The colorful murals of San Francisco’s Mission District

by Jeremy Kressmann on

San Francisco’s Mission District is a neighborhood with a number of faces. It is at once gritty and unique, increasingly filled with shiny new businesses yet still retaining the vibrant Latino immigrant culture and scruffy charm for which it has always been known. As one walks the area, it’s easy to get a feel for these differences – pungent taquerias and Quinceanera dress shops increasingly back up against indie booksellers and sleek furniture stores.

No matter the changes, The Mission remains the center of a thriving community of Mexican and Central American immigrants, which continues to give the neighborhood a distinctly south-of-the-border flair. This is especially true of The Mission’s vibrant street murals, a tradition that is evident just about anywhere you look.

Murals have a long tradition in Mexican art, particularly in the context of the Chicano movement, which represented the struggles of Mexican Americans for social and politcal rights. Mexican muralists like Diego Rivera played a large role in the movement, painting large scale public art in cities such as San Francisco which depicted a variety of social and political themes.

Though Diego Rivera is long gone, the legacy of his work lives on to this day in The Mission. The casual visitor will find the streets bordered by 16th to 24th and Mission to Valencia are packed with an assortment of wildly colorful murals. While some are strongly tied to the traditions of Mexican mural painting, others are thoroughly modern in scope, referencing themes as diverse as video games, 60’s Psychedelia, Hip-Hop and modern New York graffiti tagging.

During a recent visit to San Francisco we took a closer look at some of the many public murals dotting the area. Take a look at the gallery below for a tour of the murals of the Mission District.

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Photo of the Day (08.10.08)

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Here’s a destination you don’t see too often. Flickr user Phojo11 captured this cool wall of Alice in Wonderland graffiti while traveling through Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It’s heartening to see that tourism is returning to this formerly war-torn region, and also heartening to see that artistic output is thriving again as well.

I especially like the bright colors. The blue wall here almost seems ready to fade into the sky above if it wasn’t for those few green trees poking over the top. Not to mention that fearsome-looking Cheshire Cat right in the middle of the image.

Have you taken any street art photos during your travels? Or perhaps just a beautiful cityscape? Add it to Gadling’s photo pool on Flickr, and it just might end up as our Photo of the Day.

One for the Road: Street World

by Kelly Amabile on

From Get Lost Books list of suggested holiday gift-giving titles comes Street World: Urban Art from Five Continents, a collection of street scenes that stretches from Mumbai to Los Angeles. The colorful hardcover is divided into more than 50 topics and includes over 500 photographs of artistic public displays from around the world.

Street World celebrates subculture creativity in all its forms: graffiti, skateboarding and bike messengering, DJing, offbeat fashion, gang life, music, as well as design, photography, and other more traditional visual art. The 400-page book looks at the artistic expressions of fashionistas, biker gangs, guerrilla gardeners, urban knitters and more. It’s the perfect gift for all your traveling culture vulture pals.

Photo of the Day (11/15/06)

by Adrienne Wilson on


Here’s a random street art shot taken by Mister Rad while in Soho Square. Looking almost like two separate pictures, I’d say he did a marvelous job with depth of field. And both sides leave me asking questions. Like, what’s the triangle doing on the multi-colored brick and where are all those people heading? Perhaps the answers are far too obvious for those who have spent any time in London, but I’ve only experienced a layover at Heathrow.

Want to see your photo on Gadling? Be sure to submit your favorite travel shots to our Gadling Flickr pool.

Graffiti Worldwide

by Adrienne Wilson on

Earlier this morning I went for a short bike ride with a friend of mine down Venice Beach while it was still pretty quiet and undisturbed by camera touting tourists. Strangely it was my first time journeying the strip of sand, surf, and shops on two wheels though I’d lived in surrounding areas for years not long ago. Normally my trips to the beach where spent kicking up sand, dancing to the beat of a drum and waiting to cheer when the sun kissed the edge of the water and the sky goodnight at the Sunday drum circle. The world beyond the circle was filled with nothing more than wandering lost souls looking to get a snapshot of the woman and her two aliens. If the people dancing in the circle seemed bizarre, then the folks strolling along the pavement were even weirder in my eyes.

As I cruised along the sidewalk listening to mechanics of the bike working with my feet, I glanced around soaking in my surroundings. Garbage flowing out of trash cans to my right and graffiti covered buildings to my left. I kept my attention to the left, not because the garbage to my right made the graffiti more desirable to look at, but had the garbage not been there at all, I would have marveled at the work. I never noticed it before, but it’s almost as if your can feel the pumping of a racing heart with each spray from the can. It’s as if there is this strange range of emotion embedded in tags left by restless artistic night crawlers, vandals, designers or whatever you wish to call them. My eyes searched for hidden meanings or stories, but finally opted to just enjoy the colorful legal and illegal works against the wall.

The thing is I’ve always sort of liked graffiti. I started thinking of various other places where I had seen it on walls, trains, or other miscellaneous places. So, basically what I’m really trying to provide you with not my overly dramatic romance blurb of a girl, a bike, and graffiti, but some awesome places online where you can check out art from taggers around the world. Wooster Collective is a popular one showcasing street art worldwide. Another one worth viewing is graffiti.org where you can see pieces from Gaza, Japan, Iran, and South Africa to name a few. Nice way to pass away the time and see the world from a different view.