Eyes of the city

WEEK 13

It’s a funny thing to be a tourist at home. But quite common, right? We let so much pass by that others travel thousands of miles to experience and taste.

This week I’m on a mission to The Mission in San Francisco to learn about — and be in the presence of — our great mural art.

Two primary locations house the majority of the mural art – Clarion Alley and Balmy Alley. The murals in Balmy Alley started in the early 1970s with primarily female artists (!) … so I made this my first stop.

The Mission district, as most know, is the Latin cultural heart of the city, and exiting the 24^th Street and Mission BART station, I was greeted by a salsa band no less. I walked east and saw murals everywhere, so bright and colorful. How have I missed this? Everything was a canvas: garages, store fronts, wooden fences, building exteriors completely covered in paint.

I turned into Balmy Alley, a one-lane street paved with bricks down the middle, and was immediately struck by the fact that people live here among the art. Here and there were flowering trees and succulents, and while it wasn’t a beautiful street, it had power and presence. The art was a mish-mash of colors and styles and themes, but it all worked. I saw images of death, birth, love, immigration, civil unrest, police brutality, anarchy, religion, love. Some favorites:

I walked north on Harrison, a mostly residential street of Victorians, small houses and newer loft buildings, to 19^th Street where I had read about a block-long mural. It was super-impressive and tough to capture, but again had elements of whimsy and fantasy with giant acrobats and musicians, people of all colors, shapes and sizes, faces with wild eyes and green noses.

As I was making my way to Clarion Alley, my last stop, I found this mural at 19^th and Mission, which I later learned is of legendary guitarist Carlos Santana and was painted in 2014:

Clarion Alley, which cuts between Valencia and Mission, is more on the tourist circuit and indeed was filled with all types, ages, nationalities. It’s a newer expression of murals from the last 15-20 years, and the art here was more locally political focusing on themes like affordable housing, evictions, heroin addiction. And a new to me word “demoncracy” which the Urban Dictionary defines as “government by an evil ruing elite though with a façade of apparent democracy.”  

In all, I found the street art to be wonderfully human, painted in a real city on real walls by real people expressing their fears and desires and beliefs. Like all art, it asks you to stop, consider, question. To me, these murals are the eyes of the city, seeing us as we see through them.

END NOTE. I hit a speed bump this week (my thirteenth of the project). I found it difficult to motivate myself to pursue a new activity and make time for the experience. Each day I had an expectation that I would do one of several things I want to do on my San Francisco list … and each day got away from me. When I look back, it wasn’t any more profound than life happened: overnight to my mom’s and a favorite, lovely mountain hike with her new dachshund Slink; birthday dinner with my brother; time with friends; appointments; birthday dinner for my wife; work—both planned and unplanned; and any extra moments devoted to Burning Man prep (more on that in a future post). All good in fact. I put this observation out there as a reminder of the discipline and stamina needed to overcome the push/pull that inspired this project in the first place.