Our friends at Last Gasp, a legendary underground comics and book publisher, are celebrating their 40th anniversary on April 1st with a big art show and party at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco.

Last Gasp was founded in 1970 by Ron Turner. Last Gasp’s first publication, Slow Death Funnies #1 came out on the first “Earth Day,” April 15, 1970. Subsequent comics included the all-women’s comic It Ain’t Me Babe, and Skull Comics. Over the years they have published, and in some cases brought to light, some of the most respected and talented artists working today, including such luminaries as R. Crumb, Mark Ryden, Justin Green, Bill Griffith, Frank Kozik, Todd Schorr, Winston Smith, Spain Rodriguez, and Robert Williams to name but a few.

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It’s no secret that San Francisco’s South of Market district has changed a lot in the last 20 years, but it’s easy to forget just how dramatic those changes have been.

Not all that long ago, SoMa synonymous with seediness and squalor — so much so that the area was used as the backdrop for a movie scene that defined mainstream anxieties about out-of-control crime during the early 1980s.

Remember Clint Eastwood’s “Go ahead, make my day” bit from the 1983 Dirty Harry film Sudden Impact? It was the standout scene in the movie, and the line became one of the decade’s pop-culture touchstones — so much so that it was embraced by then-President Ronald Reagan:

“I have my veto pen drawn and ready for any tax increase that Congress might even think of sending up. And I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers. Go ahead–make my day.”
–Ronald Reagan, to the American Business Conference (1985)

As it happens, the building used to film the famous “make my day” scene still exists, although the neighborhood around it has changed almost beyond recognition. The scene itself was shot at 701 Third Street, at the corner Townsend, in a building that was originally constructed to be a Doggie Diner. By 1983 it had become a one-off burger joint called Tiger’s. (In the film it’s called the Acorn Cafe.) Later it became Burger Island, and today it’s a utterly forgettable McDonald’s franchise.

More interesting, however, are the scenes outside the windows of the building. In Sudden Impact, the lot across the street is dusty and vacant, heightening the sense of post-urban blight.

But there’s a reason that lot was empty, of course. Originally it was home to a magnificent Southern Pacific train station that was torn down in the mid-1970s, just a few years before the film was shot:

And now, in a perfect metaphor for SoMa’s transformation, that empty lot is now home to a Border’s Bookstore and coffee bar:

So there you have it. The location that was once a perfect embodiment of lawlessness and urban decay is now a perfectly civilized place to take the family or browse the books while you sip coffee.

Here’s the original Sudden Impact scene it’s entirety. Enjoy the spectacle, then say it to yourself: “Go ahead… make my latte!”

photos: S&P depot via San Francisco Public Library

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At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art yesterday, I came across a series of clever artist-themed desserts offered at the SFMOMA’s Rooftop Coffee Bar. There were many on offer, but these three were my favorites: Mondrian Cake, Richard Serra Cookies, and Jeff Koons White Hot Chocolate. Delicious and brilliant!

photos by Telstar Logistics

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photo by Scott Meinzer

Scott Meinzer shot a beautiful HDR photo of a rainbow over San Francisco after yesterday’s rain and hail.

via Ryan King

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Mauricio Balvanera put together a really great video from last weekend’s Urban Iditarod 2010 in San Francisco. He shot it at 60fps on a Canon 7D.

The music in the video is “Pursuit Of Happiness” by Kid Cudi.

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San Francisco’s The Morning Benders newest album, “The Big Echo”, is out now. The band is streaming The Big Echo in it’s entirety today only (3/9/10).

Check out this beautiful video of a live “Wall of Sound” style recording of “Excuses”. You can read more about the video, along with an open letter to Phil Spector, on Yours Truly.

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Archival footage of a streetcar trip down Market Street in San Francisco shot in 1905 before the great earthquake and then again a year later in 1906 after the earthquake showing the massive destruction.

The footage is from the Prelinger Archives, edited together by edited by Matt Lake.

via Ed Hunsinger

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photo by Scott Beale

Congratulations to Craig Newmark and crew on the 15th anniversary of craigslist!

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The Game Developers Conference (GDC), the world’s largest professionals-only game industry event, takes place March 9-13 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

The GDC attracts over 17,000 attendees, and is the primary forum where programmers, artists, producers, game designers, audio professionals, business decision-makers and others involved in the development of interactive games gather to exchange ideas and shape the future of the industry.

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photos by Scott Beale

Last night was the opening for Operation Restore Defenestration, a Defenestration art show and fundraiser organized by Brian Goggin at 1:AM Gallery in San Francisco.

