The San Francisco Centre Mall used to be the place teenagers went to be teenagers. But then, like a 12-pack of Zima, it emptied out, store by store, until closing for good Friday. On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of those former teens gathered outside the mall’s locked doors on Market Street to grieve their adolescent playground through a haze of blunt smoke and the sounds of hyphy.
“Growing up, this mall was everything,” said 33-year-old Antwan Shelbua, aka Big Folks Pop, who came up with the idea; he posted about the party and streamed it live on Instagram, hoping the gods of virality would bless him (and they did). “This mall was the shit.”
As a DJ mixed music from SOB X RBE and other local hip-hop acts, Shelby brought everyone into a circle. Marijuana smoke filled the air. Of course, guys on bikes did wheelies. By 4 p.m., an hour after the party began, the crowd had tripled, taking over the sidewalk. Some passersby, unable to get around the merriment, stopped and joined the celebration.
Shelby told the crowd not to worry about rapping too loudly, putting drinks in paper bags, or hiding bongs. The event, he assured them, was sanctioned by the police. Indeed, across the street, officers stood near their SUVs watching the festivities, unbothered. The San Francisco Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.
“This was my playground,” said Deonta Harper, aka OBN Enemy, a 28-year-old skateboarder who made his first trip to the mall after being suspended from school at age 12. “I didn’t want to go to school. I wanted to come here.”
While difficult to fathom for any post-Covid newcomer who has seen the mall only as an abandoned ghost hull, it was once the city’s center of commerce and a cultural hub. When the San Francisco Shopping Centre, as it was formerly known, opened in 1988, it had the first spiral escalator and the largest Nordstrom in the country. In the 2000s, its $440 million remodel into the Westfield San Francisco Centre won design awards. But that was then.
ONB Enemy honors his friend Butters, who died in 2024 and made the mall “lit.” | Source: Ezra Wallach/The Standard
The 5.9-acre property, comprising two structures, was foreclosed on by lenders in November at a valuation of $133 million. Less than a decade ago, the mall was valued at more than $1.2 billion.
Otis Harris, a 27-year-old who works for the city, said he used to come to the mall every day with the woman who is now his wife. On Sunday, their 4-year-old daughter sat on his shoulders as they observed the twerking and breakdancing and reminisced. He had many firsts at the mall. First taste of a Mrs. Fields cookie. First fist fight.
Many attendees recalled that smoking weed at the mall was as much a part of the experience as shopping for new kicks or purses. The security guards, one partyer remembered, would sometimes get high with them on the roof or staircase.
Rio Cifuentes, a 29-year-old food service worker, waxed nostalgic about skipping school and taking his munchies to Panda Express, along with buying a movie ticket at Century Theatre only to stay throughout the day, watching several with his homies.
“I used to skip school, come here all the time, walk around, and eat,” said Kiara Breed, 27, from Oakland. Breed, who works at Chase Center, recalled that she first came to the mall as a preteen in 2010.
Marcus Johnson, a 35-year-old who works as a security guard, said the mall’s closing felt like a childhood memory being ripped away. Growing up, there wasn’t anywhere else he needed to go. He’ll always remember San Francisco Centre as the place that gave him his first job, at Foot Locker, when he was 16.
“That and me and females getting food,” he said. “There ain’t gonna be another mall like this.”