That 40-foot-tall Raygun Gothic Rocketship down at Pier 14 is already having an effect on people. For example, it has David Chiu, District 2 rep and President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, pining for the Playa.
Per Steve Rhodes, “after seeing this he might go to Burning Man for the fist time.”
Bon voyage!
[UPDATE: Mayor Gavin Newsom was on the scene as well. Read an account, after the jump.]
From LiveSOMA comes the news that the Black Rock Arts Foundation is counting down to the Opening Reception / “Landing Party” for the 8-ton Raygun Gothic Rocketship installation at Pier 14 (at the foot of Mission Street) on Friday, August 6th, 2010 starting at 3:00 PM.
This is a fine replacement for the Bourgeois Spider (aka Bougie Spider aka Crouching Spider) from Louise Bourgeois, R.I.P.
Isn’t it awesome? OMG, it opens up!* Check out the insides via an awesome video from Wired.com:
But, as you know, getting anything done in the 415 ain’t cheap - San Francisco has a well-earned reputation of being America’s most expensive city in which to conduct business, west of Chicago anyway. So why not see what you can do to help?
Check it:
“The Black Rock Arts Foundation is proud to collaborate with artists Sean Orlando, Nathaniel Taylor, David Shulman, and their talented crew (FiveTonCrane.org) on the installation of the iconic, large-scale sculpture, The Raygun Gothic Rocketship at Pier 14 on San Francisco’s waterfront from August 2010 until September 2011. The 40-foot-tall art piece, The Raygun Gothic Rocketship, offers a retro-futuristic, highly-stylized vision of space travel circa 1930’s-1940’s science fiction and is the latest in a series of temporary public art exhibitions sponsored by BRAF with the aim of enlivening and activating public spaces.“
Is this the very same craft that you saw on The Playa last year? Hells yes, playa! (Leave us note NK Guy’s excellent photos of RGR from last year’s Burning Man.)
A nice poster non?
In closing, Raygun Gothic Rocketship! Raygun Gothic Rocketship! Raygun Gothic Rocketship!
(If we can manage to keep the vandals, the taggers (both corporate and non), away from this thing, we’ll be in good shape.)
“Dear Friend:
You are invited to join us in celebration of the Black Rock Arts Foundation’s latest Civic Arts Program project, the installation of the Raygun Gothic Rocketship at Pier 14 in San Francisco, California. Come hear more about this ambitious undertaking from the crew that made it happen. Enjoy entertainment, dj’s, light refreshments and surprises from the Rocketship crew! The Rocketship will remain on view, free to the public, until October 7, 2011!”
*Sadly, the ship’s hatch won’t be open to the public for various reasons, like the ADA and the chance of falls from 15 feet up etc…
A great shot from Nick Winterhalter:
Andy Wright’s bit in the SFWeekly ably documents the progression of this billboard high above Divisidero.
And here’s the latest iteration. See? Sharpened teeth and a Chuck Manson prison tattoo have been added in for the doggie’s owner
Click to expand:
What’s your next move, Coffee-Mate?
CBS or ClearChannel or somebody has had a billboard here on Ashbury for the longest time, but now the whole thing is gone tout de suite.
That could be due to regulations, a permit hassle, our Great Recession or whatnot, but the fact that it was a prime target for taggers probably played the biggest role.
Oh well. Maybe this window will be back in operation with a quickness.
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Maybe.
Or, I don’t know, maybe it’s another example of a Bunksy around town these days. (Doesn’t really matter that much unless the buildings’ owners want to cut it out and auction it off. Irregardless, it’s effective viral marketing* from Cinetic Media / Abramorama / Paranoid Pictures LLC for Exit Through the Gift Shop: A Banksy Film in’nt?) Moving on…
Via SFist and the Uptown Almanac** comes news of fresh tag in the Upper Haight.
The mise-en-scene today at the foot of Belvedere:
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Detail, camera left:
Und camera right:
One presumes a red line connects these two elements.
You can see all the new ads on somebody’s SF Banksy Tour, Sunday, April 24th. (Don’t rely on the addresses, WharholianPics has better descriptions of the various locations, apparently)
“Ok this might be a tad cheesy but I’m excited to tour the city Sunday and check out the new works of Banksy.
Dolores Park (exact location unknown)
Mission (Valencia between 19th & 20th above Little Otsu)
SOMA (9th and Howard)
Financial District (Sacramento and Davis)
Chinatown (Grant and Commercial)
Haight St (above Villains Vault)”
Anyway, the movie is playing at the One Embarcadero these days.
| EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP 87 Mins :: R |
12:30 | 2:45 | 5:00 | 7:20 | 9:40
|
Enjoy.
* Here’s a good question:
“…do we really need significant P&A [Print & Advertising] when so much of what Banksy does is viral?”
No sir, no you do not. But check this bon mot, from 2008:
“The easiest way to not go viral is to try going viral.”
Appears as if they’re trying pretty damn hard in 2010.
