Everywhere we went there were graffiti arts- on the walls and pavement. There was particulr alley- Carrion alley, which is a commissioned space for official graffiti.
The thing I noticed most was the contrast a block across and parallel to Valencia Street is the difference in communities. O Valencia Street there many cute, fashionable shops, cocktail bars and cafes, filled with students, young people out to take over the world. The parallel block consisted of Latino families all milling about, chatting and hanging out in street corners. It is obvious the two don't mix and all next to each other.
We met Mark Gonzalez, a poet, a lyricist, a social warrior, who hails from Mission and took us to his favourite Tacqueira. We had interesting discussions about the changes in communities that are mirrored here and all over the Western countries and also about his project in trying to help communities with scars of displacement, intergenerational misunderstandings and pains. It's a big topic and I don't feel we truly delved into it, but it was moving to know that someone is thinking about it and trying to do open dialogue with people.
The next leg of our journey was to get out of San Francisco and head to Yosemite. Through various friends and families we were told about the fire, which didn't completely close the park down, so we had to take a longer route, which led us to Modesto for a good nights sleep. The route, I'm sure would've been pretty in daylight, surrounded by fruit trees, but in night it was all a blur, made worse by accidentally driving a truck stop bay. It felt like we were the only human beings in the world and the transformers were coming, or was it more like the Autobots?
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