“SFPD officers and private security guards stand at intervals, patrolling the perimeter of the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. Sidewalks on two sides of the venue are inaccessible to pedestrians,” Andrew Dudley reports for Hoodline. “Enormous power generators are stationed on the Larkin Street side of the building, occupying a lane of parking spots. And all anyone will say publicly is that the building will be closed for a ‘private event’ for the better part of a month.”
“What exactly is going on here?” Dudley wonders. “One security guard we chatted with yesterday would only say that the venue will be closed until September 13th for a private event. “Applications filed with the Planning Department chalk the activity up to a ‘trade show’ which will purportedly run from Sept. 4th until the 10th. Yet not only do those dates span the Labor Day holiday, which would be unusual for a trade show, but we could find no other evidence of a trade show, conference, convention, or other event planned for the venue during those dates.”
“There’s one more clue in the Planning Department documents,” Dudley reports. “Four windows on the Grove Street side of the building will be removed to make way for a 15-foot-tall fiberboard logo, which will hang on the exterior of the building, and may be very oddly shaped.”
Read more in the full article here.
Anh Le, in a leter to Beyond Chron writes, “I initially thought that this entourage of police and security guards was for a movie filming project. I hear that it would be for a 3-days truck unloading job at the Auditorium, and that Apple will hold an event there to introduce a new product.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium has a maximum capacity of 7,000. The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where Apple has launched many new products (most recently the revolutionary 12-inch MacBook along with Apple Watch pricing and launch dates), has a maximum seating capacity of 757.