San Francisco - Retail & Industry

There are now major concerns about the future of the longstanding Berkeley flea market held each weekend at the parking lot for BART’s Ashby Station.

After nine years at its current location on 17th Street, Castro gift shop Local Take (3979B 17th. St.) is preparing to move to a new, larger space at 18th and Castro streets.

The former Everyday Cleaners at Divisadero and Golden Gate Avenue is spinning into a new incarnation as a cannabis dispensary, after getting a City Hall permit Thursday.

A tiny bottle shop selling local craft spirits will be built into Nob Hill’s Soda Popinski’s, despite neighbor concerns about “meandering drunks making raucous noises.”

Sunglass Hut quietly closed its Castro store at 511 Castro Street last week after at least 15 years in that space.

A very large dispensary will bloom at Lombard and Steiner streets, though those plans were nearly choked because the Department of Building Inspection spaced out on a permit 17 years ago.

North Beach has plenty of places to get your drink on. But until recently, if you were seeking a mellower high from a cannabis dispensary, you were out of luck.

Castro home decor shop Kenneth Wingard (2319 Market St.) has announced it will be closing after 16 years in the neighborhood.

B8ta's CEO, Vibhu Norby, said his employees were repeatedly subjected to harassment, while the stores themselves were vandalized and broken into, and after some temporary closures, the business is calling it quits in the U.S. entirely.

Yet more businesses are bullish on a big downtown revival, as sustainable coffee purveyor Saint Frank Coffee is one of several new retailers coming into the ground floor of the twisty silver condo Mira Tower.

While it won't be there forever, the long-empty Forever 21 storefront in downtown San Francisco will have the candy emporium It'Sugar occupying the place while the building converts to office space.

“We were in the Tenderloin for 10 years and were really advocating for the neighborhood,” says owner Kristin Klein. “But I could not turn down a primo location in North Beach for the same price as pre-pandemic Tenderloin.”

Sour Cherry Comics (3187 16th St.) is a brand-new bookstore run by and geared towards the LGBTQ+ community.

The new Valencia Street studio Ephemeral Tattoo is inking tattoos with a twist — their biodegradable ink tattoos will disappear from your skin within 9-15 months.

After nearly four years in the neighborhood, Castro floral art studio Blumen (548 Castro St.) will close at the end of the month.

The Castro's Levi's Store at 525 Castro Street (between 18th and 19th streets) has quietly closed after 14 years in the neighborhood.

The new Whole Foods near Civic Center will be the largest Whole Foods in San Francisco, and will open March 10 to bring a much-needed boost to a corner that has lately been in the news for all the wrong reasons.

Some 200 yards from the Great Highway, a cannabis dispensary is coming to what is currently Black Bird Bookstore. Meanwhile, Black Bird is just moving just a couple blocks up the street.

Van Cleef & Arpels — a centuries-old jewelry chain founded in Paris — and the luxury fashion company Chanel recently acquired new retail store locations in Union Square that are set to debut this year, each real estate investment existing as a sign that downtown SF is rebounding.

For the company’s 170th anniversary, Ghirardelli Square is renovating its chocolate shop and ice cream parlor, plus adding a new pop-up shop.

The latest retail casualty in the ongoing shutter parade around Union Square — and in the ongoing retail decline nationwide — is the Market Street/Westfield Mall location of Abercrombie & Fitch.

The new owner of the Pacific Heights True Value Hardware made an unusual discovery when he took over — a 50-foot avocado tree that’s pummeling the shop’s backyard with the delicious fruit.

The Castro's newest cannabis retail store, Flore Store (258 Noe), is now open while historic neighborhood restaurant Flore (formerly Cafe Flore) has remained shuttered for two years.

A new cannabis retail shop has been proposed at 2057 Market St., formerly Market Nail Spa.

Amber Senter helped create cannabis social equity policies in the Bay Area and the state of California, and now she's part of the team that just won Planning Commission approval for a new Bayview dispensary.