Place Dirty Harry Shot People Slated for Development as Luxury Hotel

Fair enough: The headline "Place where Dirty Harry shot people slated to become luxury development" could probably be deployed every day. Dirty Harry shot a lot of people and this city doesn't know its limitations when it comes to luxury development.

But, in an ongoing sign of San Francisco's transformation from what it was to what it is, the diner where Clint Eastwood's gun-toting cop first uttered the phrase "Go ahead. Make my day" before perforating half a dozen or so robbers -- now a McDonald's -- is slated to give way to a 10-story SoMa luxury hotel.

Back when Sudden Impact came out in 1983, Third and Townsend was a gritty realm of poverty, warehouses, and misbegotten, never-to-be-completed freeways.

AT&T Park was decades from even being a dream. SoMa, in fact, had plenty of nothing; that's why it served so ably as a repository of Dirty Harry Callahan shootouts and chases.