Now shuttered, the once-bustling retail hub now stands as a monument to aspirations and generations
Let us gather beneath the iconic glass dome of the San Francisco Centre one last time to say goodbye to a mall that tried earnestly — and sometimes hilariously — to be more than a shopping center. Well, metaphorically, at least.
The long-planned closure happened Saturday, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, two days earlier than expected. Now, a proper sendoff is in order. The former Westfield mall was never just a place to buy socks you didn’t need or have perfume someone sprayed on you without your consent. It was a climate-controlled town square, a place where teenagers, tourists, tech workers, aunties from Daly City and the occasionally unwell prophet all briefly coexisted under one soaring oculus, like a Frank Lloyd Wright fever dream sponsored by Zara. For Generation Xers and millennials such as me, the mall’s closure feels like more than the shuttering of stores and food courts. It seems to mark the official end of our youths — the last nail in the coffin of our generational relevance. We didn’t invent malls, but we mastered them. We loitered, we flirted, we wasted entire afternoons without producing anything of value — because we didn’t need to. It was the ’90s and early 2000s, after all. The world has moved online and malls are no longer necessary. We can’t help wondering whether the same might be true of us. As long as the San Francisco Centre remained open — with its wayward halls and spiral escalators under the Emporium dome — our nostalgia had a physical address. We could push through those heavy gilded doors on Market Street and wander a familiar labyrinth, never 100% sure of where exactly in the mall we were, passing $1,200 handbags in search of a decent hot dog. It was aspirational in that very San Francisco way: high ideals, odd execution and no one batting an eye at the contradiction. This mall was a gathering point for Bay Area teenagers like me. On weekends in the 2000s, we descended on it to run laps around the atrium with the little money we had, hunting for the one item that might raise our social standing by a notch. We drifted through every floor of Bloomingdale’s, convinced we were getting away with something just by being there, before ending up at Betsey Johnson in search of a perfectly quirky dress or pair of shoes. I remember one time, idling in front of Auntie Anne’s, when a shoplifter came tearing around the corner, mall security in hot pursuit. Nobody moved to help or get out of the way. He took the turn too sharply, skittering across the tile like a hockey puck and sending stolen merchandise flying. It wasn’t the first time I’d witnessed such a brazen act there, but it was the funniest. Spectacle was just part of the San Francisco Centre experience. Ex // Top Stories Why Grok’s deepfakes might be protected by the Constitution The First Amendment protects speech of all kinds, even nonconsensual deepfaked bikini pictures, says Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman SF General to double capacity to treat patients with severe mental-health issues The state granted San Francisco $21 million to establish 50 new locked treatment beds at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital Is measuring SF homelessness becoming an ‘apples and oranges’ comparison? Advocates for the unhoused express both optimism and reservations over changes to The City’s biennial tally The mall took on new meaning for me as an adult. I would regularly hop on Muni from my place in the Castro just to dine at the food court, which was not your average food court. It felt elevated, offering selections atypical of standard American malls, such as Korean barbecue instead of Sbarro pizza. It was highly social, a place to run into friends or make new ones while waiting for your fancy little buzzer to let you know your meal was ready. When it was time to get married, we registered at Bloomingdale’s, savoring the long-awaited opportunity to be legitimate shoppers there — at least with other peoples’ money. Our tiny apartment couldn’t accommodate much, but that didn’t stop us from racing through the store with barcode-scanning guns, adding items we had no room or use for to our carefully curated list. Last year, when Bloomingdale’s announced it was closing, I flocked there like everyone else for its “everything must go” sales. But the dollar signs in my eyes were quickly replaced by tears as the stripped walls and empty shelves punctuated the mall’s death. It was impossible to ignore the reality of the San Francisco Centre’s end — and it felt like a part of me was going with it. Even in its last breath, the mall doled out its unique brand of joy, with a pop-up DJ set closing out the mall on Saturday, per SFGATE, and Bay Area music blasting in front of those heavy gold doors. What comes next for the San Francisco Centre is unclear — and what should is up for debate. The glass dome will stay, at least for now. The escalators will still spiral. Inevitably, The City will argue over what the space should become — university classrooms, pickleball courts or perhaps a sunlit enclosure for those two pandas The City is supposed to get. The mall itself — and our youth — may be gone, but our fondness for gathering, lingering and arguing about it transcends generations.
Westfield Downtown San Francisco Mall Closures
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