Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! announced Tuesday that it will close its San Francisco museum by the end of the year, ending nearly six decades at Fisherman’s Wharf.
The company did not set a specific closing date, nor did it point to a single cause for the shutdown.
“It really wasn’t one single challenge or event that led to the decision,” Suzanne Smagala-Potts, a Ripley’s spokesperson, told SFGATE. “After nearly 60 years at this location, we took a broader look at the attraction, the changing landscape of Fisherman’s Wharf and what makes sense for Ripley’s moving forward. Ultimately, we decided the time was right to close this location.”
The museum first opened at the site in 1967 and grew to hold more than 400 artifacts alongside a 2,000-square-foot mirror maze. Ripley’s operates as a global chain built around collecting strange and rare oddities.
Founder Robert Ripley, a California native, once worked for the San Francisco Bulletin. Ripley’s also exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island in 1939 and 1940, giving the company a decades-long tie to the city that predates the Fisherman’s Wharf location itself.
Ahead of the closure, Ripley’s plans to sell off items connected to San Francisco, including a Golden Gate Bridge sculpture crafted on the head of a pin, toothpick renderings of the bridge made by a local artist, crutches once belonging to former San Francisco Giants star Joe DiMaggio, and a chicken-wire portrait of Janis Joplin, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Ripley’s President Jim Pattison Jr. left open the possibility of a future return to the city.
“While we’re saying goodbye to this location, we’re not necessarily saying goodbye to San Francisco,” Pattison said. “With Ripley’s, you never know. We might just be back!”
A Waterfront in Decline
Ripley’s departure adds to a string of closures along Fisherman’s Wharf, once one of San Francisco’s top tourist draws. The neighborhood’s Cartoon Art Museum shut its doors in August after failing to recover from pandemic-era losses, and several longtime restaurants in the area have also closed in recent years.
The Port of San Francisco has responded with the Fisherman’s Wharf Forward program, an effort to revitalize the district through upgraded public spaces and infrastructure meant to guard against earthquakes and rising sea levels.
Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! still operates two other West Coast locations, on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles and in Newport, Oregon.