If you couldn’t make it to the opening, but want to help the project, you can make donation through The Black Rock Arts Foundation which is a fiscal sponsor for the refurbishment of Defenestration.

At one point during the evening everyone’s attention was directed to the Defenestration building across the street to watch Brian Goggin and John Law rappel off the side of the building and then wheatpaste a 2D chair on the wall.

ABC News was on the scene and aired this news report on the event.

UPDATE: Puzzling Evidence has posted his video from Operation Restore Defenestration, including video inside the building and the rappelling off the side.

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“Remembering Playland At The Beach”, a documentary by Tom Wyrsch about San Francisco’s legendary Playland at the Beach amusement park, premiers on March 16th at The Balboa Theater in San Francisco.

A full length documentary about San Francisco’s famous 10-acre seaside amusement park, Playland at the Beach. Located next to Ocean Beach, it was torn down in 1972 to make way for a condominium development. Gone now for more than 3 decades, it remains one of the city’s lost treasures. Go back in time to see Laffing Sal, the Fun House, the Carousel, the Big Dipper, the Diving Bell, Dark Mystery, Limbo, Fun-tier Town, and much, much more, all through the eyes of the people who were there. The first and only documentary ever made about Playland.

via Spots Unknown

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Welcome to San Franpsycho, a San Francisco themed photography show featuring the work of Derek Poon and Travis Jensen at DWNTWN Skate Supply in San Francisco. The opening reception is on March 6th and the show runs through May 6th.

In conjunction with the show, we will be releasing a collab shirt with Frank Chu, one of San Francisco’s most prolific characters, who will also be in attendance at the opening.

via Caliber

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The Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition, featuring 3 days in a world that might have been, takes place on March 12-14 at the Hilton Garden Inn in Emeryville, CA.

The Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition returns to the San Francisco Bay Area March 12-14, 2010 presenting a world of polished mahogany, leather and brass, where steam power, airships and clockwork are the cutting edge of technology; a neo-Victorian experience, spanning from the 1830s to the early 1900s and from cultivated London to the rugged coast of San Francisco.

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poster by Hugh D’Andrade

Bound Together Anarchist Collective Bookstore presents the 15th Annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair on March 13th and 14th at the San Francisco County Fair Building.

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photo by RICK!

The Urban Iditarod, which takes place on Saturday, March 6th in San Francisco, is now reopened to the public after a few years of tinkering to make less likely to attract the ire of the SFPD and still fun.

The start location of this years event Giants Stadium at the Willy Mays statue.
We mush rain or shine at 1pm, sharp!
Teams can be any size from 1 to 100.
Participants must be in costume and have some sort of cart.
$20 per team.

The team that gets to the finish line first, loses.

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If your passion was, say, body modification, and you could win a chance to go around the world as an intern for the world’s foremost body mod website… You might resemble our guestblogger Ed Hunsinger. Okay, maybe only Ed looks like Ed. But when BME (Body Modification Ezine) announced their BME World Tour Internship Contest, our Ed entered with hopes to win faster than anyone around here could say “septum piercing.” To everyone’s delight, Ed made it into the #9 spot and was given an “extra credit assignment” to create a ‘day in the life’ video about himself. We knew Ed’s video would be cool and fun, but what we didn’t expect was that it would be its own documentary about Bay Area life within the large-scale, underground machine arts culture — including a first-person tour of life at industrial art space NIMBY and a full demonstration of Interpretive Arson’s astounding interactive project 2pir. And it’s full of fire. We like fire.

Ed’s post features his entry video, photos from a remarkable day, and the call to vote for him includes,

When I got word that I was in the top ten finalists, my heart skipped another beat. Closer and closer to a trip around the world. I could feel my passport tugging on my sleeve, “can we go!? can we go!? please please please!”, but I calmly explained to my anthropomorphized government document that the decision was not up to me. I still had one more assignment to prove I was worthy of such a trip: a blog entry, video, and photos of a day in my life. Luckily the next day had potential to be interesting enough to share with the Internet.

Laughing Squid guest blogger Burstein makes a cameo in Ed’s video.

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Muralist Mona Caron (left) working in the Tenderloin with project manager Lisa Ruth Elliot. Photo: Nick Kasimatis.

I once rode the J-Church in San Francisco with my friend, the muralist Mona Caron. When you ride that train, there’s a brief moment where you can see the tail end of Mona’s first public artwork, the Duboce Bikeway Mural, and as she and I passed we chatted about that project — how she did it, where the funding came from, etc. When the other passengers overheard our conversation, realizing she was the artist behind this epic work, the entire car spontaneously burst into applause.

