Street Art

As a country bumpkin who moved to New York City in my early twenties, there was no remedy for the overwhelming cacophony of noise that assaulted me on every street and underground, whether it was the piercing horns from cabs or the unbearable throttling clatter of the express trains roaring by me on the local tracks of the NYC subway system. Eight years later, when I left the big city for the more livable confines of Oakland and then San Francisco, I was just thrilled to hear the screaming banshees of Hades that emanate from BART's rails under the transbay tube. I don't know how you lifelong city folk can bear to listen to it without plugging your ears.

The San Francisco Great Streets Project is hosting an evening of music, drinks, food, and livable streets discussion tomorrow evening at the Mission District home of architect David Baker. The Art - Streets - Life event will include the grand opening of an Andrew Schoultz mural, and the unveiling of a new Great Streets Project presentation.

One of San Francisco's cherished literary icons -- poet, painter and City Lights publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti -- is celebrating his 90th birthday today, and I thought it would be fitting to bring you his vision for transforming a small block of Vallejo Street in historic North Beach into what would be called the Piazza Saint Francis. 

We walk on layers of history. In our neighborhoods, in our cities, there were once natural phenomena, like creeks, sand dunes, hills, and forests. Over time they were covered in farms, factories, houses, and most of all, streets. At first those streets were dirt, often thick and muddy. Around the middle of the 19th century they started to be used for railroads, both intercity, and local streetcar and cable car lines. Sometimes the shape of our 21st century streetscape is a ghost of those old train lines.

Jane Martin is a longtime resident of San Francisco's Mission District, a licensed architect, and an avid gardener. She is the founder of PlantSF, an informational website dedicated to reconfiguring the design and use of urban spaces, primarily sidewalks and to a lesser extent, residential streets. PlantSF started in 2004 after Martin had spent considerable effort establishing a sidewalk garden in front of her then-home on Shotwell between 17th and 18th Streets.