West Portal's Halloween Stroll Passes Old Landmarks Wearing New Names This Year

The West Portal Merchants Association's free Halloween Stroll returns this Saturday, October 31, from 4 to 7 p.m. along West Portal Avenue. The costume contest starts at 5 p.m. at BookShop West Portal, 80 West Portal Ave., and merchants will judge kids, adults and pets in separate categories, according to the association's events page.

Trick-or-treating on the avenue is a familiar ritual. What's new is the route. Several doors on that stretch belong to different businesses than they did at this time last year. Two old institutions were replaced by newcomers that kept the same scale and pointed back to what came before. A third is set to be replaced by something far bigger. The contest at No. 80 takes place across the street from that third one.

Four addresses, then and now

The order matters. The first two rows are replacements of the same size. The last row is a change of scale. The stroll covers all of it in three hours.

Start at the horseshoe, which is calmer than it was

Families heading to the avenue from the Muni station will find the station area noticeably different from a couple of years ago. SFMTA's West Portal Station Safety and Community Space Improvements are now listed as complete. The quick-build work ran from fall 2024 through fall 2025, followed by an evaluation period in early-to-mid 2026, according to the agency's project page. The package added intersection turn restrictions, a red transit lane, planters and bikeshare near the station, murals and decorative crosswalks, and traffic calming on nearby streets.

In its July 20, 2026 evaluation, SFMTA reported that injury crashes fell 60% and illegal U-turns outside the station fell 75% compared with before the changes. Those are good numbers for an evening when small children in costumes will be crossing near the portal.

The work isn't permanent. SFMTA says the quick-build materials are designed to last three to five years and that it is looking for grant funding to replace them with permanent materials. The horseshoe follows the same pattern as the rest of the avenue this year: a provisional fix that works, waiting on a longer-term decision.

Two doors that kept their memory

The first storefront past the station is the clearest example of a small-scale handoff. Squat & Gobble announced it would close after 32 years, with Sunday, January 25 as its last day, the Ingleside Light reported. The space went to Wipada Rattanapun and Arkaranit Dusitnitsakul, the owners of Khao Tiew, who planned an Asian-influenced brunch restaurant called Tur, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The Standard reported that Tur opened at 1 West Portal Ave. on May 13.

The space went from one breakfast-and-lunch operation to another. What changed is the menu, which runs to seven versions of Thai-style jook, honey-walnut shrimp with waffles, confit duck with eggs, a tonkatsu sandwich, Caribbean squid-ink pasta and passion-fruit mango sticky-rice French toast. Eater SF put Tur in its September 2026 guide to new restaurants.

One timing note for Saturday: as of late May, Tur's hours were 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Wednesday through Monday, closed Tuesdays. If those hours still hold, brunch there comes well before the stroll begins. Check with the restaurant before you plan around it.

At 32 West Portal, the nod to the past is right in the name. Papenhausen Hardware closed in 2024 after 88 years. The space is now Hardware Coffee Co., which opened in May 2026. Owner Sam Pederson told the Chronicle that the name honors Papenhausen and that he wants the café to offer what a good local hardware store did: "high quality, solid offerings, reliability and being part of the community." Pederson's immediate family funded the café, with no outside investors, and artist Sandra Bautista of Dasluz runs the flower shop inside. Beyond coffee and flowers, the business serves food, beer and wine, sells some retail and rents out space for private events.

In the April announcement, the Chronicle said the café planned to open 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, with coffee from Oakland's Grand Coffee Roasters. The same article listed George's Donuts & Merriment, Ballast Coffee, Starbucks and Peet's as nearby competitors on the avenue. Pederson said he considers all those other merchants a good thing for the street.

At both addresses, a long-running business closed and a newcomer of similar size moved into the same room. Each one points back to what came before, Hardware Coffee through its name and Tur through its daytime-dining format. That's how the avenue has usually handled turnover. The next address is different.

The costume contest faces the Empire

BookShop West Portal has been at No. 80 for about 20 years. The Empire Theater sits across the street at No. 85, closed since early in the pandemic. Earlier this year, the plan for the Empire was a nine-story building with 64 apartments. In early September, the plan grew to 12 stories and 172 units, with 7,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, The Standard reported. The plan also covers the neighboring building, which The Standard described as home at the time to Supercuts and Goodwill. That is almost three times the units in a single project, on a street the Chronicle described in April as having "one of the only vacant buildings in the corridor."

Anna Bullard, BookShop's owner and a board member of the merchants association, told The Standard that the main feeling among business owners she has talked to is anxiety. Her concerns were construction traffic in the short term and parking and the street's low-rise character over the long term, even with the possibility of hundreds of new customers.

Jesse Appleton owns the Empire building and the property next to it. He told The Standard that the project team understands the challenges of construction and will work closely with merchants. The project's own website makes a general commitment to work with merchants and neighbors to reduce impacts and keep the street accessible. It does not list specific measures.

The project site says the plan combines San Francisco's Family Zoning with three state laws: SB 423, SB 330 and the State Density Bonus. It lists completeness review and tribal consultation as steps still to come. Where the application stands is still unsettled. In an August 31 Chronicle report, the development team said it had submitted a revised application. In the same story, the Planning Department's chief of staff said the city had received nothing beyond the January filing.

For now, the marquee across from the costume contest is still the one that went dark early in the pandemic.

After the candy runs out

Three items are still open after Saturday. As of this week, the merchants association has not posted a November event on its calendar. SFMTA's search for money to make the horseshoe changes permanent has no announced outcome. And at 85 West Portal, the project site still lists the application-completeness review as a step ahead.

Until then, the avenue's newest businesses are the two that kept their buildings, their scale and some of their history. The costume contest starts at 5 p.m. at No. 80, and the stroll ends at 7.

If you've owned on or near West Portal Avenue for years and want to talk through what changes like these mean for your own plans, The Golden Gate Group would be glad to hear from you. Schedule a 15‑minute consultation, and we'll start with what you're seeing on the avenue.