**Is Scott Beale of Laughing Squid really a “fool” and/or a “lazy fuck?” Decidedly not. So it’s difficult trying to make sense of the following:
“… Laughing Squid needs me to do some research so that lazy fuck can just rip off this blog without credit. Again. Even anonymous dumbasses on ezboards.com are better at giving us hat tips than that fool.”
Must be an inside joke or something.
You know about Yelp-rated Warm Water Cove aka Toxic Tire Beach, that mini park where 24th Street almost meets the bay? Well, take a look at the changes.
Here it is as it was, at least the north side anyway, from back in aught-seven:
And here is how that Historic Sugar House looks today:
“Concrete Beach” via CaliberSF‘s Troy Holden (Whoops, this caption didn’t take earlier today, my bad.)
That’s quite a change, huh? Looks like DHL Worldwide Express done moved in. (Which is apropos, since DHL got it’s start in San Francisco. Speaking of which, the “H” in DHL created DHL while he was going to UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall. (I’m probably still on their waiting list, oh well.) Read his fascinating life story about how he killed himself with a seaplane and also read about some suspicious acts by the people employed the aforementioned University of California here.)
Anywho, the graffiti eradication program is all documented right here in “Warm Water Cove Graffiti Vandalism Project 2007″ at SFGov.org. This pdf has it all, it even shows how the SFPD catches anyone who would dare throw some urban art on the empty walls.
The mellow artists were no match for the determined City and County:
I’ll tell you back in aught-seven, it was widely predicted that the graffiti people would come back with a vengeance. I know that there have been subsequent incidents, but the City is still putting enough energy into this project to keep the place graffiti-free.
Score this a minor victory for Mayor Gavin Newsom.
More deets after the jump.
Here’s what the little monsters know – they know that if they tag a big old transformer box or what have you, then it’ll simply get painted over by the City or a property owner, sometimes with a quickness. But painting over a mural, such as the one called Gold Mountain at Romolo Place in North Beach near the intersection of Columbus and Broadway, well that throws all the stakeholders into paralysis and so scribblings will remain for tout le monde to see.
Ideally, you’d have the original muralist come over and do a touchup for free. Ideally. But the long-lived tagging on Gold Mountain has epoxy in it, so it’s really hard to take off of the wall without erasing everything. And then after you do a fix-up another tagger will come along, despite your use of anti-graffiti coatings and whatnot.
Here, take a look at the mural on Romolo from six-plus years ago – nice and clean.
But WholeWheatToast‘s photo from 2008 looks just like every other recent photo that you can find online:
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Here’s the current shot from Google Maps. (Note that Google’s face-blurring privacy program doesn’t distinguish betwixt real people and paintings of people.)
And the pic on MapJack looks the same as well. Oh well.
Now honestly, I’m not sure how much good putting up video cameras would do unless you had somebody to watch a live feed 24-7. I mean the value of showing the SFPD grainy night-time footage of some skinny, 5′ 8″, hoodie-wearing hood isn’t much, right?
For all I know these tags are still there today, with more added on, possibly. I’ll check it out the next time I’m in the area.
(San Francisco: The City That Knows How®… to sit around and dawdle. Oh well.)
Leaving you with what the Chinatown Community Development Center has to say about all this:
“Gold Mountain Mural Restoration
The Gold Mountain Mural is located at Romolo Alley, near Broadway and Columbus, on the side of the Swiss American building owned and managed by Chinatown CDC. It is the joint effort of Ms. Ann Sherry, the muralist, and Chinatown CDC depicting the lives of Chinese Americans in San Francisco. It was created in 1994, and once restored in 2004 due to heavy tagging. At that time, to honor her, we added the image of our local heroine, Ms. Betty Ann Ong. Ms. Ong is the American Airline stewardess who was the first one to contact ground crew informing them of the plane being hijacked on that fatal flight into the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Recently, this historic mural caught the eyes of the President of the National Museum of Murals and Mosaics in Philadelphia, and will be featured in their online museum website.
Once again, due to tagging, we will start restoring the mural in the near future. We have so far secured some funding to install surveillance cameras to safeguard the mural. Once restoration is complete, we will daily monitor the mural and assist the SFPD to apprehend taggers. (Volunteers interested to help can contact Cathie Lam at 415-984-1461.)
Listen up, taggers. Here’s one of the vehicles they send to censor all your public art. This thing must be loaded up with every color of paint imaginable - it’s huge.
Now, wouldn’t it be a score for you to tag this giant rolling canvas - you know, poetic justice and all?
This thing is your white whale – keep an eye out:
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And look what they do with that truck – they paint over your scribblings just as soon as you put them up, leaving only a ”wet paint” sign. Thusly:
Courage.
Taggers have struck this poor Chevy S10 pickup on the Streets Avenues of San Francisco in the Richmond District.
Barack Obama appears to be the number one meme.
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Oddly enough, the other side of this pickup looks perfectly fine.
