The building is unremarkable. Perched on the edge of an empty parking lot at the intersection of Haight and Shrader streets, it’s painted in a peeling shade of Blue Man Group indigo. Tags cover its concrete surface like stick-and-poke tattoos; a triangular roof, slightly too large for the rest of the structure, is plopped on top, resembling a child’s Lego creation.
A double-decker bus passes by, populated by about a dozen gawking tourists, but they’re either oblivious to the little kiosk on the corner, or they just don’t care. In size it’s comparable to the $625,000 public bathroom city officials planted in Noe Valley a couple of years ago. At one point, someone tried to spruce it up with a speckled red-and-white paint job to make it look like a mushroom. The drive-thru windows are plastered over, leaving the interior sealed off from the rest of the world.
This yurtlike architectural oddity was once a symbol of cutting-edge technology. Now, it sits in the shadow of a billboard heralding “The Future of AI,” with a wad of gum affixed to the roof. But it’s the only one left of its kind: the last standing Fotomat in San Francisco. And the average person doesn’t even know it exists.
Established in 1967 by San Diego entrepreneur Preston “Sandy” Fleet, Fotomat was a product of the drive-through era that saw people spending more time in their cars than ever. When they could already go to the bank, order a burger or pick up their pharmacy prescriptions all from the comfort of their own vehicles, Fleet thought there was another errand to be expedited: photo development. At the time, developing film could take anywhere from a few days to a week. But Fleet, a businessman in the aerospace industry who helped invent what became the Imax projection system, promised his new chain of drive-thru kiosks would do the job with a turnaround time of 24 hours…