Month: March 2025

Last July, I did a post featuring one of the last episodes of the 1970s television show ‘EMERGENCY!’, entitled WHAT’S A NICE GIRL…’, which had scenes filmed in San Francisco. The last episode, ‘THE CONVENTION’ also opens with two scenes filmed in San Francisco. The first involves a rescuing a worker trapped in the sail rigging of the Balclutha, which back then was docked at Pier 43; the second part was filmed mostly at Minna Street and 4^th. (Thumbnail images)

 

Near the southwest corner of 4^th Street at Minna was the Imperial Hotel, already pretty rundown by 1979 when this episode aired. I learned later that this location was probably picked because the hotel was slated for demolition the following year. The Moscone West Building is there today.

 

A heartless landlord at the hotel is trying to evict a tenant for playing his music too loud in the building, and all the pleas from the tenant are ignored. Naturally, the tenant does what we know he’s going to do, and shoots the landlord. An ambulance races down 4^th Street from Market Street to assist the wounded landlord. The multi-layered parking garage is still there, but has had a new façade put on its 4^th Street side.

  

The ambulance pulls up to the hotel, passing the equally glamorous Independent Grocery store.

 

Meanwhile, the angry tenant begins sniper shooting at people on 4^th Street.

 

Police pull up on Minna, looking west toward 5^th St. to deal with the sniper.

  

When the sniper throws a hand grenade into the hallway, it starts the building on fire after the explosion. Now the fire department is involved.

  

The fire truck turns onto 4^th Street from Minna to hose the Imperial Hotel, as television reporters cover the unfolding drama. I didn’t get a half of a fire truck in my photo, but I got half a car.

  

The sniper eventually detonates another hand grenade, killing himself, as fire fighters battle the flames.

  

I started wondering if there were any old photographs of the Imperial Hotel before it was demolished, and found a picture on opensfhistory.org of the old hotel being wrecked in March of 1980. The vintage picture was taken on Mission Street, looking southwest along 4^th St. Today, the AMC Imax Building occupies the corner on Mission Street where the old photo was taken.

  

Minna Street has been featured in other notable film locations. Clint Eastwood, as “Dirty Harry”, dispatches some liquor store thieves on the southwest corner of ^2nd and Minna Streets in the 1976 film ‘The Enforcer’.

Buster Keaton was chased by a squad of police along Minna Street from 2^nd St. to New Montgomery Street in his 1922 silent film ‘Daydreams’.

Although it was over a half of a century ago, 1974 seems like…… a long time ago! These are pictures from that mid 1970s year that I’ve posted in the past. (Thumbnail images)

  

B Dalton Bookseller, in a vintage picture taken on Kearny Street, posted on the San Francisco Remembered Facebook page: Bookstores like B. Dalton, Rand McNally, and Bonanza Books were all around Downtown San Francisco back in 1974.

 

A cable car trying to sneak in the back door on a MUNI bus from a SF Chronicle picture taken at Powell and Sutter Streets.

  

An old J Line Street car heads down off Liberty Street toward Dolores Park, in a vintage Dave Glass photo:

 

Polk Street at California in a vintage San Francisco Chronicle picture from SF Gate:

  

The St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Larkin Street near McAllister. The Parade’s coming up again next weekend.

  

Looking down toward the Hyde Street Pier from Beach Street in a police chase scene from a 1974 episode of the ‘The Streets of San Francisco’:

 

Recently departed actor Gene Hackman, on the corner of Geary  and Stockton Streets in a scene from the 1974 film ‘The Conversation’; a film many consider one of the best movies from the 1970s:

  

A 1974 poster that I have: If you can zoom in on this, it’s very interesting.