Blog

There are several street art alleys in the Mission District. Each alley came about for similar reasons – to take back the alleys and return them to the people for their enjoyment. Lilac Alley by Mission and 24th Street is one of them organized by Mission Art 415.
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All cities have utility and news boxes on sidewalks scattered around town. They vary in size, shape, number and ownership. Frequently they are painted different colors depending upon who owns them. They make good targets for tagging, stickers and paste ups. Every city tackles the graffiti situation according to the scale of the problem within their community. The solutions can be applied citywide or by neighborhood and or ownership and be reactive or proactive, generated by owner, government, neighborhood and business associations, art organizations and even individuals.

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Paris based Polish artist Yola was in San Francisco September 2012 pasting up art around the Mission. While here she met Alfonso and Eleanor. He was a poet and a revolutionary, she an ex-nurse, studying genetics for fun. Eleanor passed away in May this year and Alfonso in December 2014. They cared about each other very deeply till the end. This paste-up is a celebration of their lives and love.

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It was a spontaneous decision to visit Istanbul. I was sitting in a Hong Kong cafe with local tattoo artist Ross Dixon Turpin (co owner of Star Crossed Tattoo), he had been putting me up in Hong Kong for the last few nights. We were talking about potential countries to do street art in. Very enthusiastically, he said that I need to pay Istanbul a visit. He had traveled there recently with his wife and told me that this city is pretty much free reign for getting up. A few days later I was sitting in an airport bar in Seoul, South Korea with an Australian couple that had just traveled to Istanbul. They told me how alive the people are there, they spoke of its deep culture and busy streets with great excitement. They seemed regretful to be going back home. Days after this I found myself watching live Turkish music in San Francisco’s Revolution Cafe. The music was loud, fast paced and full of life, the women in the band were of Turkish decent and beautiful. I knew after these three experiences, it was time to book a ticket.

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BottleRock just took place this past week-end in Napa. We visited the festival grounds as final preparations were taking place to specifically see the art and were pleasantly surprised to find the artful presentations of the wine tents that dotted the grounds. This festival is truly a sensory event appealing to the five senses. The promenades were lined with food booths showcasing food prepared by Napa restaurants. There were several musical and culinary stages.

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The forecast read: Chance of Rain… bullshit! It rained for 10 of the 12 days I spent in Tokyo. The odds did not favor me: I was still nursing a fractured foot and endowed with very little knowledge of the Japanese language. By all accounts this trip should not have happened. Just arriving in Tokyo was a chore, as a vicious Tropical Storm rolled through the Pacific and threatened to strand me in Manila for an extra week. To say nothing of the overzealous customs agents at Narita who turned my luggage upside down looking for contraband. No drugs, just slaps! (more…)

San Francisco has managed to be on the cutting edge of experimenting with new ideas. As we all know many of those ideas are high tech and percolated by budding entrepreneurs resulting in apps and technical products. During this plethora of ideas, a low tech idea was spawn, germinated and coined “parklet”. Five years ago the first parklet was created in San Francisco. Their count around the city has since paralleled the tech boom.

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Oakland has been undergoing a transformation caused by an overflow of displaced San Francisco residents and Bay Area newbies who are settling here during the current gold rush. This is not the first time San Francisco residents have settled en masse in Oakland. In 1906 the population of Oakland nearly doubled with the influx of San Franciscans who became homeless due to the earthquake, settling primarily in West Oakland. We wonder what the locals were saying then as the present day occupants are confronting increasing property values and rent that is changing the culture of their neighborhoods.

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Imagery Estate Winery is an artisan winery with an artful presentation that imbues it’s entire process from vine to bottle to the final presentation at their winery in Glen Ellen in the Sonoma Valley. Only a 60 minute drive from San Francisco, it has enough to offer to enjoy a leisure afternoon of wine, art and fun in the sun playing bocce and horseshoes while savoring a bottle of wine with your picnic lunch.

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The creative juices are flowing in Oakland. A new glass blowing studio recently opened in West Oakland that is focused on fabricating water pipes, glass pendants and other smaller custom hand crafted glass pieces in a very creative environment.

Earlier this year Richard, the owner and founder of Acala Studios acquired space in a corrugated metal slump block building with a drab grey cavernous interior. He wanted to transform it into a unique workspace with art that would play an integral part in setting the tone and atmosphere of the studio.

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Street Art Throwdown is a reality show that began airing last month on February 3rd on Cable TV. It pits 10 artists against each other in various timed challenges with assigned themes under different physical and environmental conditions that street artists typically encounter doing legal and illegal art. The show is being filmed in the greater Los Angeles over an eight week period with a contestant eliminated every week. The winner takes home $100,000.

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With all the dry warm weather, it already feels like Spring in the wine country. Now is the perfect time to visit Napa and Sonoma to enjoy the blossoms and watch the vines bud without the summer crowds. This coming week-end is especially ideal to visit Jamieson Ranch Winery. Amanda Lynn and Lady Mags will be there for a Saturday midday reception for the exhibit of their show SubmergeD. There is also the added draw of the permanent installation of their impressive murals by emerging and graffiti artists.

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