Walking to the Volvo shop from my home, about a two-mile journey, I usually go straight down Gough from Japantown. (Coming home after leaving the 14th Street shop it’s uphill all the way and I do a lot of zig-zagging.) This trip I walked Franklin, which brought me face to face with the Baby With Handgun mural for the first time. Turns out, it’s been there since November 2019 — does anyone remember 2019? But if you don’t live in Hayes Valley or walk south on Franklin (when you drive on Franklin, which is one-way north, the mural’s only in your rearview mirror) you may have missed it too.
Baby With Handgun is the work of muralist BiP Apollo, who worked for years anonymously but now has both a very public Instagram account and an artist’s website. The mural was created as a protest against police brutality. Having admired his work on other San Francisco buildings, I’m happy to recognize BiP the creator. The name derives from Believe in People; and why not?
Nearing my destination, in what might be termed a gritty section of 14th Street, I was curious about what a realtor friend had mentioned as a $5 million residence almost next door to the garage.
“Come on,” I had said. “It’s a garage. Mechanics underneath cars performing tasks with not a little oil and dirt and grunge. You’re kidding about a $5 million home.”
“Look it up,” she said. I did. I also stopped and noticed. You can walk past it a dozen times (as I have in years gone by) and not notice. Walking San Francisco cries out for noticing.
So I noticed the plywood fronting a vacant lot in between the residence and the repair shop I inelegantly term a garage. The painted plywood features more murals, of abstract faces on postage stamps. But not just anonymous faces, these are faces of “people who are solving big problems and having a profound and positive impact on the world.” These murals are sponsored by Resolve, a nonprofit which “envision(s) a less polarized world with a shared commitment to transforming ambitious ideas into real benefits for people, communities, and ecosystems.” And again, why not?
Next door to those encouraging words was my destination. A garage. Founded in 1983, when nearby homes probably weren’t valued at $5 million.
