TravelMarx: Precita Eyes Tour – Mission District Murals

Overview

Today we took the Precita Eyes Mission Trail Mural Walk Tour of the murals of the Mission District. We were surprised at the concentration of murals, street and graffiti art that we saw. It started when we parked our car. The lot we parked at (California Parking Inc @2351 Mission Street) was chock full of art. The parking lot was the site of the former El Capitan Theatre and Hotel. Here is a sampling of what is just at the parking lot: StreatArtSF.

In Seattle, there is isolation between murals and street and graffiti art. In comparison, in the Mission District, murals are side by side with street art and graffiti. The lines between the different art forms are more blurred. The Mission District was much like what we experience in London, when we went on the London Graffiti and Street Art Tour.

In the Mission District, a lot of activity centers around alleys like Lilac, Cypress, Balmy (the most famous), Lucky, Cunningham, and Clarion, to name a few that we visited. Most of the Precita Eyes tour we took was within 1-2 blocks north and south of 24^th Street, from Mission St (west) to Balmy St. (east). The theme of much of the work revolves around community, democratic art, and the Hispanic experience in the Mission District. A newer theme that appeared a number of pieces is the gentrification of the neighborhood, typically be employees of high tech companies.

Below, if a title of a piece has quotes around it, then it’s just our title for the piece. Your Precita Eyes tour may be different than what we show below. We chose to organize the tour for presentation below around “stops”. And, we only discuss a fraction of what we actually saw. See the two photos (with this post) of the maps of Balmy Alley and the Mission Trail.

Selected Works from Our Precita Eyes Tour

Title – Creator (date)

Stop 1: Mission Street and 24^th Street

Culture of the Crossroads – Precita Eyes (1998)

Stop 2: Lilac St and 24^th St

Solidarity – The H.O.M.E.Y. Project (2007)

Stop 3: Lilac Alley - A block of fence and garage murals painted by J.M. Velazquez and local artists. Managed by the Mission Art 415 Organization. (For more images, see StreetArtSF.)

“Untitled” – Mark Bode (2007) – infamous “Bode broad” on a motorcycle. More info.

“Peace to Pengo” - Nite Owl, related exhibition “The Pursuit of Slappiness”

“Reyes Muertos Mural” (http://blog.rmklothing.com/)

“Female Warrior” – Twick, Bode, Cuba, Stan153.

“Rock It, Don’t Stop” – Unknown

Kase 2 RIP 2011 – memorial to New York based artist, Kase 2 (real name Jeff Brown), who invented the “computer rock” style of graffiti writing. More info on this memorial mural.