Funny, according to Yahoo Maps, my neighborhood in San Francisco’s SOMA district is still called “Multimedia Gulch”, a name that really hasn’t been used here since the late 1990’s. It’s interesting that South Park, ground zero for the web, is not part of Multimedia Gulch according to this map.
Here are a few of articles about Multimedia Gulch from it’s heyday:
“San Francisco’s Multimedia Gulch”
by Alan Deutschman, Fortune Magazine, March 7, 1994“Gurus of Multimedia Gulch”
by Trip Gabriel, New York Times, September 4, 1994“San Francisco Tries to Retain Its ‘Multimedia Gulch”
by Laurie J. Flynn, New York Times, March 2, 1998“Making sense of Multimedia Gulch
Digital Mecca is changing The City in just about every way imaginable.”
by George Raine, The San Francisco Chronicle (via The Examiner), October 31, 1999
Oh and Vivid Studios has a great map of Multimedia Gulch that is frozen in time.
Maybe Yahoo can’t forget the past because their wonderful neon hotel sign is located in this area on 6th Street between Bryant and Harrison Streets and was installed here back when the area was still known as Multimedia Gulch. Here’s the sign on Google StreetView (yeah, I know it’s ironic, but until Yahoo has street level imagery…)
Speaking of Yahoo neon signs, here’s a photo of the one in New York’s Times Square from some late night Times Square photography I did there back in January.