Forbidden City (nightclub)

The Sutter Cinema was located on Sutter Street in downtown San Francisco, just off of fashionable Union Square and a few blocks from Chinatown. It was a walk-up, on the second floor 363 Sutter, occupying the space that had previously been one of America's premiere Chinese-owned night clubs, Charlie Low's Forbidden City, which featured dancer Coby Yee. The Sutter Cinema opened in 1970; the owner/manager, also cashier, was Sexual Freedom League member, and one of Janis Joplin's closest friends in high school, Arlene Elster. She was the first, if not the only, woman to operate an adult theater. The clientele was middle-class. Asian-Americans from nearby Chinatown also frequented the cinema because Elster was one of the few customers of the legendary Sam Wo restaurant to be on friendly terms with its notoriously abusive head waiter Edsel Ford Fong, who she provided with an ample supply of free passes. The Sutter Cinema was unique, because in pointed contrast to the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre, Elster was not primarily motivated by money. She was a member of the Sexual Freedom League, held a benefit for it at the cinema, and felt that her participation in the pornographic film industry was an opportunity to spread sexual freedom as well as earn a living. She was showing sex films out of a feeling that sex films should be shown: "the times now not only allow but require films like ours." She would only show in the theater films that pleased her, some made with her partner Lowell Pickett. "Sutter Cinema played films that Elster wanted to see, films in which woman possessed sexual desires and 'made it' just like men." Elster intended to show erotic films that showed more than a penis going into a vagina. She felt that "erotic film needed to be made of, by, and for men and women. Female orgasms need to be portrayed on the screen at an equal rate to male orgasms." "In December 1970, the cinema with Leo Productions sponsored a five-day erotic film festival toward this end" ("to elevate pornographic film to a higher level of respectability." (To accommodate the crowd, the festival was held at the 800-seat Presidio Theater, but a poster for it says "Sponsored by the Sutter Cinema.") Mary Rexroth's film Intersection (1971) had its premiere at the Sutter, where she also showed the Mary Rexroth film Cozy Cool (1971) and gay porn films. Mary Rexroth is the daughter of the late poet Kenneth Rexroth. The First International Erotic Film Festival gained a modicum of literary cache thanks to the presence of festival judges, critic Arthur Knight and erotic book publisher Maurice Girodias. As a result, the festival drew the attention of the producers and talent spotters of the Johnny Carson Show, who invited Elster to do a segment on the program, which aired in January, 1971. By 1975 Elster was disenchanted, because of police harassment (she was arrested 14 times, and paid a fine of $1000) and the lack of quality movies to show. From 1975 to 1976 she sublet the cinema, moved with her lesbian partner to Sonoma County, and, like Fred Halsted, operated a wholesale plant nursery. The cinema closed shortly after.

The Book Club of California is a non-profit membership organization of bibliophiles based in San Francisco, operating continuously since 1912. Its mission is to support the history and art of the book, including fine printing related to the history and literature of California and the western states of America through research, publishing, public programs, and exhibitions. It is one of the two largest book collectors' clubs in the United States, with more than 800 members nationwide.

San Francisco Fountain, is a 1970 bronze sculpture and fountain by Ruth Asawa, located outside the Grand Hyatt San Francisco in downtown San Francisco, California, in the United States.

The Grand Hyatt San Francisco is a skyscraper hotel located half a block north of Union Square in San Francisco, California. The 36-storey, 660 room 108 m (354 ft) tower was completed in 1972, as the Hyatt on Union Square and renamed the Grand Hyatt San Francisco in 1990.The hotel had 402 employees before the COVID-19 pandemic, dropping to 28 as of April 2021, mainly due to cancelled conventions in the city. It was closed for around half of 2020, losing about $1 million per day during that time.

