I’ll admit, I didn’t quite get it at first. Back in 2010, when Instagram was in its infancy and we were all Valencia-filtering photos of latte art to hell, I was working at Macy’s in Union Square. For a brief period of time, you could find me on the third floor in a department named “Impulse,” doing a poor job of opening credit card accounts and selling wacky Marc by Marc Jacobs wares (RIP Marc by Marc.)

A co-worker approached me one day, her voice low, tone conspiratorial. “Have you SEEN it?” she asked. I’m not sure how I replied, but my face must have signaled my level of confusion. I wasn’t sure if she was implying that IT was spectacular or spectacularly disgusting. “Really, how big of a deal can it be?” I thought to myself.

I was so wrong.

The bathroom at Macy’s in San Francisco, May 9, 2004.

And now, with the future of the Macy’s building in limbo, San Francisco is losing this hidden gem — no, it’s not a speakeasy or a tiny Michelin-starred restaurant. It’s a restroom. But not just any restroom: We’re saying goodbye to the gilded wonder on the sixth floor of Macy’s Union Square, one of the last remnants of the legendary I. Magnin department store.

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Anyone who has ever been there knows that the sixth-floor restroom wasn’t just a bathroom: It was a portal to another world, a sort of Narnia. You could find this time capsule of elegance past unassuming rows of mattresses, bedding and towels, at the end of a fluorescent-lit hallway.

Pushing the door open, you stepped into a green........

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