A detail from Windows Into the Tenderloin. Photo: Mona Caron.

For the people that live near or pass Mona’s murals on a regular basis, her work is a gift that keeps on giving. In part that’s due to her technical virtuosity, which puts her in the company of the very best of the mural tradition in this or any country. She has a rare mastery of perspective, anatomy, rendering and color that gives her work an undeniable authenticity as art, that makes you stand up and take notice. But I think the real pleasure people have in her murals, and the thing that brings them back to view and enjoy them again and again, is the radical utopian vision that animates her art.

You can see that utopianism in her newest mural, Windows Into the Tenderloin, which Mona will be dedicating at a party Friday afternoon:

MURAL DEDICATION EVENT
Friday, March 5th, 3:30pm
Corner of Jones & Golden Gate
Everyone welcome!

Located on the corner of Jones and Golden Gate in the heart of the Tenderloin, the piece is an honest picture of the neighborhood, created in part through hours of community input, and enlivened by portraits of the local characters that Mona has befriended over the year and a half she has been working on it.

Photographer unknown.

Photo: Mona Caron.

Photo: Mona Caron.

Photo: Mona Caron.

The finished work uses virtuoso trompe-l’oeil to open windows on the social life of the area, expressing in art the deep social bonds that always exist, even in the most devastated community. Mona doesn’t sugarcoat a tough situation, but she reminds us that in the Tenderloin, just like anywhere else, good things as well as bad things are happening. Crime, drug use and poverty make life more difficult, but social life goes on —people laugh and talk and eat together, raising children and watching out for each other in countless ways.

Elsewhere in the mural, she peels away huge swaths of wall to reveal the natural ecology that stubbornly refuses to die, even as the urban environment masks it, paves it over.

Photo: Mona Caron.

Mona’s work is epic, but it calls our attention back to the little details, the small signs that life continues, refusing to be crushed or defeated, even in the face of poverty, urban decay, racism, environmental degradation. We can call that vision utopian, but it’s also just a fact, a truth that we all know but that is so rarely spoken aloud.

Thanks, Mona, for this great gift to our city and the world!

Check out more of Mona’s amazing murals and artwork on her website: monacaron.com.

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Nathan Maas has made a mini documentary “I Am A Motherfucker” about Thomas Bruso aka Epic Beard Man who was featured in the video that has now gone viral of him getting into a fight with another man on an Oakland AC Transit bus.

Here’s the original video of the Epic Beard Man fight.

via Sean Bonner

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photo by Dave Schumaker

photo by Jamison Wieser

Black Rock Arts Foundation recently installed the sculpture “Ecstasy” by Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito at Patricia’s Green in the Hayes Valley neighborhood San Francisco. An opening reception for the installation is planned for Friday, March 19th and the sculpture will be on display through June 18th.

First displayed at the Burning Man festival in Nevada in 2008, Ecstasy is one of the eight monumental metal figures of the artists’ masterpiece, Crude Awakening. In Crude Awakening, these eight figures surrounded a 99-foot tall wooden oil derrick in gestures of prostration, worship and exaltation. Alone, Ecstasy embarks on a hopeful journey. Instead of throwing her head back in reverie to the oil derrick, she gazes wistfully into the open sky as she steps forward into an optimistic future, free of dependency on fossil fuel.

Through our Civic Arts Program, BRAF is pleased to further the evolution of this artwork’s message by exposing it to a new audience and community, and to return to the site of Patricia’s Green. In 2005, this location became the site of BRAF’s first public art project.

Working closely with the residents and business owners of the Hayes Valley neighborhood, BRAF established a model of community collaboration towards the curation and installation of public art. These community members continued to work on bringing art into their neighborhood, forming the Hayes Valley Art Coalition. The installation of Ecstasy at Patricia’s Green further affirms the success of this collaboration, and of the model of public, temporary art installation.

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photo by Gerry Gropp

Jayson Wechter presents The Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt 2010 on Saturday, February 27th in San Francisco. Here more info on how to register your team.

The Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt is a unique urban sleuthing adventure played on the streets of Chinatown, North Beach, and Telegraph Hill on the night of the annual Chinese New Year Parade. Treasure hunting teams have four hours to solve sixteen clues leading them to obscure landmarks, forgotten architectural delights and vestiges of San Francisco’s colorful past. Players can come with a team already organized, or can join like-minded hunters at the event; it’s a great way to make new friends.

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