Mission Mission

Signs be damned, these sofas must be free. On Liberty near Valencia.

Pizza Zone (‘N’ Grill!) on Duboce and Valencia.

Look, I’m not going to pretend I know anything about street art. The closest I got to “tagging” was repeatedly drawing the Stüssy S all over my binder in 7th grade.

But I think it’s really tacky when businesses paint their signs in graffiti text. It reminds me of those arcade machines in the 90′s that would show you a tag-font “Stay In School” splash screen when they started up. Even then I was cynical enough to see through their ridiculous attempt to appeal to my “urban” side.

Jscinsf submitted this shot from Bryant & 18th:

Over which the following email exchange quickly transpired:

Vic:

Thanks, but that doesn’t even make sense. How do you return a fuck after your done “renting” it? Rentals generally refer to goods, not services. Unless “fuck” refers to a douchey person whom one might call a “fuck” (it’s a stretch), but why would you want to rent one of those? You can just go to the Marina and hang out for a couple of hours and get it gratis. This street artist clearly did not think this through.

Kev:

Ever hear of prostitution?

Kat:

If you’re not gonna give a fuck, you’re not gonna get a fuck, so why not just rent a fuck?  That’s my stance.

For more on “fuck”, there was a documentary film that came out a few years ago that covers the subject quite well.

There, that should settle the question as to whether or not what we do is journalism.

While we’re on the subject of street art, it might interest you that we were contacted by a notable men’s magazine about publicizing their video profile on Dickchicken. We unanimously declined; I think we’ve done enough for Dickchicken. We watched it and he’s a dick. I won’t link it but you can probably find it by googling a magazine that rhymes with “Greyboy”.

westbymidwest peeped this street art the other day.  I always knew those damn penguins were an enemy of progress.

(link)

Also, westbymidwest also snapped a great shot of some transvestite sticker art.

EPA has the scoop.

This was found. 17th and Dearborn.

This pole is the art from Beetlejuice for Halloween?

UPDATE: Troy has a better description:
“that table leaf is holding on to the pole for dear life. it might be mistaken and think itself to be seafood, shellfish, or waterfoul.

look at that sign near the curb — telling it to stay away!”

I figure if I can still unironically enjoy Biggie’s “Mo Money, Mo Problems,” I can link to a 5-year-old interview with my new favorite sticker artist (via Wooster Collective):

What is your favorite thing to do on your day off from work?: art or sex, but even though I don’t have a job right now, I still don’t seem to do either as much as I’d like.
What is your favorite color?: green or purple or something.
Who (or what) do you love?: idiot art, copyright infringement, music, efficient public transportation, soul sistas, Mary Hopkin, vandalism, my friends, etc. I don’t actually love: fascism, racial profiling, police brutality, prison labor.
What other talent would most like to have? I’d like to be able to interact normally with other people and/or play the piano hella good.

Read on…

(Photo by Rick Audet | Thanks for the tip Gwen!)

(photo by jeffgage)

Andy Brooks’ photostream has been killing it lately:

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(photo by Schill)

Ben Ward, from the email:

In the past week or so some fantastic new art has been showing up all over town, some in the Mission, some over in Soma. Little paper cut outs, detailed in thick black marker pen, glued to walls and whathaveyou. No name, few titles.

I don’t really know what is going on with these cutouts, but I’ve been seeing them around the Mission as well and they are awesome.  Take this one from Dolores Park:

More from the flickrs:

(Photo by Ross Harmes)

(photo by our tipster, Ben Ward)