Remember the Duboce Park BART Station?

Here’s a trip down memory lane: Recognize this BART station? Yes, that’s Duboce Park providing the greenery behind the station, but what gives?

@McClure_SF on Twitter posted this photo of a BART station built some time in 2005 for a Will Smith film.

It’s the film that brings all copyeditors to tears: Will Smith’s The Pursuit of Happyness. According to BART, the film crew constructed the fake façade in Duboce Park because “there is one scene where Will Smith’s character jumps out of a cab and runs down a BART stair way into a supposed underground station in the Presidio.” Hmm. I guess dashing out of a cab and running right to the Duboce Park Muni shelter just doesn’t have the same dramatic effect.

From BART.gov‘s archives:

The film crews for The Pursuit of Happyness spent 17 days shooting on BART property. All of the scenes except the bathroom scene were at BART stations or on trains. The bathroom scene was shot on a sound stage in Alameda. It was quite the production. All the scenes were shot between October 1, 2005, and November 20, 2005, at the 12th St./Oakland City Center, 19th Street, Powell and Balboa Park stations. Because the movie was set in the early 80’s, the production crew paid to change all the advertisements during the shoot days to ads that were around in the 80’s. You’ll notice the system maps were also changed. We even brought back the old uniforms our station personnel used to wear.

The film also features Glide Memorial Church and the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange. And you can still find the same Chinatown barbershop in the film on Ross Alley.

A couple of other movies that feature our public transit:
40 Days and 40 Nights
Casualty of War
aaaaand … Batman!

Top photo by Abir Majumdar