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Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
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Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
 Northwest view (May 2017) | |
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| Location | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 37°47′04″N 122°24′12″W / 37.784374°N 122.403424°W |
| Address | 135 Fourth Street, 94103 |
| Opened | June 16, 1999 |
| Developer | Sony |
| Management | Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield |
| Owner | Starwood Capital Group |
| Architect | Handel Architects |
| Stores | 25 |
| 1 | |
| Floor area | 350,000 square feet (33,000 m2) |
| Floors | 4 |
| Parking | 1,800 paid spaces |
Public transit | Powell Street station |
| Website | shoppingmetreon |
The Metreon is a shopping center located in downtown San Francisco, California, United States at the corner of 4th Street and Mission Street. It is a four-story 350,000 sq ft (33,000 m2) building built over the corner of the underground Moscone Center convention center. Metreon opened on June 16, 1999, as the first of a proposed chain of Sony "urban entertainment centers", aggregating dining, games, music, exhibitions, shopping, and movies. Sony intended the ambitious US$85 million (equivalent to $164 million in 2025) project to be a theme park and gallery for Sony products, and to reinforce a sophisticated image for the Sony brand.
In 2006, Metreon was sold to Westfield Group, an Australian-based mall developer, and it was refashioned as a food-oriented mall. In 2011, most remaining businesses in the mall were closed. Westfield began a major renovation with an emphasis on dining, including Target, creating a large downtown department store that now takes up the second floor. In April 2012, Westfield sold the Metreon to Starwood Capital Group.[1] Westfield (and its successor, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield) continues to be responsible for management.
The Metreon's original attractions included a movie theater with both standard and IMAX screens, a multimedia edutainment presentation involving audio-animatronics and 3-D film based on the famous book The Way Things Work by David Macaulay, a play area for young children based on Maurice Sendak's popular children's book Where the Wild Things Are (sharing a floor with an In the Night Kitchen themed restaurant), and an arcade and bar, the Airtight Garage, based on French comic artist and graphic designer Jean "Moebius" Giraud's graphic novel of the same name and featuring all original games.[citation needed]
In October 2001, Metreon, in partnership with Sony's anime television network, Animax, was host to an anime festival, in which numerous anime videos were broadcast across its Action Theatre.[2] As a hub for Sony products, the Metreon often hosted special events for the public when new products were released. Consumers flocked to the Metreon for high-demand items such as the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, and PlayStation 3.[citation needed]
Although Sony opened two additional centers in Tokyo and Berlin in 1999, the original center failed to turn the expected profit. Sony promised first-year foot traffic of six million, one million above pre-launch projections, but by mid 2001 "The Way Things Work" was closed. The other major exhibit, "Where the Wild Things Are," closed sometime after July 2004.[citation needed]
The Airtight Garage's games were unpopular, with the exception of HyperBowl, a 3D obstacle course bowling game featuring air-supported bowling balls used as trackballs, and they were gradually replaced by other, better-known games. The arcade was finally closed, then reopened as Portal One, which preserved the decor, full bar, and Hyperbowl but was otherwise a typical arcade. May 13, 2007 was Portal One arcade's last day of operation. The arcade was relaunched again as a Tilt.[citation needed]
The 16-screen Loews (now AMC) theater was a success, becoming one of the most profitable theaters in the country and claiming much of the Metreon foot traffic; the lease agreement did not apportion ticket or concession sales to Metreon, however.[3]
By 2002, persistent rumors said that Sony wished to withdraw from management of the property. In February 2006, Metreon was sold to The Westfield Group, the owner of the nearby Westfield San Francisco Centre shopping mall, and Forest City Enterprises, a real estate development company.[citation needed]
In early 2009, Sony announced that it would be closing the Sony and PlayStation stores, the last flagship stores located in the mall. Following the announcement, on March 3, 2009, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency approved plans from owners Westfield Group and Forest City Enterprises to renovate Metreon into a "restaurant-centric" mall. Expected modifications include relocation of the Fourth and Mission street entrance to the center of the block and the installation of a food terrace facing Yerba Buena Gardens. The San Francisco Filipino Cultural Center and the "Tavern on the Green" restaurant were projected tenants.[4] Tavern on the Green, however, entered bankruptcy on September 11, 2009, "throwing into doubt" the plans for the Metreon location.[5]
The Metreon building has been redeveloped as a Target store, opened in October 2012.[6] Target is leasing 99,677 square feet (9,260.3 m2).[7] The other tenants are the AMC theater (now with its own entrance), a food court, Chronicle Books, Massage Envy, National University, The City View event space, and various other food purveyors not directly in the court.[8] The Sanraku sushi restaurant and Buckhorn sandwich shop remain in the new food court, along with Jillians, which is now only accessible from outside. The movie theater has also experienced upgrades, with the IMAX auditorium now featuring their new laser projector, and the addition of Dolby Cinema and recliner seats.
