Actually, nowadays, looking for fun on New Year’s Eve usually means finding a warm bar with a football game showing on TV, but I headed over there last night anyway, pretending I was young again. (Thumbnail images)
This picture on Market Street near Stockton Street is actually labeled ‘Market Street on New Year’s Eve’. It doesn’t give a date, but it was probably during the 1940s. It didn’t look like a very exciting New Year’s Eve that night. The State Theater, just visible on the left, was demolished in 1961. The California Theater Building, on the southeast corner of 4th and Market Street where the State Theater was located in was demolished in 1968. The building with the Ross Store in the current picture is now on the corner. (San Francisco Public Library Archives)
Jones Street in 1954, and the last run of the Jones Street Cable Car Line; that’s why there’s black ribbon on the cable car. Going into this area at night is a great way to find some excitement….. if you’re Indiana Jones! All of the tidying up during the APEC Summit has been discontinued, and the unfriendly street people who gather here have reclaimed their territory. (opensfhistory.org)
Market Street at Jones in 1975: Hmm, ‘WOMEN INTO DISCIPLINE’; that probably was a little more action than I was looking for Sunday night. This is the building where the Pussycat and Centre Theaters were located in. (opensfhistory.org)
A girls marching band, crossing Hyde Street from the Orpheum Theater: That wouldn’t have been quite the New Year’s Eve entertainment that I was searching for either; especially since their ectoplasm seems to be wearing off and they’re fading away. ‘The Mummy’s Hand’ dates the picture to 1940. (opensfhistory.org)
City Hall; now there’s a place to see a little action! Or maybe, that’s a place to see little action. The vintage picture, taken from about where I was at, is from 1925. (opensfhistory.org)
This 1966 picture, taken from close to where I’m at, but further out on Market Street and with a telescopic lens, is a great picture of this portion of Market Street when it was known as San Francisco’s ‘Great White Way’, mimicking New York’s Broadway. This would have been THE place to send New Year’s Eve in San Francisco long ago. (opensfhistory.org)
Well, there’s always fun on a cable car. Sometimes, you have to wrestle with these things to get a reasonable match up. (opensfhistory.org)
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 
My second wildest experience in San Francisco was New Year’s Day 1987. I was not there at midnight between 1986 and 1987, but was there instead at midnight between January 1 and 2 of 1987. It is a long story, and we did not get into too much trouble. We were good kids, really.
Those are good memories, huh? I remember New Year’s Eve when I was 20, my buddies and I walking through the Broadway Tunnel just after midnight, waving at the passing cars and wishing them a Happy New Year! We were well fortified on hydraulic sandwiches, courtesy of Budweiser, (or more likely Regal Select, we couldn’t afford Bud in those days). Most of the people in the cars passing honked at us, and yelled ‘Happy New Year’ back. It was a different town in those days.
Okay, I will not say how we did it, because I do not remember (and neither of us drink alcohol), but we somehow turned some of those lines of lights on the exterior of one of the Embarcadero Center towers off and on a few times. They were those long stripes of lights that extend from the roof to the ground level. We then went to the Equinox on top of the Hyatt Regency to ride it around the scenery and get some coffee. The waiter was selectively rude to Brent, but not me, and was then a bit too selectively attentive to him, but not me. We got the impression that he was watching Brent so that he did not steal anything. So, of course, while he was busy with that, I ‘borrowed’ some of the utensils, including a creamer, which is likely on Brent’s desk right now.