The White House was the first department store in San Francisco; it opened in 1854 and closed in 1965. It was originally named Davidson & Lane, then J.W. Davidson & Company, and finally, in 1870, when it moved to a large new building, took the name "The White House".The White House's long-time owner, Raphael Weill, was a prominent "philanthropist, epicure, and patron of the arts". Weill was a French Jew born in Phalsbourg, Lorraine, France. He arrived in San Francisco in 1853, joined the firm in 1855 at age 18, became a partner in 1858, and in 1885, became senior partner. He was a prominent member of the Bohemian Club, a founder of the French Library, and a patron of the French Hospital. He was an uncle of the founding brothers of Lazard Frères. Weill was appointed as a chevalier of the French Légion d'honneur in 1908. He died in 1920.In the 19th century, the company was known for its progressive treatment of its employees, closing at 6pm and on holidays, offering annual paid vacations, paid sick time, and commissions on sales.The Davidson & Lane Dry Goods Company originally opened in 1854 at the corner of Post and Grant. It moved to Kearny and Post on December 7, 1870, with the new name The White House. After that store burned down in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the third location, designed by Albert Pissis and clad in white terra cotta, was at Sutter and Grant, with street address 256 Grant Avenue. It closed on January 1, 1965, at which time it was housed in four buildings. After remaining vacant for several years, the main building reopened as a parking garage on the upper floors, with restaurants and retail stores including Tiffany & Co. and Peck and Peck at street level. As of 2021, the primary ground floor tenant is Banana Republic.

The V. C. Morris Gift Shop is located at 140 Maiden Lane in downtown San Francisco, California, United States, and was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1948. The store was used by Wright as a physical prototype, or proof of concept for the circular ramp at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.All of the built-in furniture is constructed out of black walnut, is original to the renovation, and was designed by Manuel Sandoval, who apprenticed and worked with Frank Lloyd Wright.

Maiden Lane is a pedestrian mall located in San Francisco, California, United States. A former section of the city's red light district, Maiden Lane is now home to high-end boutiques and art galleries. The street also serves as the location of San Francisco's only Frank Lloyd Wright designed building.

Église Notre Dame Des Victoires is a Catholic church in San Francisco, California. The church was founded in 1856 to serve the French Catholic immigrants during the Gold Rush. The architectural model for the church is the Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière in Lyon, France. In 1887, Pope Leo XIII signed the decree placing Eglise Notre Dame des Victoires under the charge of the Marists and giving it the designation of being a French National Church. The church building was rededicated in 1915 after rising from the ashes of the 1906 earthquake and great fire. In 1984, the church was designated as a historical landmark. The church remains an important center of San Francisco's French community: it is located adjacent to the city's "French Quarter" centered on Belden Place and regularly conducts a Sunday mass in French.

450 Sutter is a twenty-six-floor, 105-meter (344-foot) skyscraper in San Francisco, California, completed in 1929. The tower is known for its "Neo-Mayan" Art Deco design by architect Timothy L. Pflueger. The building's vertically faceted exterior later influenced Pietro Belluschi in his similarly faceted exterior of 555 California, the former Bank of America Center completed in 1969.The building's tenants are largely dental and medical professional offices.

Bay Area Medical Academy (BAMA) is an accredited school of higher education offering programs for students wanting to train to become a phlebotomist, medical assistant, or pharmacy technician. The school's campuses are located in downtown San Francisco near Union Square and in downtown San Jose.

The Tiffany Building is an eleven-story, 100,000-square-foot (9,300 m2) building at Union Square in San Francisco.; the bottom two floors contain a Tiffany & Co. store, while the upper floors contain offices. It is also known as 350 Post Street and the Qantas Building. The Tiffany store has 17,000 square feet (1,600 m2) of space. Cathay Pacific maintains its North America regional headquarters on the third floor of the Tiffany Building, in Suite 300. The Kenmark Real Estate Group, which manages the building, has its headquarters on the building's top floor. The Consulate General of Tonga is in Suite 604 of the building.

The Dragon Gate ("Chinatown Gate" on some maps) is a south-facing gate at the intersection of Bush Street and Grant Avenue, marking a southern entrance to San Francisco's Chinatown, in the U.S. state of California. Built in 1969 as a gift from the Republic of China (Taiwan) in the style of a traditional Chinese pailou, it became one of the most photographed locations in Chinatown, along with the older Sing Fat and Sing Chong buildings (at Grant and California).