clarion alley
The sun is really setting on what once looked to be a really promising career as a drug dealing Lady Gaga. In the span of 9 months, Kreayshawn has gone from Oakland to international celebrity to doing banner ads for thrift stores online. She's basically the hipster Mr. T, only her rise and fall got condensed down to satisfy the attention span of the internet.
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Previously on Uptown Almanac
It seems that painters in Clarion Alley are finally growing tired of dealing with bombers vandalizing their murals. These two muralists, whos names I won't publish to protect their other works from retaliation, saw a mural they began painting yesterday irreparably destroyed last night.
"We had a sign over the mural saying it was in progress and to respect it, but someone threw up a giant piece over it anyway."
They've given up on painting in the alley and are in search of a new place that they can help establish a new mural project on, but they decided to leave the alley and its taggers with a parting gift before bouncing.
Previously on Uptown Almanac
Local photographer Bhautik Joshi caught up Chad Hasegawa painting his defining layer cake bear in Clarion Alley and shot him some questions about the process:
"If you don't mind me asking - how did you end up with wall space in Clarion Alley? Did you apply?"
"No way - they get in touch with you. It's awesome to get the chance to paint here - so many people come here to see this alley, is so busy."
"And how does it work? Do you get a commission?""Nah. Even if they offered something, I wouldn't take it - I'm just honored to be invited to paint here."
It seems like it was only yesterday that a graffiti heart over the freshly painted A Sunday Afternoon an Dolores Park sent the entire Mission community into a tailspin of despair and outrage. And rightly so: a bang-up mural celebrating everyone's favorite park was defaced. But it wasn't just that the specific mural was blemished, rather it was that a mural was damaged.
Now it seems like the norm is for SF murals get covered over with tags and pieces. Eine's series of alphabet murals along Mission Street were defaced within days by the same crew pictured above. A quick walk down Bartlett, Market, Divis, or one of the various other mural alleys around the Mission show the same thing. It almost seems antithetical to the core of what street art and graffiti represents: putting art out there, for free, for everyone to see and admire on their own accord. In a sense, there's now a crew of kids acting as a gallery owners, determining which murals the world gets to check out and which should be reused as a new canvass.
It's a bummer, really.
Previously on Uptown Almanac
I guess he has to do something with his time now that no one cares about him anymore.
Someone had to explain this tag to me the other day, because I generally need things explained to me. Apparently the popular children's television show Portlandia made the observation that people put birds on things to make everything more artistic. Perhaps this is true, although Mid-Market is full of pigeons and than place is a shit pit. Regardless, street artists have taken this concept and run wild on Clarion Alley's murals.
Previously on Uptown Almanac
I found myself admiring some guy's shoes when he walked over this statement: "NOT A TOURSIT ATTRACTION. AN ALLEY." Obviously duder fails to understand that the two are not mutually exclusive ("THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE. NOT A TOURIST ATTRACTION. A BRIDGE."). But let's ignore that for a hot minute, why does it matter if murals are a tourist attraction? Shouldn't people like murals? Plus, it's not like there are Segway tours rolling up down 24th and turning down Valencia... holy shit, I'm arguing with spraypaint.
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