When even a once-popular pizzeria can't make a go of it on Valencia Street, you know things must be slumping on the once-buzzy corridor, as we hear of yet another end-of-year closure.

Yellow Moto Pizzeria is closing next week at 18th and Valencia streets, after two and a half years operating under that name — and five years after the space opened as the first Flour + Water Pizzeria. It had spun off as its own independent spot and rebranded in 2022 amid an ownership split at Flour + Water Hospitality Group, with one of the original Flour + Water partners, David White, taking this pizzeria as his own in the deal.

As White and the team say in an Instagram post announcing the December 7 closure, "We have done our absolute best to make it work but have not been able to overcome the significant headwinds of the last few years."

They add, "We love our neighborhood, and we believe in it, and we know that eventually it will come back. We wish everyone in our wonderful community the very best as you navigate the ongoing path to recovery."

White previously spoke to the Chronicle about Yellow Moto's financial woes, blaming depressed foot traffic on Valencia and the negative impacts of that controversial center bike lane, which reduced parking on the street. A post-pandemic slump in the Mission District was certainly to blame as well, and White suggested that he'd had several consecutive seasons of slow business.

White said that, essentially, "summer never happened" for the neighborhood in 2023. "I had a bad winter last year, but on six days of operating in the winter I made the same revenues as I did on seven days of operating this summer. And, it coincided with the bike lanes," White told the Chronicle.

This location at the prime corner of 18th and Valencia first became a restaurant a decade ago as the pizzeria offshoot of Farina, the now defunct, high-end Italian restaurant up the block (now the home of Good Good Culture Club). It folded a few months after Farina did in 2017 amid some major financial troubles — unpaid taxes and lots of debt were reported, and the pizzeria ultimately was evicted by US marshals — and it was scooped up by the Flour + Water group, which has since relocated its flagship pizzeria to North Beach.

Flour + Water Hospitality Group also has expansion ambitions, with a second, takeout-focused location that was already announced at Mission Rock, and I'd be curious to see if they weren't interested in reclaiming this spot.

While the Valencia corridor may have seen more exciting days in years' past, it remains a significant hub of restaurants and cocktail bars, with places like The Beehive, Barberio Osteria, Taishoken, Fort Point, Puerto Allegre, and Tacolicious all remaining big draws within just a few blocks.

There have been some significant losses over the years — Bar Tartine, Hawker Fare — and last fall saw the closure of West of Pecos, but that space at 550 Valencia has since been reoccupied by Indian restaurant Apna Chulha.

There was some good news, though, for 2025, which is the return of The Slanted Door to its original space at 584 Valencia Street. The James Beard Award-winning Vietnamese restaurant had its humble beginnings in the bi-level space back in the 90s, and chef Charles Phan, perhaps seeing that the expense-account hordes weren't flocking back to the Financial District anytime too soon, decided not to reopen in his much larger digs at the Ferry Building, opting to go back to his roots in the Mission and the building he still owns there.

Photo via Instagram