I didn’t like Fleishacker’s so much, because it was just filled with ocean water — cold and salty. However, it was impressively huge. Here is a nice article about two brothers who grew up during that area’s heyday.

Mom loved I. Magnin’s though for a pre- and earliteen it was agony waiting for her to finish shopping for herself and the girls. I never got to go into the bathrooms you describe, but Gail remembers them, and says it seemed like the stalls were intended for trysts!! That big, apparently.

Mom got her “Blue Grass” hand lotion, cologne and other every-day scent there, along with Jean Nate splash for after the bath, and the French soap, hard, hand-milled (whatever that means) and sandalwood flavored - curved so it didn’t lie flat and get all soggy in the soap dish.

Mom’s “good” perfume was also from I. Magnin - Balenciaga’s “Le Dix” - and I went there and bought Gail Audrey Hepburn’s favorite - L’Interdit by Givenchy. It was perfect on her until she got pregnant with our first child — whatever the reason, her body chemistry changed and she could never wear it again.

I remember The Emporium, as well - we shopped there often, and Gail bought her wedding dress there for $100.00.
And then we’d go out and ice skate at Sutro’s, or down to Playland for an apricot turnover and an hour in the Fun House…… If Dad were with us - not often - we would most likely end up at Schroeder’s before heading home….the folks never discovered The Green Apple on Clement (if it was even there in those days)….that wasn’t part of a trip to SF until I had my own kids.

Sorry for the nostalgia-fest, but those were wonderful days in The City….grand memories.

And practically next door was Goldberg-Bowens, where we got FABULOUS sandwiches built to order. Dessert was always down at Union Square — in Blum’s, where we had a Napoleon, and then bought brioche, which my Mom loved, and Danish pastries to take home to Dad in Ukiah.

I LOVED “orthodontia day” in S.F……450 Sutter, forever!!!

Abercrombie & Fitch does indeed display disturbing pictures on their walls. I remember the few times I walked inside and I thought to myself, “And this stuff sells? This turns people on?” I thought perhaps that at the tender age of twenty-nine, I’ve become a curmudgeon before my time. But alas I don’t think I’m alone.

Like you, I used to think Abercrombie was a preppy sort of store. I guess something changed there in the late 90’s because when you walk through one of their stores it’s like you’re walking through those tacky black and white non-sequitor Obsession commercials.

And then the noise level is… well, maybe I am being a curmudgeon : )

Times change…