A field guide to the real San Francisco streets in Zombie SF
Every street and all 1,400 buildings in Zombie SF come from OpenStreetMap, so the neighborhood you run through is laid out like the real one. Here is what you are actually looking at, and a little of its history.
Where the game is set
The map covers the Tenderloin, Mid-Market, the bottom of Powell Street and a slice of SoMa across Market Street. You start at the corner of Eddy and Jones, in the middle of the Tenderloin's tight grid of five- and six-story residential hotels and apartment buildings. Head south a few blocks and you hit Market Street, with its theatres and the Powell St cable car turnaround.
The Tenderloin
The Tenderloin is one of San Francisco's oldest and densest residential neighborhoods, and one of its most diverse. Most of it was rebuilt in a rush after the 1906 earthquake and fire, which is why the blocks look so consistent: brick and stucco buildings of similar height with bay windows, fire escapes and ground-floor shops. That cohesion is the reason a large part of it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Uptown Tenderloin Historic District, with more than 400 contributing buildings from roughly 1906 to the early 1930s.
The name was borrowed from New York's old Tenderloin district. The popular story is that police assigned there could afford better cuts of meat, but the history is murky, and nobody knows for sure.
One corner worth knowing is Eddy and Leavenworth, two blocks west of the starting point. The Cadillac Hotel there, built around 1907 to 1908, is often described as the first building completed in the neighborhood after 1906. It later became the first non-profit residential hotel in the western United States, and its ground floor is home to the Tenderloin Museum, which runs neighborhood walking tours if you want to see the real thing.
The neon
The Tenderloin has dozens of small hotels, and many still have vertical blade signs. In the game, any building OpenStreetMap tags as a hotel gets a glowing neon sign, so the clusters of red HOTEL signs you see along the streets match real hotel locations.
Market Street and the theatres
For much of the 20th century, Market Street between Powell and Van Ness was San Francisco's theatre and movie-palace strip. Several of those buildings are on the map and get a lit marquee in the game.
- Golden Gate Theatre (corner of Golden Gate Ave, Taylor and Market). Opened in 1922 as a vaudeville and film house, designed by G. Albert Lansburgh. It closed in the 1970s, was restored, and today hosts touring Broadway shows.
- The Warfield (982 Market). Opened in 1922 as Loew's Warfield, also designed by Lansburgh, with room for more than 2,600 people. It became one of the city's best-known rock venues.
- The Strand (1127 Market). An early movie house on the same strip that was later rebuilt as a modern performance space.
- Curran, Toni Rembe (the former Geary) and Alcazar theatres are also in the map data, up toward Union Square.
In the game, the marquees all read the same thing: TONIGHT: THE DEAD.
Powell Street and the cable car
San Francisco's cable cars date to 1873, when the first line climbed Clay Street. The Powell Street lines followed in 1888, and in 1964 the system became a National Historic Landmark, one of the few that moves. At Powell and Market, cars are still turned around by hand on a wooden turntable.
In Zombie SF, a cable car runs up and down Powell from the Market turntable to the north edge of the map. You can press E to ride on the running board, and anything undead in front of it gets flattened.
Mid-Market and the tech buildings
West along Market, around 10th Street, stands Market Square (1355 Market). It opened in 1937 as a furniture and merchandise mart and from 2012 housed Twitter's headquarters. In July 2023, a giant lit X appeared on its roof and was taken down within days after the city cited it for not having a permit. In the game, the X is back on the roof. A few blocks further along, 1455 Market was Uber's headquarters until 2020, and the game gives it a billboard about how long your zombie will take to arrive. More of these in the easter egg list.
Karl the Fog
San Franciscans have nicknamed the summer marine layer "Karl". The game's fog is tuned to that low, wet, streetlight-swallowing kind, and it is why you hear zombies before you see them.