Hub Theater

scottfavareille on June 18, 2004 at 4:34 pm

The Hub mostly showed grindhouse fare before switching to “adults only” films in the mid-1960’s. It closed in the early 1970’s.

kencmcintyre on December 20, 2005 at 10:44 pm

A theater with a sense of humor:

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GSenda on May 12, 2006 at 2:18 pm

Sadly, the Hub and several other theatres on the block were put out of business by the forthcoming Yerba Buena Center project. Which took years to resolve in the courts while these theatres were boarded up.

At the end all the theatres in this block were showing porn theatres and the city took them over under eminent domain and for awhile the city owned fully operating porn theatres!

I recall Herb Caen making a note of it in one of his columns.

I seem to recall reading that at their height there were 40 or 50 movie theatres operating at the same time on Market Street. A friend of mine says he managed to see at least one movie in each of the theatres on Market Street in his youth.

George Senda
Concord Ca

almanac1951 on September 14, 2010 at 5:34 pm

Allen Ginsberg took this photo of fellow Beat Generation icon Neal Cassady and his girlfriend of the moment, under the marquee of the Hub, in or around March of 1955.

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Joe Vogel on December 5, 2013 at 8:20 pm

An article about San Francisco’s movie theaters in the July 15, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had this paragraph about the Silver Palace Theatre:

“The first moving picture house to be opened on Market street following the fire of 1906 was the Silver Palace, just above Third, with a seating capacity of about 400. This house, which was conducted by the late Benjamin Michaels and Harry M. Lichtenstein, was fitted up at a heavy expense and at the time was considered quite a wonderful place. It is still being operated and is now under the management of N. K. Herzog, who also has charge of the Pastime theater in the same block. Both of these houses make a daily change of program and charge an admission of five cents.”