They put a lot of work into the opening scenes of a 1974 episode from the television show, The Streets of San Francisco called ‘License to Kill’. The scene was filmed at the intersection of Hyde and Beach Streets, one of the busiest intersections in San Francisco. You have the old Del Monte Cannery on the northeast corner of the intersection, cable cars cross through Beach and Hyde arriving to and departing from Aquatic Park on the northwest corner, and the Buena Vista Cafe, one of San Francisco’s best loved an famous watering holes, is on the southwest corner of the cross streets. (Thumbnail images.)
I took the Hyde Street/Powell cable car to Aquatic Park yesterday to do update pictures of the scenes. Cable cars still let passengers off arriving at Aquatic Park at the same spot in the middle of Hyde as these 1970s people in the show.
One of the passengers on the cable car in the overcoat, walking toward the southeast corner of Beach and Hyde Street, is up to no good.
It’s actor Murray Hamilton, Mr. Robinson in the film ‘The Graduate’ and the Mayor of Amity Island, one year after the filming of this episode, in the blockbuster ‘Jaws’. Here, he plays an ex cop named Barney Lujack responsible for a series of vigilante killings.
His target this time is the fellow in the plaid sport coat holding a newspaper heading into the Buena Vista Cafe. He’s a hit man for the Mob, Johnny Waco, and one of his victims was Lujack’s son.
Waco dispatches his assigned victim in the cafe with a silencer hidden in his newspaper.
Waco heads back across Beach Street to a car driven by an accomplice. However, Lujack has him dialed in.
Lujack shoots and wounds Waco on the northwest corner of Beach and Hyde. During the 1982, 1983, 1984 restoration of the cable car system, this portion of the tracks were rerouted into Aquatic Park here at the corner where Waco was wounded.
The accomplice drives up Hyde Street to pick up the injured Waco past where the cable car tracks originally entered Aquatic Park, about where the white van and service truck are in my picture.
Police squad cars are quick to respond. That’s a great look at the Hyde Street Pier in 1974.
After picking up Waco, the car speeds west on Beach Street toward Ghirardelli Square and the Maritime Museum, followed by the police.
A police officer races up past the Cannery to the northeast corner of Hyde and Beach Streets, but Lujack gets away.
Lt. Mike Stone, (Karl Malden) and Inspector Steve Keller (Michael Douglas) pull up to the Buena Vista Café in the tan color car on the right.
They enter the Buena Vista to investigate the shooting by Waco.
As Stone and Keller leave the café and cross over to Aquatic Park, they get an eyewitness account of the second shooting committed by Lujack.
Stone and Keller cross back over Beach Street to their car, trying to sort out the details.
“The way I see it, it’s a clear case of two accidental shootings.”
“No, I don’t think so, buddy boy. We have eyewitnesses in the cafe who say a man with a silencer shot the man at the table, and then we have eyewitnesses outside who say that the man who shot the man in the café was shot by another unknown suspect when he left the café. No, no, this doesn’t look like accidental shootings to me, but I could be wrong. How about an Irish Coffee at the Buena Vista before we leave?”
“Sounds good!”
Actually, they were two much brighter cops than that in the television show.
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 
Half a century later, the curtains in the windows above the Buena Vista Cafe are almost the same.
I noticed that the inside of the cafe hasn’t changed much, but I didn’t notice that, Tony.
It is sort of creepy now. Perhaps no one has been up there in all those decades.
And every year, around Halloween, they open the curtains. I think you’ve discover a good mystery here, Tony!
. . . but who opens the curtains if no one goes up there?! Scooby-Doo, where are you?!