Thursday's Nintendo Moves into the Saint Francis Hotel, and why is this Important?

Times and tastes change. Not that long ago, there were two restaurants that had a coat-and-tie requirement. If you showed up without the appropriate accoutrements, they gave you a loaner. Naturally these codes were enforced when the movers and shakers in San Francisco wore coats and ties.

But then the captains of industry stopped dressing like your grandfather. The new look of our corporate leaders became slightly more casual. With Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg dressing like a seven-year-old boy and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs adopting the persona of a therapist, the tone was set. Formal is out, casual is in. A generation that once valued formality was surpassed and supplanted by a generation that valued, “Chillaxing.”

I have worked in hotels around Union Square since the 1980s, and have observed retail trends over the decades. I have no statistics to cite but the coveted northwest corner of Powell and Geary Streets, anchoring the historic Saint Francis Hotel’s retail space, for me has always been a bellwether for the trends in society. Whatever business moves into that location is already surrounded by prestigious retailers such as Swarovski, Macy’s, Victoria’s Secret, Saks Fifth Avenue, Tiffany & Co., Neiman Marcus, Louis Vuitton, Williams-Sonoma, and Apple.

And now the Nintendo Store has joined that pantheon of brand-greatness.

You can catch a glimpse of this historic corner in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic, The Birds, as the camera follows Tippi Hedren walking to the pet store where the film begins. You can also see it lurking in the background in the Union Square scenes in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1973 classic, The Conversation.

It is the retail location which says to the world whatever business moves into 331 Powell Street, matters. For many years it was a high-end clothing shop called BCBGMAXAZRIA, then the pandemic hit and sat empty.

When the Nintendo Store took over that space in May of 2025, it symbolized a generational shift. The kids who first played with their Nintendo Play Stations in the 1990s have grown up. Now they have kids, and as my dad basked in sharing his favorite black and white movies with us from his childhood, they now share their youthful joy of Nintendo games with their kids.

Part nostalgia for Millennials, and partly a place for Gen Z-ers to call their own, the Nintendo Store speaks volumes as to what succeeding generations deem important. In and of itself, neither the corner retail space, nor the Nintendo Store itself are necessarily noteworthy, but the fact that particular business in that specific location symbolizes the trajectory our society's values and priorities.

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