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photo by Joseph Schell/SF Weekly
An old tuna cannery in Bayview Hunters Point, condemned after the Loma Prieta earthquake, has turned into some sort of hot spot for vandals or graffiti artists, depending on which side of the vandalism-as-art debate you're standing. Anyway, SF Weekly has a glorious tribute to the place, filled loads of equally glorious pictures.
But one peek inside the immense building - now completely boarded up and guarded by a tall chain-linked fence - reveals it has hardly been abandoned. What appears on the outside as an industrial wasteland is, on the inside, perhaps the largest living canvas for graffiti artists in the entirety of San Francisco.
If trespassing and hanging out in Bayview-Hunter's Point is your bag, you'll want to visit it soon. Caltrans, who owns the property, will tear the place down in mid-September. Check out more images at What I'm Seeing.
In related public art news, that abandoned hotel with defenestrated art adorning the outside at 200 Sixth Street, the Hugo Hotel, "is slated to be demolished and replaced with low-cost housing if its owners lose an eminent domain court battle scheduled to begin today." Examiner has the entire story.
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man, this is too bad. the land and water around there is completely contaminated. i cant see a residential going up there anytime soon.
there is a treasure trove of masterpieces in that building, some dating back to the mid-90's.
i guess it was bound to happen, but many of US will be sad to see it go.
man, this is too bad. the land and water around there is completely contaminated. i cant see a residential going up there anytime soon.
there is a treasure trove of masterpieces in that building, some dating back to the mid-90's.
i guess it was bound to happen, but many of US will be sad to see it go.
Thanks for replying to my email this afternoon.
I'd be open to a group of photographers getting together and shooting as much as possible this coming weekend; perhaps meeting up beforehand at Just For You?
If anybody is interested, reply to this post.
id be interested in shooting if its not too late. it really is a shame watching this building gone. they may take ties mansion away, but his legacy and his memories will forever be cherished by the heart of san francisco....
and I just realized this was posted on september 6th....I missed it...
aww, kids are gonna have to buy paper now. What a shame!
ha ha, oh poor you. i suggest improving your post-it paper airplane design now that your TPS reports are all caught up.
most of these buildings that are getting sealed up or paved over for new construction have been abandoned for years. a lot of them are in San Francisco's backyard (Bayview, HP, Visitacion Valley, Dogpatch).
if you NIMBYs keep kicking us out of your backyard -- its gonna start to show up in your front yard (Fi-Di, Marina, North Beach, The Aves, etc). and quite literally on your home, your garage, the bus stop on the corner, and the tree next to that bus stop.
im not saying graffiti is right or wrong, i think you know my position already and that is "i enjoy looking at it and photographing it.)
what i am saying is it is not going away anytime soon. and if you keep removing the remote places like Thunderdome, Tire Beach, Tuna Cannery, etc -- it is definitely going to start showing up elsewhere. and probably in poorer quality as you have to apply your paint much lot quicker in areas with heavy foot and car traffic.
It's already on the Avenues
You want to come out and help me scrub the tags off my building's front door?
That said, I've got no issue with people doing what they want out there in this building if no one else has an issue (esp. the people there)...seemed kinda weird that you ascribed this place closing up to NIMBYs on the Avenues or in North Beach or whatever.
Im no NIMBY, but I do believe in private property and that graffiti is vandalism. Those empty shells that you claim are canvasses are taking up some square footage that could house families. We've only got 49 sq miles. You bet we should tear it down and rebuild (not condos, Gavin). This has nothing to do with gentrification, so please think before flaming with accusations of class war.
Oh few, for a second I thought this was the Eureka Valley Muni station!
Yay eminent domain! The government doesn't want to pay the owner's price so they just take it anyway. It's one of the most egregious abuses of power possible for the government.
Anyone know where this is exactly?
I think this is on Rankin somewhere, don't really remember...
I was there today, and I'm going to return tomorrow.
San Francisco is bent on getting rid of all artists. They seem to want drones as residents in the city, people who don't have any creativity, talent and personality. I am sad that my years in SF I have seen it go from an Artist Mecca to nothing. All those buildings that artists used as studios, etc., now sit empty. It is just a shame.
Yes, because empty buildings have nothing to do with the economy right now and how SF's economy has been wildly veering from rich to poor over the last 15 or so years.
Oh, and you're right: the city, with its Arts Commission (or whatever it's called) and all the grants doled out to the arts--both institutional (like the Opera, etc) and indy artists are *totally* aimed at getting rid of individual expression.
This is largely a generational lament usually heard from people who've fallen out of the scene.
The building with the furniture hanging out the windows will always be special to me as it's one of the first things I remember seeing shortly after moving to SF, and I'll be sad to see it go.
It's unfortunate that The Examiner had to mar the whole thing and once again prove how inept their editors are with their print copy of this story - I'm used to poorly edited articles from them and realize spelling and proper grammar isn't their main focus, but there is ZERO excuse for misspelling a very easy-to-spell word on their FRONT COVER. I wish I were kidding.
I've got nothing against graffiti as art in itself, but there's something obnoxious about hip arts enthusiasts who expect visual artists to depend on bureaucratic granting organizations or work for free, and the idea of the graffiti artist plays right into that. They add something valuable to the city, but they're the visual art equivalent of street musicians, and yes sometimes they get famous but their use of their materials is always pretty shallow. Graffiti looks good in photographs, on posters and in limited-edition prints though, which is good because most artistically-minded people around here won't spend more on a painting than they do on their laptop.
Just returned from spending two hours inside the place; it's in far better shape than we've been led to believe. It's a shame to demolish this building. There are some very talented, cool neighbors nearby, one of them even invited me to the open studios that some of his fellows artists were hosting, and I photographed the stuff that's been sprayed on the back of their building.
It's a little eerie that one of the flywheels is still in motion, thanks to the fan that's wind-driven.
If you go, take a flashlight; there's a dark doorway that's actually an empty elevator shaft.