Helipad on Valencia? At least it's not a restaurant.

Over the past 2 years it feels as if virtually every new retail space on Valencia is a new restaurant, whether converted from a closed space (auto repair shop becomes Dandelion Chocolate and Abbot's Sellar), in a new building (Farina Pizza, Mission Cheese), or from a long abandoned space (Amber Dhara).

Luckily we have a few new retail spaces that actually sell hard products, i.e. they're not restaurants. A stretch at Valencia and 19th has Aggregate Supply, a Chase ATM, and Gingko Home Furnishings, and we are thankful, regardless of their price points.

Now, the old 780 Cafe space (formerly The Summit) will become the new Betabrand Flagship Store. As reported in the Uptown Almanac, Betabrand is opening a large store in the space. Regardless of whether I can afford the lovely clothing they will sell, I appreciate their playful posters promoting the new store, with stories of a shaved Bigfoot, an arm eating sea lions and planned helipads (take that SF General).

The Sasquatch story is the funniest with descriptions of a new "100% pure Bigfoot fur" sweater.

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Introducing our new, limited-edition Sasquatch Sweater. Each beautiful garment is knit from 100% pure Bigfoot fur, shorn from our free-range herd in the Cascade Mountains.

It goes on to note that only "residual amounts of Sasquatch musk" are in the garments. In addition, the care instructions call for dry-clean only, but you can give it an authentic "wild" look by rubbing berries, dirt and bear scat into your sweater.

The storefront drawing caught my attention first with its helipad.

 

Some of the fun storefront elements include:
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• Helipad
• Strobing trillion-lumen neon seal (that's about 8.3 trillion watts, but who's counting)
• Rabid animal petting zoo, which includes splats of something a giraffe, squirrel, and howler monkeys

An unlucky tourist engages "Frisco Frank" and his weather prognosticating.

Finally there's a story about "Frisco Frank", a sort of groundhog day style sea lion living at an unmentioned Pier 39. It's a bit of a gruesome tale that tries to be funny, although it seemed a bit of a stretch to me. Let's just say that whatever Frank does to a tourist tells us whether we'll have:

• six more months of winter
• mild temperatures around the corner

Let's hope the store keeps up the humor, has a somewhat broad selection and price points (not likely with products actually made in USA), and most importantly, stays open for more than the 2 years Summit/780 Cafe were open.

Last note, there's sale for furniture there. Lot's of good deals on office chairs, metal stools, and some tech office looking couches.