Cal Hacks began hosting its annual hackathon at The Metreon in 2023.
The Metreon 16, an IMAX 3D movie theater and Dolby Cinema theater operated by AMC Theatres, and Jillians, a restaurant, were the only attractions that remained open when Target opened in 2012.
The Walk of Game is loosely based on the Walk of Fame, in which honorees include Shigeru Miyamoto, Nolan Bushnell, StarCraft, Sid Meier, John D. Carmack, Super Mario, Sonic The Hedgehog, and Link from The Legend of Zelda series. A special Walk of Game event took place there in 2005 and 2006. It was unknown that it would ever continue and is now most likely obsolete, now that Target is taking up the second floor where the Walk of Game was.
A seven-day-a-week farmers' market operated as an interim tenant in the former Discovery Channel Store space between May and November 2009.[9]
The Michelin-starred Tsuta ramen shop in Tokyo, Japan, expanded into the Metreon in October 2019.[10]
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‡ Managed with no ownership interest. World Trade Center space is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the Fulton Center space is owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. | ||||||
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
The Metreon is a shopping center located in downtown San Francisco, California, United States at the corner of 4th Street and Mission Street. It is a four-story 350,000 sq ft (33,000 m2) building built over the corner of the underground Moscone Center convention center. Metreon opened on June 16, 1999, as the first of a proposed chain of Sony "urban entertainment centers", aggregating dining, games, music, exhibitions, shopping, and movies. Sony intended the ambitious US$85 million (equivalent to $164 million in 2025) project to be a theme park and gallery for Sony products, and to reinforce a sophisticated image for the Sony brand. In 2006, Metreon was sold to Westfield Group, an Australian-based mall developer, and it was refashioned as a food-oriented mall. In 2011, most remaining businesses in the mall were closed. Westfield began a major renovation with an emphasis on dining, including Target, creating a large downtown department store that now takes up the second floor. In April 2012, Westfield sold the Metreon to Starwood Capital Group. Westfield (and its successor, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield) continues to be responsible for management.
The Way Things Work is a 1988 nonfiction book by David Macaulay with technical text by Neil Ardley. It is a whimsical introduction to everyday machines and the scientific principles behind their operation, describing machines as simple as levers and gears and as complicated as radio telescopes and automatic transmissions. Every page consists primarily of one or more large diagrams describing the operation of the relevant machine. These diagrams are informative but playful, in that most show the machines operated, used upon, or represented by woolly mammoths, and are accompanied by anecdotes from a mysterious inventor of the mammoths' (fictive) role in the operation. The book's concept was later developed into two short-lived animated TV shows (the former produced by Millimages and distributed by Schlessinger Media, and the latter produced by Children's Television Workshop and Film Roman), a Dorling Kindersley interactive CD-ROM (including a spin-off pinball game, Pinball Science), and a board game. A family "ride" involving animatronics and a 3-D film based on the book was one of the original attractions at the San Francisco Metreon, but closed in 2001.
The Walk of Game was an attraction in the United States honoring the icons and pioneers of the video game industry, created in 2005 and located inside the Sony Metreon, an entertainment shopping center in San Francisco, California. It noted the most influential game characters of that year. Gamers worldwide cast their votes through paper ballots and online submissions at the Walk of Game website during a one-month voting period. Ballots were held during October in the years 2005 and 2006. The top four games/characters and two lifetime achievers were honored with a permanent 24-by-24-inch (60 cm × 60 cm) customized steel star on Walk of Game. The attraction was based on Hollywood, California's Walk of Fame, as suggested by the similar name and customized floor tiles. In February 2006, Sony sold the Metreon to The Westfield Group. With the departure of Sony, the Walk of Game was never again updated. In 2012, the area of the Walk of Game was converted to a Target store. The Walk of Game was removed, along with the walkway which it had occupied.
Kurtz & Friends is an American animation studio founded by Bob Kurtz. Based in Burbank, California, the studio is known for producing short films, title sequences, and television commercials. Kurtz & Friends has created/produced animated theatrical titles for most major studios including the Walt Disney Company, Universal Studios, MGM, Sony Entertainment, Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group and Warner Bros. Titles include: The Pink Panther, Are We Done Yet?, Four Rooms, George of the Jungle and City Slickers. The company also created animated sequences for Jurassic Park and Minority Report, as well as for HBO's Carlin on Campus. In addition, Kurtz & Friends developed The Way Things Work, a three-screen, 3-D multimedia film for Sony's San Francisco Metreon complex, and the "Crocodile" anti-smoking films and print campaign for the California Department of Public Health. Kurtz & Friends created the animation for the Emmy-winning specials David Macaulay: Roman City and Edith Ann's Christmas (Just Say Noël) which won a Peabody Award. The company's films are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the ASIFA Archive in Germany.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Shirley Chisholm, elected in 1968.
