I chose to buy a home in San Francisco for a reason even though it was much more expensive than Pleasanton. I grew up in some of the greatest cities of Europe so I’m not fresh off the train from Fresno. Been around cities long enough to have the confidence to say when something is butt-ugly or tacky and as far as I’m concerned, most murals fall in this category. An urban environment in fact does not have to include cacophony. When it does, people tend to dislike it and not take care of it well (yes, look at Chinatown). Lots of visual stimulation, yes, always. Public art, yes, if it is not throwaway and harmonizes well with its surroundings. But trying to cover ugliness with even LOUDER visuals is the wrong approach.

I have a vision for this place too. For starters, remove the billiards sign and give the building a fresh paint job. The city has no money? Many places require the owners of vacant properties to maintain the buildings for a clean, non-deserted look. That to me includes NOT boarding up the property. I suppose there is no such law in SF or it’s unenforced, but to me requiring someone who owns a building in a community to keep it up to date seems common sense.

You are fully entitled to your opinion, and I get to disagree with it completely.

1. Aesthetics: I like trees and lanterns and the like too, but if that’s all you like, then Stepford-like Pleasanton is for you. San Francisco is urban, that means cacophonous visual stimulation, as well as natural beauty, as well as trees and lanterns and the like. Chinatown as governing aesthetic principle.

2. Humanism: a place that is only trees and lanterns is often the expression of one vision for that place, and its people are as serfs, expected to maintain it. The ‘cacophony’ is actually a beautiful expression of the personal and the individual, and courageously shared for public appreciation and scorn. Given the proliferation of graffitti, I think the mural is a more constructive canvas for this impulse.

3. Redevelopment: Mid-Market has enormous challenges, but inviting artists to make the most of its dregs is an important first step for rehabilitation. The alternative of the Big Plan (without that community engagement) threatens to aggravate community fault lines, as Japantown’s corporate construction did.

As for ‘Hollywood Billiards’ – it’s a reminder of what was once a thriving mid-Market community, where the pool halls were part of a lively mix of music, drink, and yes, grubby honky-tonk. In trying to find a way forward, inviting people to start to express their visions for a place is a great idea.

My personal reaction to murals is that when I look at them, they tend to add to the already huge cacophony of visual overstimulation. A lot of them have a certain cartoonish, infantile element to them.

The second from top picture above is very telling. No amount of murals will change that sorry, trist landscape, with the potholes, the neglected building finish, the anemic trees and of course the crowning achievement, the sign shouting “HOLLYWOOD BILLIARDS”. Classy. :-/

http://www.wondercafe.ca/paint_your_faith/blog