If getting trampled at a Best Buy at 4:00 a.m. doesn’t sound like your ideal holiday shopping experience, think outside the big box this Black Friday. Thanks to our unique local laws that favor small businesses over “formula” chain stores, there are oodles of San Francisco local businesses open on Black Friday offering wares that fall outside of Santa’s usual offerings.
Kayo Books
814 Post Street San Francisco, CA 94109 / (415) 749–0554
By appointment only
Kayo Books is not as well known as bookstore heavyweights like City Lights or Green Apple Books, but that’s partly because its selection is so niche: Kayo trades exclusively in pulp. Walking through the store means immersing yourself in midcentury pulp and dime-store novels, as is clear from the quirky section headings, which include “Catholic Guilt,” “Good Girl Digests,” “Hobo & Train Literature” and, my personal favorite, “Sleaze.” Of special interest is the erotica. Kayo stocks hundreds of mass-market paperbacks from the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, most of them with lurid covers featuring buxom pin-up-bodied women and titles like “College Nympho” and “One of Those Cruises” (both of which I bought there, and which I dutifully keep in my living room for guests to giggle over). The erotica books are displayed openly on the back wall; if you really want to be titillated, though, ask co-owners Maria Mendoza or Ron Blum to show you what they keep “in the drawer.”
Isotope—The Comic Book Lounge
326 Fell Street, San Francisco, California 94102 / (415) 621–6543
The interior design of Isotope Comic Books shows how much the cultural status of comic books has shifted during the past few decades. Gone are the days when comic-book shops were dank, teenager-infested dens of iniquity staffed by bitter and critical nerds (à la Springfield’s Android’s Dungeon). In contrast, Isotope is a spacious, modernist two-story space with spare displays and soft couches that beckon you to immerse yourself in the comics void. Beautiful, atlas-size hardcover graphic novels are one of those fetish objects people drool over when they see them on display, which is what makes them such good gifts.
Super 7
@super7store / https://www.facebook.com/OfficialSuper7/
1427 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA 94117 / (415) 553–6155
It’s hard to imagine that Disney’s Big Hero 6 wasn’t at least a little inspired by Super 7. The San Fransokyo of the film almost exists within the confines of this store. Super 7 began life as a vintage Japanese toy zine inspired by punk/skate culture; post-zine, Super 7 became the toy, art and T-shirt store it is today, trafficking in pop culture arcana as well as showcasing more obscure paraphernalia from sci-fi and cult films, e.g., Boondock Saints action figures.
Currently, Super 7 has a large stock of what might be termed weird Star Wars swag, including a T-shirt of a heraldic Chewbacca coat of arms and an inexplicable Super Shogun Star Wars Shadowtrooper toy, whatever that is. With excitement building around Star Wars: The Force Awakens, these make especially good gifts for kids, especially if you want your children to grow up to be Japanophilic, robot-obsessed nerds (in other words, Guillermo del Toro).
Wicked Grounds
@WickedGrounds / https://www.facebook.com/wickedgroundscafe/
289 8th Street, San Francisco, California 94103
You can’t possibly make a list of San Francisco small businesses without including something kinky and/or queer (preferably both). Wicked Grounds makes for a good stop on a busy shopping day because it’s both a café, with all the relaxing atmosphere and drinks hereunto appertaining, and a BDSM boutique in the back. It’s kind of like a mullet, really — business in the front, fun in the back.
After you’ve beaten back the holiday stress with a soothing, hot cup of tea from the café, head to the boutique for some San Francisco stocking stuffers, e.g., BDSM books and guides as well as ropes, whips and all things leather. Then pick up another cup of chamomile on the way out, and, I don’t know, splash it all over your partner’s back while you whip them or whatever. (Especially if they’ve been naughty.)
