In this rousing and well made episode of the television show ‘The Street of San Francisco’ from 1974, Lt. Mike Stone (Karl Malden) and Inspector Steve Keller (Michael Douglas) are up against terrorists who are planning to place explosive bombs all around San Francisco. 1970s television doesn’t get any better than this. (Thumbnail images)
The episode titled ‘Flags of Terror’ opens in Tokyo, where three members of a group of terrorists are purchasing miniature bombs that can be hidden in cameras. They later plan to smuggle them in to San Francisco.
The cruise ship the terrorists arrive in docks at Pier 35: They build them bigger nowadays.
Stone and Keller happen to be inside Pier 35 on a routine check for smuggling. We get a good look at the inside of Pier 35 in 1974, and also, a nice pair of legs on the right. The girl reading the book on the far right is about to get in serious trouble.
The bad guys (and girl) try to smuggle their explosive cameras past customs, but an alert agent smells a rat. When he motions an armed guard to come over, the terrorists make a break.
As the terrorists make their break, they grab some hostages. Yeah, they did that in 1974 too. The girl is the one we saw inside Pier 35.
They exit the north side of Pier 35 with their hostages here.
As the terrorists run along the Embarcadero, you can see the old Pier Inn Cocktail Lounge between Piers 33 and 35 in the background. They bottom picture with the Pier Inn in the background is a snapshot I took on a rainy late afternoon in the late 1980s.
As the villains shoot back at the customs agents chasing them, a father and daughter are going into Pier 35 to take a Hawaiian cruise. The daughter is hit and killed. Later in the episode her vengeful father almost gets all of the hostages killed by trying to shoot at the terrorists.
The terrorists run past Pier 35 and the side of the pier where the world War ll Liberty Ship, the Jeremiah O’Brien, is berthed today.
Right on their heels are Lt. Stone and Inspector Keller.
The criminals jump into a red van and head down the Embarcadero followed by multiple police cars, including Stone and Keller. In this three set you can see the now gone Piers 37 and 39 in the upper right of the top photo. In the middle picture you can see the mast of the sailing ship, the Balclutha when it was berthed at Pier 43 on the far right.
The terrorists head down the Embarcadero, turning onto Broadway where the Embarcadero Freeway ended.
Cut off by police at the foot of Broadway, they head back to the Embarcadero
The pursuit continues south underneath the Embarcadero Freeway. Their van crashes into a pile of boxes on the corner of Mission Street and the Embarcadero at the old Audiffred Building.
The chase continues to an area that was once skid row in 1974. Surprisingly, all of the buildings in the film scene are still there. The terrorists eventually hijack a yacht south of China Basin, and threaten to kill everybody on board including the hostages and themselves unless a seaplane is delivered. This is top notch entertainment.
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 
Top notch entertainment?! I never liked the show, but I suppose it is better than what is on now. Does television even exist anymore? I mean, are there any scheduled broadcasts, or is everything just on demand?
I didn’t like the show myself back when, Tony; I thought it was hokey and seldom watched it. However, watching it in retrospect, the amount of work they put in to some of these episodes would not be allowed today by the City of San Francisco. Also, many of the episodes, like this one, are plausible and structured well. The amount money it would would take to film this one episode today would make it impossible to create, not to mention that they had to close off many areas of the San Francisco waterfront from near Fisherman’s Wharf to below China Basin to film the chase scene, although this was probably done over several days. “Top notch entertainment” may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I’ll take it over ‘Happy Days’ anytime, and I liked Happy Days better than the Streets of San Francisco back then!
Yes, I did not consider that. I know that much more went into such old entertainment. Actors actually needed to act. They could not rely on technology to do it for them.