San Francisco Street Art

BY MARLOWE BJORKLUND

Growing up in San Francisco, street art was something that I never valued. It was a given element of growing up in the city. Like taxes, overpriced coffee, and death, street art was to be expected. It was in the parks we went to, murals dripping with spray paint next to intricate mosaics. Neither one is more prestigious in my mind than the other. Children are taught taste; it’s developed over time and through exposure, and I was exposed to street art so often that it felt almost obvious. There were aspects of growing up in the city that I did not appreciate because it was simply the way things were. I felt that I was growing up in a cultural hub, in a centre of art, of culture, in a place that was important. It didn’t occur to me that this was not a universal experience. Of course, I knew some people were out there on farms in rural Arkansas. It just did not clock to me that these regions were less “culturally impactful” in whatever sense than the birthplace of the Black Panthers, where counterculture was essential to culture-culture, where technology blossomed, and access to the wider world wasn’t a question. So much of San Francisco, to me, was a given.

Then I moved.

Now, understand, I moved to Paris. So, it wasn’t exactly a step-down, and I had similar feelings in a different context. I was still in a cultural hotspot. I still felt as though the world was spinning around me, and not that I was spinning with the world. History ran rampant, and the energy of the City of Lights buzzed throughout me.

When I moved back to the Bay Area, its unique nature still did not register. Only in the post-pandemic reality of a hard-hit San Francisco still, in the midst of rebuilding have I realised how special the city is. As life throughout the city died down, with expenses being insurmountable sans tourists and general revenue in the Covid-19 Shutdown, lots of people just upped and moved. I was among them. My family took off to Sonoma, a town in wine country about an hour away from the, now gone, hubbub of the Bay. The last adventure I had in the City? A week’s worth of touring different neighbourhoods of the Bay to understand and engage with our unique local history. Among these was a tour of the murals and street art of the famed Mission District.

The Missions are another thing I was shocked that not everyone knew about, but of course, history unique to my region was - shockingly - unique to my region. The Mission District, which grew around Mission Dolores (also known as Mission San Francisco de Asís), is one of the missions built by Junípero Serra and is the oldest structure in the City, with the adobe chapel being from 1776. It is also one of the liveliest neighbourhoods of San Francisco. It is largely a Hispanic neighbourhood and hotbed for Chicano culture in the Bay, with one important aspect of the neighbourhood being, for around a century, murals and street art.

One of San Francisco’s many pieces of artistic pride was the mural by Diego Rivera, which was displayed at the SFMOMA from June 28, 2021 until January 21, 2024 (SF MOMA). Rivera first painted murals in San Francisco, and was important to the artist (SF MOMA). Murals retained their cultural clout in the city. They are pieces to engage with locals, murals are accessible art, they are open to the public, and unlike the treasures in the Museum of Legion of Honour, or the deYoung, or the SF MOMA, or another one of San Francisco’s myriad museums, murals are part of the daily fabric of living in the Bay.

Counter-culture is native to the Bay Area. Fighting for cultural equality seems natural, and it’s been a reverse culture shock coming from such an open-minded, and to me, welcoming environment, to meeting people who do not individually engage with the cultural revolutions of our day and age. Meeting people whose opinions date them over forty years despite being twenty years old has taught me how socially advanced certain (not all!) aspects of being from San Francisco have made me. Being from San Francisco there is a feeling that anyone can engage in culture. Anyone can have a valid idea, something interesting to say, or a position worth understanding or debating. In discussions with my peers in History, Art History, English, or other typical liberal arts degrees, a consistent issue arose for them. Their stances are often not engaged with, and the ideas discussed in class don’t bring the topic of intellectual engagement into the modern context. This was a shock. Not only because you’d, or at least I expected, that such a historic and prestigious school would be on the cutting edge of discourse, but also because what is the point of engaging in discourse if it is not also brought in the modern context? In every San Francisco classroom I have sat in, there was never a discussion in English, History, or Philosophy classes where modern politics, ideologies, and principles were not brought to the forum. The Bay Area, to me, is a place where the past and the present collide such that the understanding of now is inherently connected to where we have been. Despite the shaky roots we have along our San Andreas fault, our roots run deep. The culture of the city feels like a debate. It is a series of: Why? How? Since when? For how long? To what end? Who? It is questions building on questions at a table where not all voices can be heard, and having left the context of the Bay; I realised how many more voices I heard then rather than what I hear now. How were these voices so universally heard? Well, look back to the title of the article. San Francisco Street Art.

