The Metreon in San Francisco, California: A Review

Sony built this neon monster back in 1999 to be some sort of Blade Runner/cyberpunk techno-fetish mall that would also showcase their cutting edge products. While they actually had some neat exhibits and activities for awhile, they never really seemed to put it all together in a cohesive or meaningful way. Eventually, in 2006, they sold it off to the Westfield company, who patterned it after the three other boring malls they already have in San Francisco. I guess the lesson here is that L.A. is really the place to try and build cyberpunk structures, not San Francisco.

The Metreon is really kind of a ghost town at this point in 2009. There's three shops now - literally. The rest of the mall is a handful of higher-end restaurants, the Tilt Arcade, the Walk of Game, and a movie theater that has basically been the lifeline of the mall since forever as it does some of the highest volume of business in the country.

The movie theater has IMAX, and is pretty decent, but also pretty pricey. The Tilt Arcade is your fairly standard, one dollar a pop arcade that is but a cheesy echo of what arcades used to be. The manager actually hangs out on the Shoryuken forums and takes suggestions, or at least used to. I guess the Walk of Game is an interesting stop if you're a gamer, but really, you'll see all there is to see in five minutes or so.

The only places to shop right now seem to be a sunglass kiosk called NYS Collections, and Chronicle Books which faces the nice Yerba Buena Gardens. Chronicle is basically one of those small Waldenbooks with even less of a selection, and I'm not sure how they continue to make it when everyone else has folded up. It's clean, it looks nice, but there's barely any selection.

Restaurants (none of which I've sampled, so I can't give detailed comment) on hand are the Buckhorn Grill (sandwiches and salad), Firewood Cafe (expensive Italian restaurant), Jillian's (sports bar and casual dining), Just Desserts (bakery), Luna Azul (expensive Mexican restaurant), Penguino (ice cream and fro-yo for the Hello Kitty set) and Sanraku (sushi).

They've recently began using all the newly open space to host a weekly Farmer's Market here. Now, there's two types of Farmer's Market that go down in the city of San Francisco. One type focuses on cheap, fresh, seasonal produce from local farmers, and is a haven for working and poor people to get some decent food at reasonable prices. The other is a mix of organic foods from local farmers, and "artisan" foodie items that are generally good but very expensive, and the rich people drawn for the "artisan" foods drive up the price of any produce being sold to levels above and beyond Safeway and Trader Joe's. The Island Earth Farmer's Market at the Metreon is decidedly one of the latter. Expect a lot of stuff like Cowgirl Creamery and not a lot of bargain plums and avocados.

Perhaps the biggest knock against the Metreon, aside from the total desertion of the stores and services, is something that it can't do a lot to control - the fact that after dark, 4th and Mission seems to become Wannabe Thug Central in the city. Lord knows what reason, since all that's here besides the Metreon is a really overpriced Denny's and Mel's, but you've got an active mix of real drug dealers, and little "hella high school gangstas" who be straight up ignorin' they homework so theys can be mall thuggin'. Yaw. Fareals.