Culture & Travel

Graffiti: Alive and Well in the Heart of San Francisco?

By Ilan Kayatsky

Last month, while visiting a South-of-Market warehouse which my work (a non-profit affordable-housing developer) is demolishing, I noticed a new addition to the building. Only a few days into the dismantling of the building’s roof, several large pieces of skillful graffiti appeared on the interior walls. Though one of my responsibilities to my job is to make sure that people don’t break into the building, my first response to discovering the pieces was that here was a reminder of creativity and expression thriving in the city. It’s a reassuring feeling that there is an endless pool of artistic energy present which can find any canvass that materializes, though it could be hidden behind solid walls and rubble.

Since graffiti became a permanent sub-culture among inner-city kids and a permanent feature in our cities in the 1970s, the mainstream has always misunderstood it as a symbol of the deterioration of middle-class values: vandalism, juvenile waywardness, urban decay. By contrast, those who have grown up within or who were influenced by urban culture (especially around the world of hip-hop) know that graffiti is one of the rawest forms of urban expression. How else can a gifted artist create a work of art which can be seen by thousands of people, without the need for deep pockets or connections, without formal training?

Meanwhile, in the San Francisco of 2001 there is great hype around the issue of gentrification. The city is changing physically, socially, and demographically (though it’s always been changing). At its most disruptive, gentrification in S.F. might be described as the influx of a suburban and culturally homogenous flavor that partially replaces the urban matrix. That matrix is the sum total of generations of change, newcomers, grit, organic growth, inorganic growth, and slowly evolving relationships between people and places. Many within my generation recognize that that urban landscape is something crucial to our identity as Americans: it’s vital, dynamic, extremely varied, gritty, and real.

The pieces I found inside the walls of the warehouse are testimony that, despite the perceived loss of urban culture, urban expression is ubiquitous and simply oozes out wherever it’s given outlets. With one act of graffiti, 10 thoughts are expressed. I’m simultaneously reminded that San Francisco is still–and will always be–a bastion of diversity (in all the implications of that word) and that the changes we fear can’t reach as deeply as we imagine they might. There will always be too much character to be completely supplanted, too much vitality, too many layers. The city is far too complex to lose its soul just because of some money coming in during this moment in history.