Safeway is a huge chain of supermarkets with stores mainly in the Western United States and Canada, with a few regional chains in other parts of the US. It has a number of locations in San Francisco. The Castro Safeway (at Church and Market) is the gayest of the lot, and the Marina Safeway (near Fort Mason) is said to be a straight pickup spot.

Their virtues: huge parking lots and open 24 hours for those late-night shopping requirements.

Their vices: huge parking lots and produce that has too often failed to satisfy.

Some locations are not 24 hours.

The quality of each Safeway store varies. Sometimes homeless people do hang around the stores and cause problems. They have been seen reaching into open bags of French bread and squeezing the loaves. Also, a homeless woman was once seen taking a sip from the ladle of the self-serve soups.

Some stores provide a container of disinfecting wipes out front for cleaning the handlebars shopping carts. (After all, you often do not know whether the cart has been used by homeless people and then returned to the supermarket.) You can also disinfect your hand-held shopping basket as well.

The architecture of the Marina Safeway is of note to many supermarket enthusiasts. This Marina design features an all-glass front and a soaring, curved roof. This open and spacious design allows natural sunlight into the stores. Safeway used this design on stores throughout the '60s, however many of them were demolished to build larger box-like supermarkets. Others had their signature front windows covered with a false facade such as the Market Street location. Only a small number of classic Marina-style stores survive to this day.

Safeway is currently remodeling their stores into the new Lifestyle format which features warm colors, upscale subdued lighting, enhanced selections of organic and freshly prepared foods, olive bars, fresh artisan bread, and wood floors. Examples of this type of store are located at 2300 16th St. and 735 7th Ave. This Lifestyle format was introduced so Safeway could compete with other stores such as Whole Foods that offer gourmet organic selections.

Mission Safeway