Where the Wild Things Were
Like the dodo, the passenger pigeon, and other animals of very little brainpower the Wild Things are no more. For you see, dear children, there once was a playground of Wild Things at a Sony complex in San Francisco. Once they roamed free and easy. Now it is gone and only the photos remain.
Check out this old-timey internet posting from back in the day, showing shots of the place in question. Be warned that it does have a tendency to play The Entertainer when you arrive on the site, so mute everything you can, please. For a quieter picture, look here.
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Here’s what Wilson Swain had to say about it:
"The playground was pretty awesome, but finding photos has proven a challenge–I’ve looked, even for my own reference. There are a couple of images here (of the Night Kitchen restaurant, and the entrance to the gift area, as well as one shot of the actual indoor playground). The sculptures were full scale and fiberglass–durable but not as permanent as cast Iron, so I’m not sure if that matches your statue criteria or not. If you find better pictures, I’d love to see them. I so regret not going with a camera–the structure really was an object of beauty. The same facility also had a themed adventure based on ‘The way things work’–it had already closed by the time I got there."
Does anyone remember this place? If so, do you have any memories you’d care to share?
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About Betsy Bird
Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Kirkus, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on BlueSky at: @fuse8.bsky.social
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This place was so AWESOME! I remember going there, and you could walk through the Wild Things kingdom, like in the forest. It was like walking through a book! So sad to see it go away, does anyone know why?
The entire Metreon was a big disappointment, just a bunch of SONY Playstations and a reason to sell stuff SONY, but this exhibit made up for it. I remember the exhibit costing seven dollars to enter and I was originally expecting it to be totally cheesy, but it ended up blowing my mind. On top of all that Chronicle Books had a store on the ground level and they were selling these awesome jackets designed by J Otto Seibold. Last time I checked (about a year ago) the space wasn’t being used for anything.
We live just south of SF, and I never dreamed those Wild Things would just disappear…we saw it only from afar. Had I but known, I would’ve taken dozens of photos and bought the fuzzy wild thing slippers. Dan is right: the rest of the Metreon (sans Chronicle stuff, which was always worthwhile) was a head-scratching disappointment.
There was a row of telescopes on the upper level — most of them were normal, but when you looked through one particular telescope, what you saw was your own butt. (It was a video feed from a camera hidden behind you.) Genius!
(Sony sold the Metreon to Westfield. The top level is going to be a Tavern On The Green restaurant.)