Healthy Spirits
@healthyspirits / healthyspiritssf.com/
Castro: 2299 15th St San Francisco CA 94114
Clement: 1042 Clement Street San Francisco CA 94118 / (415) 682–4260
Cortland: 249 Cortland Avenue San Francisco, CA 94118 / (415) 374–7838
In typical fun-killing German style, the Bavarian Beer Purity Law of 1516 decreed that beer had to consist of only hops, barley and water, or it couldn’t be called beer. Meanwhile, to the disgust of the Germans, a couple of hundred miles to the west, the Belgians were putting all kinds of crazy shit in their “beer”: oranges, gourds, spices and even berries.
In the summer of 2008, I went to Belgium and tried some of the weirdest Belgian beers in the world; the strangest was a brand called Bink, brewed with rose petals. I lamented that I could never find Bink in the US, until I stumbled upon it in the Healthy Spirits Castro store a few years back.
Healthy Spirits has three stores in San Francisco with an equally well-curated selection of strange, distant and foreign beers, plus an ever-growing selection of other liquors, including a particularly impressive collection of mescals and whiskies. If you’re overwhelmed by the selection, they also sell “mystery” beer packs that are prewrapped and hand-selected by the staff.
The Pirate Store (a.k.a., 826 Valencia)
@826Valencia / http://826valencia.org/store/
826 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 / (415) 642–5905
There’s always that one admiral on your holiday shopping list who already has everything. Why not hijack their ship on a stormy evening and reduce them to penury? Now that they’re penniless, it’ll be much, much easier to find them the perfect gift at the Pirate Store.
Those who’ve lived in San Francisco a while may know that the Pirate Store is secretly a front for the nonprofit 826 Valencia, which offers free writing and tutoring for children and teens. The store was founded semi-accidentally, as zoning regulations required that the nonprofit’s space have a retail function. To comply with the regulation, they created the whimsical Pirate Store, likely the only one in the country with pirate-themed gifts and toys plus the literary output of the center and McSweeney’s press. Every regional 826 founded since has followed the same theme with its own unique store, including the Time Travel Mart in Los Angeles and the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Company in Seattle. All proceeds go to support 826’s mission, though if you really wish to give back this season, you could always volunteer as a tutor.
The Magazine
920 Larkin Street San Francisco, CA 94109 / (415) 441–7737
The Magazine’s selection of old vintage magazines and “ephemera,” as they put it, is well curated and unparalleled. If you’re like most of us, you’ll probably go straight for the smut, but there’s plenty of fascinating family-friendly content spanning the better part of the 20th century. Old mid-century magazines like Life are endlessly entertaining for their earnestness and hearken back to a simpler time, before the confusing multiplicity of social media, when all of America’s news came from a few chain-smoking newsmen barking at each other high in the Chrysler building.
You could say the same about the Magazine’s pornography selection. The large-format smut magazines of yesteryear have a romance to them that is lost with Internet porn. The San Francisco Bay Guardian called the store “a living archive of the sexual revolution, balls and all.”
General Store
@generalstoresf / http://shop-generalstore.com/
4035 Judah Street San Francisco CA 94122 / (415) 682–0600
I’m not 100% sure I understand what the word “bespoke” means, but to me it evokes Sufjan Stevens, Mason jars with handles and rare birds. You know that aesthetic? That’s basically the General Store.
Actually, wait, here’s a less vague description: if Portlandia were a store, it would be the General Store. Located deep in the Sunset, the General Store’s stock is a mix of artisan jewelry, hand-labeled apothecary goods, strange wooden objects and various jars in which to put your succulents. And yet the stock feels very intuitive and is beautifully displayed in such a way that you want to touch everything. It’s also the epitome of the word “boutique,” which is another word whose definition perpetually escapes me, but which I have observed to mean “a place you go when you want to buy something but don’t know what” — in other words, the opposite of a department store.
Even if you don’t go with a purchase in mind, the plant-lined patio in the rear of the store is a very pleasant place to relax, especially on rare unfoggy days.
