Somewhere between Vox & Hunter S. Thompson
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Street Art
I think this post takes the cake for the farthest total distance traveled within a single street art post. These murals were SPREAD OUT. The Twin Cities is a massive place. And on this particular weekend, it was hotter than the devil’s butt crack. I hope you are reading this in a nice climate-controlled space because when I think back on this weekend… I feel sweaty.
Well, I won’t bury the lead. Let’s see some STREET ART, EH?
I’m going to do something a little different today. I love piecing together articles on street art wherever I can. It’s a great way to get to know a place! I had a hunch that Portland was going to have some really cool street art, but to my surprise and slight disappointment, I didn’t find quite the density of murals that I would have needed to merit a full article.
However, as I walked around the city, I began to notice that nearly half of all public surfaces that I walked past—be they street signs, telephone poles, or brick walls—were absolutely PLASTERED in stickers. And I’m not talking about some garden-variety smiley face stickers. Each of these was custom-made, artistic, and—for the most part—completely outrageous. Seriously, viewer discretion is advised. This collection of stickers would make my childhood pastor WEEP!
This place is DENSE with street art. I have a ton to show you, and I didn’t even get all of it. I mean, I doubt that I ever get 100% of this stuff, but I at least try to exhaust everything that I am aware of. But I have never knowingly left so much on the table as I did in Denver. There were lots of incredible murals that I saw out the window of a car, or when I didn’t have my camera with me, and I was never able to circle back to capture them. So as much as I have for you, this does not NEARLY cover it.
St. Louis, Missouri. In the previous article, I opened by talking about how I didn’t have much more than a vague awareness of this place before fate landed me here for a long weekend. And that is true, BUT—since I have become obsessed with doing these articles where I compile collections of murals in a particular place, I have had my antenna up for information about where I can find the best street art. And I had heard that St. Louis was actually one of the street art capitals of America. Who knew!
Columbus hasn’t historically been quite so colorful as it is today, but now that this is beginning to change, it feels natural. It feels like an actualization of the identity Columbus has always had. Some of the murals you will see in this article have been around long enough to attain “landmark status” in Columbus, but most of them are new… ish.
I’ve gotten to the point with these street art features that I plan my trips around them. If I can get a day to myself, I’m gonna wander around with my camera all day until I find 100 murals I love. And I’m not just doing it “for the ‘gram” anymore! Seriously, these days of wandering are often what makes me feel like I have gotten to know a city at all. That is especially true for a place like Los Angeles.
In a city where most of the time spent between two points is in the back of an Uber, staring at your phone, walking the streets isn’t exactly “normal.” This is a car city. So going through the exercise of walking 10 miles in day, exploring this city street by street, looking in nooks and crannies for murals, poking around small businesses—this can really give you a feel for the DNA of Los Angeles. Of course, whatever I’ve managed to see so far is just a drop in the bucket! But it’s exposed me to a lot. And it helped me internalize the map of this city, so that I started to be able to find my way around without a map.
Anyway, on the morning of my first day in Mexico City, a friend and I were taking an Uber across the city to get to the bus station, when I started to see bits and pieces of murals tucked away down alleyways, behind cars, over fences, etc. We were clearly passing through some sort of cluster, so I quickly grabbed my phone and dropped a pin on the map. Come hell or high water, I was going to come back to this spot with my camera.
The gallery that follows contains murals from all over Mexico City that we walked past as some point the week we spent there, but probably 50% of them come from that dropped pin on the map. And probably 75% of what are my favorites in this lot come from that dropped pin on the map.
Georgia’s cultural resurgence comes in many forms, but today we’re going to focus specifically on street art. Tbilisi is a treasure trove of interesting little alleyways, tastefully decrepit old buildings, and a unique form of urban decay that makes the whole city feel like some sort of massive antique shop. And in the spaces in between the city’s main cobblestone causeways and its many new restaurants and coffeeshops, there is quite a robust collection of murals that… well, I should probably just shut up and show you.
FEAST YOUR EYES!
I could talk about the history of San Francisco for ages, but this article is about what has been happening much more recently. Historically, the Mission had been home to a large part of SF’s Chicano/Latino population, but starting as early as the late 1960s, the LBGTQ community began to play a much more defining role in the neighborhood’s identity. You are probably already familiar with San Francisco’s reputation for being the gay capital of the U.S., but what you might not know is that much of this reputation was built right here in the Mission.
However, by the late 1970s, the Mission had become a much more multidimensional haven for fringe culture. It actually developed a thriving punk rock scene, and helped produced such bands as the Dead Kennedys, Jawbreaker, Rancid, and Green Day! Even today, you’ll see remnants of this scene walking around the streets of the Mission with colorful mohawks and studded belts.
It’s time for our last article on Asheville. We’ve covered some serious ground in this city, and have already had a few surprises, but to me, there were none more pleasant than the ones I’m about to share with you in this article. This is Asheville’s “Street Art” installment; a segment that I am becoming quite fond of. Not every city has a visual arts scene that will support these kinds of public works… but those that do, typically don’t look much like Asheville. I tend to associate street art with giant urban areas like New York, San Francisco, or Toronto.
But Asheville threw down the gauntlet!
