The Woman In Red - Pier 26
Then …. Teddy has just discovered that Didi had a handgun stashed away in their home. He decides to dispose of it and knows the perfect place. The Hills Brothers Coffee building at far left tells us where this is - he’s at the end of Pier 26 on San Francisco’s Embarcadero. This view looks beneath the span of the Bay Bridge (out of the frame, passing overhead) and over Pier 24 towards the Financial District high-rises.
… and Now, Pier 26 is in bad shape now and the narrow exterior wharf around its perimeter (where Teddy was, above), is off-limits for safety reasons. But CitySleuth was able to walk inside the pier shed to the back corner and take this matching photo through a two inch gap at floor level beneath a huge closed metal shutter door near the end of the pier. The Hills Brothers Coffee building is still there at far left, but Pier 24 is gone; after suffering a major fire in 1997 it was demolished by 2004 leaving only its annex standing (at far lower left in both images). There are many newer buildings in this view now due to the Financial District’s expansion South of Market.
… and Now, in this aerial the ‘X’ marks where Teddy was in the Then image above and the large arrow indicates the camera’s viewpoint beyond him.
… 1970s … and here’s a 1970s aerial that shows the piers, including Pier 24, as they were when the movie was filmed (again with an X where Teddy was). Note the iconic Hills Bros Coffee logo sign at far right which is also seen in the first Then image (the red sign) at the top of this post.
(By the way, Pier 24 may be gone now but for Embarcadero history buffs here’s a nice century-old photo of it as it was).
On the left below is a 1955 photograph of the back side of the sign seen in the 1970s photo above. It’s the same image; featuring an Ethiopian coffee taster, a nod to the source of the coffee beans, it was designed in 1900 and appeared on all of the company’s products for the next 90 years. The sign is no longer there but the taster has been on display since 1990 in the current building’s plaza in the form of a nine feet tall bronze statue by sculptor Spero Anargyros.
Digressing for a moment, Hills Brothers Coffee had its humble beginnings in San Francisco in 1878. It moved several times before building and occupying their final home, a roasting and packing plant at 2 Harrison Street in 1926. Production wound down in the 1980s until the brand name, still extant, was bought by Nestlé in 1985. Today the plant has been renovated into mixed-use condominiums and offices. The fine image below, bathed in the early morning sunlight, was taken from Yerba Buena Island in Dec, 2015 when the building displayed a seasonal message spanning 12 of its windows (photo by D. C. Nelson). Opposite the building on the water’s edge is the city’s historic Fire Station 35 with the fireboat Guardian berthed behind it.
A new extension/replacement for Fire Station 35 was opened behind it in 2021; you can see both old and new below. Note the trusty Guardian is still on duty there. The extension has been designed to rise and fall with the tides and any future sea level changes; go here for a fascinating SF Public Works presentation of its construction (teaser - it was built elsewhere).
… and here’s a stunning Bay Bridge image from 2018, also taken from Yerba Buena Island, that captured the Hills Brothers Coffee building to its right and pier 26 to its left (photo by Patrick Boury).
Then …. Getting back to the movie … the Bay Bridge reaches out behind Teddy to mist-shrouded Yerba Buena Island as he nonchalantly sits and stretches while dropping the gun into the water.
… and Now, again, CitySleuth was able to match the shot through the narrow floor level gap beneath the closed and rusted shutter door.
… it turns out there was a small boat berthed right there next to him. He certainly took a risk being seen but he got away with it.