V. C. Morris Gift Shop

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.

The City of Paris Dry Goods Company (later City of Paris) was one of San Francisco's most important department stores from 1850 to 1976, located diagonally opposite Union Square. In the mid-20th century it opened a few branches in other cities of the Bay Area. The main San Francisco store was demolished in 1980 after a lengthy preservation fight to build a new Neiman Marcus, although the store's original rotunda and glass dome were preserved and incorporated into the new design.

The Forbidden City was a Chinese nightclub and cabaret in San Francisco, which was in business from 1938 to 1970, and operated on the second floor of 363 Sutter Street, between Chinatown and Union Square.The Forbidden City was one of the first nightlife venues to feature Asian American singers, dancers, chorus lines, magicians, strippers, and musicians, and was entirely managed and staffed by Asian Americans. It was popular with military personnel who were transiting through San Francisco during World War II, as well as Hollywood celebrities, and became the most well-known venue in a golden age of Chinatown nightlife. Some of the featured entertainers would go on to greater fame after launching their careers at the Forbidden City.The club inspired the novel The Flower Drum Song (1957), which became a musical (1958) and film (1961) of the same title. In 1989, the club was profiled in the documentary, Forbidden City U.S.A., by Arthur Dong.

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.

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 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 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 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.

Union Square is a 2.6-acre (1.1-hectare) public plaza bordered by Geary, Powell, Post and Stockton Streets in downtown San Francisco, California. "Union Square" also refers to the central shopping, hotel, and theater district that surrounds the plaza for several blocks. The area got its name because it was once used for Thomas Starr King rallies and support for the Union Army during the American Civil War, earning its designation as a California Historical Landmark.Today, this one-block plaza and surrounding area is one of the largest collections of department stores, upscale boutiques, gift shops, art galleries, and beauty salons in the United States, making Union Square a major tourist destination and a well-known gathering place in downtown San Francisco. Grand hotels and small inns, as well as repertory, off-Broadway, and single-act theaters also contribute to the area's dynamic, 24-hour character.The Dewey Monument is at the center of Union Square. It is a statue of Nike, the ancient Greek goddess of victory.

The Street Artists Program of San Francisco is a municipal arts program in which independent street artists and craftspeople sell their art and craft items in designated public spaces in the city of San Francisco, California. The artists are licensed by the San Francisco Arts Commission and are only allowed to sell work that has been "predominantly created or significantly altered in form" by the street artist. The Arts Commission currently licenses approximately 400 street artists, whose licensing fees cover all program costs. The program generates an estimated $4 million annually for the city's economy.The program was the result of a hard-fought political battle by street artists who were sometimes harassed and arrested by police for selling their work on the city's sidewalks. In response, street artists strategically organized by forming their own guild, hiring a lawyer, and drafting two ballot initiatives in order to create laws that enabled them to sell their work in public places. Some street artists were willing to be arrested time and again in order to draw media attention to their cause and to push for a change in existing laws.

The Dewey Monument is a memorial statue in San Francisco, California, located at the center of Union Square. Union Square is bounded by Geary, Powell, Post and Stockton Streets. The monument is dedicated to Admiral George Dewey and commemorates his victory in the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish–American War. Work on the monument began in 1901 and it was dedicated in 1903.

The McLoughlin Gallery was an art gallery established in 2010 by Joan McLoughlin that presented contemporary art from mid-career and emerging artists. The gallery was located at 49 Geary Street, Suite 200 San Francisco, California, United States. The McLoughlin gallery was the third largest space at 49 Geary. Artists at the gallery worked with a variety of different, and sometimes non-traditional, materials including: resins, plastics, Xeroxes, glitter, wood panel, acrylic and found objects.