s Angels could be standing next to hippies and intellectuals with street people.” Nevertheless, he did have a couple of rules. The first: anybody who came into the shop had to behave. 

Some of the signage in the store some found amusing and others found shocking. Courtesy: Al Geyer

“They were all fine because Annapurna was about that ethos. If you didn’t behave, you were asked to leave. And that worked for us for a half-century.”
Also verboten: asking for illegal things, i.e., drugs. Though Geyer sold paraphernalia, he knew enough to avoid talk of what goes into it.
Geyer, who made his employees managers instead of clerks and buyers who ran the business, credits his employees with putting up with a lot of unique challenges the store demands. 
“They had to deal with the craziness of the people, with the potential violence, all the people who asked for illegal things and throw them out,” Geyer said, “and they’d often be there alone.”
Telegraph activism 
In addition to fighting for the right to sell cannabis accessories, Geyer has also been involved in efforts to keep Telegraph Avenue alive and vital and its history intact. During the early aughts, Geyer and Weinstein created the New Telegraph Merchants Association, which visited San Francisco’s Haight Street business leaders, police force and mental health workers to learn from their success. 

Geyer said after the first marketing person with the Telegraph Business Improvement District approached him in the early aughts, he spent the next decade “trying to keep Telegraph real.”
“But I was overwhelmed by the powers that be,” he said. “I don’t like to see it get completely trampled over by freshness that puts the past under a rug and tries to suppress it, which is what they say when they’re talking about ‘the new Telegraph.'”
In 2013, Geyer also opposed AC Transit’s plan to create an express bus “landing” on Telegraph Avenue, which drew widespread opposition from business owners. “I always considered that a big victory,” Weinstein said, “and credit Al with helping.”
When Dalzell visited the shop in 2019, the shelves bulged with dreamcatchers, wind chimes, posters, bumper stickers, snow globes, candles, Buddha statues, dozens of incense sticks, peace sign patches, sex toys and pipes of all stripes. 

AL GEYERWe were more than pipes. We were the tip of the spear and got a lot of support from the community, the intellectuals, the progressives of the time.

On a recent visit, as Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” played indoors and on a sidewalk speaker, the store was noticeably less crowded. Geyer stopped buying in December. 
After he closes the shop, Geyer looks forward to having more time for his latest venture, AnnapurnaLive.com on YouTube Music, where he gets to mix up songs by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Philip Glass, The Black Keys and the Velvet Underground.
He pointed out the latest edition of the East Bay Express, whose readers chose Annapurna as the “best smoke shop” in the East Bay. Last year, it was voted “best pipe shop” and “best head shop,” one of many accolades the store has received over the years. 
Geyer also noted that in the ’90s, the store was named “one of the top 10 satanic stores in the country,” which led one woman to shout into the store. The point, he said, is that the store wasn’t universally loved — or even liked — by everybody. 
“We were more than pipes. We were the tip of the spear and got a lot of support from the community, the intellectuals, the progressives of the time. We welcomed everybody. We had support from every class and every type of person. They either aligned with us or they didn’t,” he said. “I basically wanted to shake up the boat. I’ve had a lot of fun.”
This story was updated on Aug. 8 with new details that the building Annapurna is in is up for sale. 

[King Bob]

I don't think I ever went there. Remember the head shop that was briefly at Vallco? And of course the Tower one. Paramount is still there. They own the building, so that helps.

[Drunk Monk]

Remember the head shop that was briefly at Vallco? 

Heck, remember Vallco? It's just an empty field now. Saw the rise and fall of that one. 

Meanwhile, more Westfield fallout...

More Westfield Mall Woes, as SF’s Only LEGO Store There Has Closed Permanently

Things apparently weren't connecting anymore in San Francisco’s only LEGO store, located in the beleaguered mall formerly known as the Westfield San Francisco Centre, as that LEGO store quietly closed permanently last week.
There is no bigger poster child for San Francisco’s retail troubles than the former Westfield San Francisco Centre, whose EU-based owner surrendered the property to its lender in June, and since then an exodus of their retail tenants have left the place. Westfield took their name off the mall in July, and the shopping center has been losing more tenants since.
And now they’ve lost another, as the Chronicle reports the shopping center’s LEGO store closed permanently last week.  
That Chronicle report confirmed what was seen in a Reddit post from this weekend, showing empty store shelves and a sign on the door saying, “We have permanently closed as of November 30, 2023, and we will miss all our friends and fans.”
A LEGO spokesperson also confirmed the closure in a statement to KRON4. “We are always reviewing our store portfolio to ensure that we can provide the best LEGO experience for shoppers and fans,” that spokesperson told the station. “As a result, we recently made the decision to close our LEGO Store in the San Francisco Centre on November 30, 2023.”
The Westfield LEGO store opened in 2016, and according to SFGate, the three other Bay Area Lego stores will remain open (at the Hillsdale Shopping Center in San Mateo, Pleasanton’s Stoneridge Shopping Center, and ironically, Westfield’s not-abandoned Westfield Valley Fair in Santa Clara). But SFGate also got a statement from a LEGO company spokesperson saying that laid-off employees were being offered “financial support through the holidays,” which does not sound like they’re being offered positions in those other stores.
The former Westfield, now San Francisco Centre is still open, and being managed by a third-party receiver that hopes to soon find a buyer for the property.
It should be noted that one idea that was floated a couple months back by a local architect for filling the now empty former Nordstrom space in the shopping center would be to bring in a full-scale (or mid-scale) LEGOLAND, of which the Bay Area only has one, way out in Milpitas. Maybe somebody is actually looking into this?

I liked this place. Not sure why. I don't do legos. Sad to see it go.