What’s the deal? Get it prettier at least.
22 Responses to “Tagging the Bejesus out of the Dolores Park Bathroom Building”
Allan Hough (7858)
Brittany Janis & Katie Cruz (104)
Authors
What’s the deal? Get it prettier at least.
Allan Hough (7858)Brittany Janis & Katie Cruz (104)
here’s the thing i dont get.
what’s the difference between this (which i am guessing no one will lurch in to defend as “street art”)…
and “hipster batman” (which is apparently some hallowed example of all that is sacred about the mission)…
other than an individual’s sense of aesthetics and / or humor and / or irony?
pretty fine line in my view.
Fine for sure. But, I’m just saying, if you’re gonna bomb as prime a piece of real estate as the Dolores Park bathroom building, a canvas hundreds upon hundreds of people lounge in front of every single day, make it count.
oh, and this isn’t news, btw. massive tagging of that particular building happens all the time…and almost 100% consistently on holiday weekends.
they had to cut the shit out of the 2 bougainvillea – trimmed from over 10 feet tall to 2 feet – on the east side of the building so they could easily paint over the “street art”.
i’m trying to get a mural project going for that building, but it’s city owned, so the red tape is fairly significant.
Dude, what do you need? We’ll mobilize.
but dude that’s my EXACT point…who’s to say what “counts”?
the kids that wrote this think it DOES count.
it’s 2 completely different cultures. “hipster batman” is probably a 20-something white kid from a middle class educated background, probably a transplant. the people who wrote this are probably latino teenagers, probably poor, probably grew up in the mission.
so what’s the difference? perspective i guess. and point of view.
i just think looking at “hipster batman” as “counting” because it ascribes to your own frame of reference and the picture as “not counting” because it doesn’t, well…i don’t get it.
i dont know what i need. i think just time to wade through the red tape. and funds, most likely.
unfortunately, getting a mural on a public building is apparently pretty difficult. applications & committees and approvals and whatnot.
looking into some potential shortcuts. will keep you posted.
I know. I’m just saying, WRITERS: PLEASE ASCRIBE TO MY FRAME OF REFERENCE.
REALLY what i’d like to do is have the building as a rotating canvas…2 month shots at street art by a particular person or crew, then paint it white…then another 2 months, someone else. how cool would THAT be? we could even let MS13 have their 2 months.
there’s any number of walls that could serve this purpose.
the wall on the Beauty Bar.
The wall across 19th from there (the furniture store). Actually MEDA is looking at buying that building, and a mural is part of their plan. i made friends with the director there…nice guy.
the building south of Mission Pool.
the side of Farina.
All sounds good. Do keep us posted.
So what’s the process like for private buildings? If I’m a property owner I have to paint over tags, but would it be possible to have a graffiti wall on one’s building?
You just need to add a big “SUCKS” beneath crappy tags like in that Rudy Guiliani SNL skit. (God *knows* enough people have stencils here in the Mission…)
Regardless of your background, you can at least do a) clever or b) well-executed, not some sloppy shit like the DPBB above…
There’s a tag on the empty billboard above the Kragen on Valencia near Cesar Chavez that is just stunning. I’ll take a picture tomorrow if it’s still there – the colors are just phenomenal.
first, you could probably call Precita Eyes, who are the people behind many of the murals on buildings in the mission…they can likely give you a lot of info.
far as technicalities and bureaucracy, for private buildings there’s a permit process (Building Department) and a planning process (Planning Department). it’s the planning that can take a while. these are the people who decide if you can build a dormer on your house, or a second floor, or add a mote, or whatever. technically, pretty much anything one does, even build a fence or get new windows…is supposed to go through both of these processes, at least.
since a mural is just paint, a permit wouldnt be hard in theory…but it probably wont happen without planning’s blessing.
idea is that folks cant just build whatever the hell they want. it has to be “in line” with whatever’s around, not be a hazard, not be an eye sore, not obscure someone’s view, etc etc etc. different hoods have different levels of scrutiny.
anything like a mural would probably trigger “neighbor notification”, which is where you send a letter to all the neighbors within a certain radius telling them your plan. then there’s a hearing, where they can come & say their piece. this is where the neighborhood associations and / or individuals can make or break a plan – sometimes for the better, certainly
for a mural, if you were to go the permit route, you’d probably have to go through this whole process, so your “grafitti wall” would not TECHNICALLY be considered something you’d need to erase, lest the city do it for you and charge you back. graffiti being, technically, illegal.
then again. probably someone would have to complain about it to get the city’s attention. and THAT said, the mission has a lot of graffiti in it, so there are city employees that look for it , and they might just report you if they see it.
other hand, if your “graffiti wall” appeals to the political / aesthetic / humor / irony sensibilities of your neighbors AND those city employees, you could probably execute it and leave it up there without the process.
all comes down to what content “counts”, and to whom, and when, and how.
there’s a nice little mural on a garage door on 19th across from the PG&E barn. i bet they didnt get a permit. there’s a big ol mural on the barn itself. i bet they did get one. i think Precita Eyes did that one.
good luck. i hope you do your wall…and that it ascribes to Allan’s point of view …;-)
i’m no expert, but i believe the style on the DPBB (johnny0 is king of acronyms) are a part of gang culture wherein individuals write their “tags” ie names, on “turf” ie claimed areas of influence.
whether these particular “tags” were written by actual members of such organizations, or simply copy-cats of the style, i don’t know.
it’s less about deep content than it is about the life, and staking a claim & establishing credibility.
dearest christ, please blast these pathetic nerds from the face of the earth as their writing is very crappy and also rather annoying (don’t you think)
other assholes tagged the hell out of the DP playground either friday or saturday night, and there seems to be an uptick of tags on 18th street as well.
Murals or installations on this building might need permits from Rec. & Park and from the Arts Commission, since this is public (park) property. For help with funding, try the SF Community Challenge Grant Program SFCCGP dot org, and/or San Francisco Beautiful’s Friedl Klussmann grants. The Friends of Dolores Park Playground are a great resource. They are well into the permit and funding process for renovating the playground.
thanks for the tips.
Whatever. This junk is just plain ugly and stupid and depressing. Can we at least get anyone who is doing County time out there on a chain gang, every day of the week, painting over anything that isn’t a building’s regulation paint job? Or does everything have to have an artistic, multi-cultural solution?
Here’s a picture of the tagged billboard near the Kragen on Valencia I was talking about earlier in the thread. I love the colors.
http://burritojustice.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/billboards-tags-improvement/
There’s also the one on Valencia which I assume is Prop 8 commentary.
Silence?
Yeah, that’s gotta be it. But is it pro or anti?
Maybe they don’t like Roccapolco.
yeah, people dump whack ass gross “graffiti” all over the place. just because this is ugly and stupid doesn’t mean it is the antithesis of the “white 20 something guy” hipster batman. it just means that some people can’t paint.
this is a prime example of why you go practice on abandoned buildings down 3rd street before you take your fucked up bubble letters to high traffic areas.
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