There is a “subversive” nature to the art form. It is not done in the sometimes clean, often idealised, occasionally glamourised loft apartments of New York, nor the old Marais buildings of Paris. It is not glorified like how art was done in Salon culture, but because of its evocative nature, it can represent the unique issues of a neighbourhood, culture, and people, such that you witness the developments and fights of a neighbourhood in your area.

For instance, the “No Justice No Peace” display from 1993 following Rodney King’s assault, where people were engaging with questions about police accountability, authority, and the meaning of the system. A fight I am sure you all know did not start nor end with his attack from the police.

Part of street art is the regional association with specific styles. This is similar to unique music cultures and style cultures embedded in the regions they originate in. The Bay Area has, for decades, developed and fostered a unique community of street artists, and the culture of street art and muralists has long been connected to activism and community engagement. In the Mission, Chicano culture has inspired generations of artists and art activists to engage with topics like Mexican American empowerment across ideologies, land reclamation, labour rights, education reform, cultural identity since around the 1960s. The culture of street art has been important in the Bay from the 1940s into the 2000s new generations followed into the paths of the artists of the previous decades (Arnold).

Street art, graffiti, and murals are woven into the fabric of the city, and specifically the Mission. The 1930s saw the Works Progress Administration (WPA) fund community beautification, helping to fund Rivera’s work and foster a muralist culture in the city (Medium). Foster it did, and the city has continued to be expressive in the art that decorates random walls, garages, parks, and tunnels. It builds a community-wide understanding of the qualms of fellow community members while allowing for bold expression. It creates a “safe space” for frustrations and ideas to grow betwixt members of a community. It builds rhetoric and understanding, and it shows that you live in a city that itself is alive. It makes the environment one that flows and is not stagnant with time. Many murals depict the culture of the neighbourhood, and the fights that the people in the neighbourhood find to be of value. This is something that being in St Andrews, I feel lacking. While there is life in St Andrews, more than I myself can begin to understand, I have always felt there is a degree of disengagement and disconnection throughout. The town has accomplished enough self-realisation to understand it is a bubble, and still, we can burst it. We can push through, and we can critically engage through art.

San Francisco’s Street Art is lifeblood. It is essential. It is engagement. It is discourse. It is art. It is expression. It is cool. Plain and simple. It rocks. I think we all would benefit from some of that zhuzh. Live in a way that you are connected. Build an environment where the people surrounding you are engaged. Are alive. Are focused and driven. San Francisco’s street art is a lesson in the art of the living. It shows the city, the people therein, and the world that we are there, here, and everywhere. It says be alive. It says make your mark. So go. Mark your mark. Maybe paint a wall and discover the art-activist hiding within. Perhaps it’s a poem. Theatre? Dance? Maybe a mural, take it from the greats. They aren’t all hiding in hallowed halls we get into graced by student discounts and free days. Sometimes they’re hiding down the alley by the bodega.

ST.ART Magazine does not own the rights to any image used in this article

Bibliography:

Arnold, E. (2023) ‘Tax Dollars Kill’: Spie One’s Decades of Bay Area Graffiti Activism. KQED. https://www.kqed.org/arts/13926619/spie-one-tdk-bay-area-graffiti-history-hip-hop. 

Charnock, M. (2018). The coolest, Instagram-worthy murals in San Francisco. TimeOut. https://www.timeout.com/san-francisco/things-to-do/best-murals-in-san-francisco 

Dottie. (2024). The Best Street Art in San Francisco: Mission District Art Walk. Dots on a Map. https://www.dotsonamap.net/san-francisco-street-art/

Jiménen, M. (2010). “We Want Our Mural Back.” Mission Local. https://missionlocal.org/2010/05/we-want-our-mural-back/. 

Loeffler, J. (2022). San Francisco Murals: 12 Places to Find the Most Colorful Pieces. SF Tourism Tips. https://www.sftourismtips.com/san-francisco-murals.html

Nelson, S. (2014). Street Art in San Francisco’s Mission District. Medium. https://medium.com/@shastanelson/street-art-in-san-franciscos-mission-district-b583b489d70a 

The Guide to San Francisco’s Mission District Murals. (2024). SF Travel. https://www.sftravel.com/article/guide-to-san-francisco%E2%80%99s-mission-district-murals