Posts Tagged ‘streetart’

It’s been a couple months since my last entry in how this global pandemic has transformed daily life in San Francisco. There’s still no vaccine on the horizon despite Russia’s premature announcement, and likewise the United States has utterly failed to combat the pandemic under Trump’s leadership.

In other words, the important things haven’t changed since last time.

Fortunately there are many far less important things to focus on here in San Francisco: the many ways we continue adapting to the pandemic.

 

 

For work I had to take Muni downtown and walk through SOMA to the office a couple times to help wind down the office operations and clear out my stuff. Much of the area around Market Street downtown felt unusually empty — boarded up storefronts, no cable cars, etc.

Today I heard The Gap’s flagship location will be closing for good. For those who remember that was a Woolworth location back in the day, which used to have an entrance directly from the Powell Street subway station.

Oddly the Westfield SF Centre mall across the street was open at the time, but has since closed again. There was a time when I suppose the grocery store in there could have been considered essential (remember Bristol Farms?) but those days are long gone.

 

 

Construction on the new Four Seasons tower is much further along than when the pandemic started. The bottom floors will one day house the Mexican Museum, assuming those plans are still on the table.

Across the street the Yerba Buena Gardens had obviously not been cleaned recently, with the pathways absolutely covered in pigeon droppings.

 

 

Entering the office was a little surreal — very few others were there, and the elevator had markings indicating it was now only suited for two people at a time. Normally we’d pack it with eight people easily, but not anymore.

 

 

Muni is still operating at a very reduced capacity with surface-level buses only and is enforcing a mandatory mask policy. At some stops attendants remind people to wear masks and try to stop buses from getting even slightly crowded.

As seen above signs on the doors indicate that a mask is required. To protect the operators, passengers are only allowed to board through the back doors unless they require special assistance.

 

 

Several streets have been converted to outdoor dining areas, including two blocks of Valencia for four days of the week. The sidewalk, parking, and bike lane areas have been converted to outdoor dining with the middle of the street reserved for walking; technically bikes are supposed to be walked but that isn’t really enforced.

Personally I’d love to see this continue on a regular basis — weather permitting of course — though with hundreds of wildfires burning throughout the state right now and smoke billowing through San Francisco this experiment clearly came at the wrong time.

 

 

Street art continues to dominate blank, boarded up walls. In July the theme shifted largely to Pride, since there were obviously no “official” Pride celebrations this year.

That said, there was definitely an LGBTQ+ presence at the Black Lives Matter protests in June, with people holding signs with slogans such as “Black Trans Lives Matter.”

Since last month’s entry in this ongoing series, a number of local, national, and world events have occurred. It’s been a strange, though hopeful time for the most part. Here’ some more changes I’ve seen around San Francisco.

 

 

In the most literal sense of the title of this post, the city’s Department of Public Health has been busy printing and distributing signs with the ever-changing set of rules we’re all supposed to be following.

Many of these signs are related to the reopening plans. As it turns out our entire economy is built on people eating at restaurants and shopping for clothes. It took a pandemic to make anyone realize this was a horrible idea, but here we are.

 

 

The official signs apparently are not enough as some people have been making their own signs. In this case it seems someone was frustrated by people not wearing masks near Valencia and 18th Street.

While it’s true not everyone is wearing masks on the sidewalk, as far as I know nobody around here has thrown a tantrum over mask requirements in stores… yet.

 

 

I’m not entirely certain what the intended message is here, but someone’s been placing stickers of infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci around the neighborhood.

 

 

Indoor dining is strictly not allowed (you can’t eat and wear a mask, obviously) but some restaurants are opting for the outdoor and sidewalk seating approach.

To position tables less than six feet apart, some restaurants — like the 16th Street outpost of Pakwan pictured above — are placing barriers between tables. Does this actually work? Should we be dining out at all? I’m guessing probably not on both counts.

I’m not sure people are really interested in sitting outside in 60/65 F weather anyway. Maybe that will change when San Francisco’s summer begins in mid to late August.

 

 

Although many stores and restaurants have reopened in some limited capacity, many dragged (or are continuing to drag) their feet on removing the boards on their storefronts. And of course many will not reopen, so there’s plenty of space for street art.

 

 

At the beginning of the month there was a large Black Lives Matter protest that began at Mission High School at 18th and Dolores. This led to many store owners running essential businesses to board up their windows. Turns out that was an overreaction as there wasn’t really much in the way of property damage anyway.

But it also sparked a change in the art appearing on boarded up storefronts. Rather than being largely decorative a new theme emerged: Black Lives Matter. Many of these took the “Say Their Names” approach, listing names of Black people who were murdered by police.

And on that note…