Election Season

Prop D Loss Won’t Derail Foreign Cinema Spinoff

The new restaurant from the Foreign Cinema team will go ahead as planned, despite the defeat of a ballot measure that would have helped it succeed by allowing more signage in the mid-Market Street area. “I looked at prop D as this plan to get people past the Powell Street station and up and down Market Street,” Foreign Cinema co-owner John Clark told Grub Street. The proposition would have allowed business to install neon and lighted signs, which are currently prohibited. “We’re planning on a big restaurant: Three floors, about 10,000 square feet. We’re planning breakfast lunch and dinner, generating 100-125 jobs. So we need about 450 people to come there and eat every day. I think everybody was hoping prop D would help spur more development and get more people there,” Clark said.

The new restaurant, tentatively due late next year, is planned for the first two floors Warfield Building at 988 Market St., with a lower-level speakeasy-style bar that will attach to the Warfield theater. Clark and his wife and business partner Gayle Pirie own Show Dogs in the same block, where over the last month they sold Prop D dogs in support of the measure. “We sold about 200 of them,” Pirie said. Turns out it takes more than Fatted Calf organic duck sausages with Dijon mustard and daikon sprouts to win an election.

Earlier: Show Dogs Debuts Political Hot Dog [Grub Street SF]

Prop D Loss Won’t Derail Foreign Cinema Spinoff