"San Francisco hobby shops" Topic

I will be SF at the end of September. Are there any hobby shops selling plastic model kits or figures in 1/72 scale? My interests are WWII and Napoleonic. Thanks.

The last general purpose one in SF, The Hobby Company of San Francisco is closing this month. Old building due for earthquake retrofit and rising rent are the causes. There is a small hobby shop in Japan Center that may have some 1/72 stuff. Otherwise, you have to try sources in the Bay Area, not in SF itself.

Ace Hardware in Berkeley, take BART and walk down two blocks or so along Addison until you get to Milvia( corner location). They have a small hobby section there.

There are other hobby shops in San Mateo( Talbot's), San Jose/Santa Clara(Hobbytown), and San Leandro(Hobbies Unlimited- largest in the immediate Bay Area now).

Those are the ones I can think of right now. I may have missed one or two, but there aren't many hobby shops left out here.

I wasn't going to post because I didn't want to be a sourpuss, but I'll just ditto the previous post: your best bet in SF is to get out of SF. Can't talk about the reasons here, but there are reasons. Get out of SF in any direction except west and you'll find lots of shops, but in SF the pickings are slim.

This is the same in many cities: rent is too high for specialty shops. Hobbytown is great, though! My Oakland/Hayward friends and I would drive down there periodically.

Berkeley Hardware was where I got my start with Airfix and RoCo in the 60's. At one time the basement was 50% trains and 50% other hobbies. There were a number of trains running in the store year round.

Haven't been in in 20+ years…

Berkeley Ace Hardware is close to BART, too.

Thanks for the info. I am not sure if will have time to get out in the Bay Area but will keep those places in mind.