I’ve lived half a block from Valencia Street for nearly a quarter of a century, and I mostly try not to go too far down the it-was-so-much-better-back-in-the-day rabbit hole. Sure, I miss the thrift stores whose threads still populate a significant portion of my none-too-spacious closet. But I’d be lying if I said I don’t appreciate that the coffee is a hell of a lot better than it was in Ye Olde Mission District.
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And frankly, like many people, I’m a lot more concerned about the future right now than I am about the merits of the past versus the present. Sure, in normal times, it’s easy to gripe about losing another live music venue (RIP Amnesia) or to lament the seemingly inexorable rise of tweetail (twee + retail). But when everything from the oldest taqueria to the latest purveyor of palliatives for the privileged is suddenly boarded up, griping feels kind of petty.
With nearly everything shut down and nearly everyone sheltering in place, the street art feels even more vibrant, and more vital, than it ever has.
To try to make some sense of what is happening outside my front door, I did what I often do: grabbed a camera and went for a walk. My intention was to document the sudden, and hopefully short-lived, demise of one of the liveliest landscapes in San Francisco. But as I strolled the nearly vacant blocks between 20th Street and 14th Street, I was struck by something else. Amid all the despair and debris and uncertainty about what the neighborhood will look like when we emerge from lockdown, there remained one constant. The one thing that drew me to the Mission back in the 1990s and has helped to keep me there ever since: art.
With nearly everything shut down and nearly everyone sheltering in place, the street art feels even more vibrant, and more vital, than it ever has. It might be all that the neighborhood is providing to keep us enthralled right now, but on a quiet, sunny afternoon, it can feel like enough. And taking the time to appreciate it beats the hell out of staring at a screen for another hour.
I don’t know how many of my favorite places will survive this existential threat or how many of my friends and neighbors will stick around for the long term, given the challenges we’re sure to face whenever things return to whatever normal is going to look like. But I do know one thing: If the neighborhood’s future is going to be anywhere near as bright as its past, it’ll be the artists who light the way.
