I'm a bit of a culture vulture, when traveling I naturally gravitate towards museums and landmarks and am loath to pass a monument or historical marker without stopping to read the plaque. San Francisco is riddled with these sort of things, of course, but in general when I think of them I think of the Presidio and Golden Gate Park area, with Civic Center running a fairly distant second since the main Library was a bit of a disappointment and I have so far not made it to the ballet or the opera, of the new Asian Art Museum.
It wasn't until I began temping, first in the Financial District and them mostly south of Market, that I came to appreciate just how many interesting artistic and cultural hot spots are located in the few square blocks that form downtown SOMA. In the first years I lived out here I rarely ventured much further West than the Virgin Megastore and the Ross on Fourth Street, during ConFrancisco I discovered the Moscone Center of course but in those days Yerba Buena Gardens and the Metreon didn't even exist so there was not much to go back for. Sure, Jeffrey's Toys is cute but it's also a little pricey and there are toy and comic stores closer to me. The Hobart Building was unknown to me until Borderlands and Tachyon began sponsoring their charity movie screenings and SFinSF readings at about the same time I began working nearby. Even what is arguably the most famous landmark and most obvious destination for locals in the area, the gorgeous Ferry Building, was only recently reopened in 2003 after it's extensive renovation was finally completed. So unless I happened to doze off on the MUNI train and wake up at Embarcadero it was rare to find myself down there unless I had a job interview or a Greyhound bus to catch.
Then, a couple of years ago I started temping downtown and found myself exploring the surrounding area out of hunger, boredom and curiosity and ever since I have been fascinated with how much is packed in down there, especially South of Market at the Museum District. I've already profiled the genre friendly Cartoon Art Museum in one of my columns and it's still going strong with recent exhibits featuring Golden Age artist Creig Fessel who created covers for Detective Comics during the 1930's, the art of Disney legend Mary Blair as well as a book signing for David Hajdu's The Ten Cent Plague, a book about the infamous 1950's anti-comics crusades.
On just on that one block of Mission that houses the CAM you can also find the Museum of the African Diaspora which is currently hosting the exhibit Africa.Dot.Com about the changing face of communications on the African continent, The California Historical Society and The GLBT Historical Society. The largest and most recognizable museum in the area, SFMOMA is right around the corner and the next block has the Contemporary Jewish Museum, which is set to reopen in June at it's shiny new Daniel Libeskind designed digs-looking like nothing so much as a freshly landed Borg cube, except unaccountably friendlier.
The dominant feature in the surrounding landscape are the various buildings of the Moscone Center which surround the Yerba Buena Gardens, home of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Metreon building which sometimes hosts it's own exhibits such as the recent Da Vinci and Titanic shows. But somehow there's still room and interest enough to sustain the Zeum, aimed at kids and often featuring science and technology focused exhibits and events, the Museum of Craft and Folk Art (how can you not love a place that had a ukelele exhibit) and the Society of California Pioneers.
The Academy of Art is seemingly located all over the place and aside from various gallery spaces which exhibit student paintings you can also catch a glimpse of the work of graduate illustrators on the 500 block of Mission where the Academy showcases a rotating exhibit in it's windows. The surrounding area is filled with all sorts of galleries as well, including the genre friendly 111 Minna which many years ago hosted the exhibit I most regret missing titled 'Sci-Fi Western', the nearby Catharine Clarke Gallery which has some interesting upcoming artists like Julie Heffeman and Timothy Cummings and Varnish Fine Art which used to show episodes of Firefly and featured in my very first event write up of it's Nemo Gould exhibit. Varnish is currently holding an multi-artist exhibit celebrating it's five year anniversary which will include Gould as well as other pieces with science fiction, fantastic and surreal overtones by artists like Jennybird Alcantara, Chris Anthony and Dylan Sisson.
Summertime is always the best time to experience everything the city has to offer, the cafes and restaurants start putting tables out on the sidewalk. The event listings are suddenly full of open studios, art walks, author events like Writer's With Drinks and LitQuake, and outdoor movie screenings begin popping up all over the place. But even if all you have is your weekday lunch hour there are still a thousand wonders within walking distance.
~Espaņa Sheriff
It wasn't until I began temping, first in the Financial District and them mostly south of Market, that I came to appreciate just how many interesting artistic and cultural hot spots are located in the few square blocks that form downtown SOMA. In the first years I lived out here I rarely ventured much further West than the Virgin Megastore and the Ross on Fourth Street, during ConFrancisco I discovered the Moscone Center of course but in those days Yerba Buena Gardens and the Metreon didn't even exist so there was not much to go back for. Sure, Jeffrey's Toys is cute but it's also a little pricey and there are toy and comic stores closer to me. The Hobart Building was unknown to me until Borderlands and Tachyon began sponsoring their charity movie screenings and SFinSF readings at about the same time I began working nearby. Even what is arguably the most famous landmark and most obvious destination for locals in the area, the gorgeous Ferry Building, was only recently reopened in 2003 after it's extensive renovation was finally completed. So unless I happened to doze off on the MUNI train and wake up at Embarcadero it was rare to find myself down there unless I had a job interview or a Greyhound bus to catch.
Then, a couple of years ago I started temping downtown and found myself exploring the surrounding area out of hunger, boredom and curiosity and ever since I have been fascinated with how much is packed in down there, especially South of Market at the Museum District. I've already profiled the genre friendly Cartoon Art Museum in one of my columns and it's still going strong with recent exhibits featuring Golden Age artist Creig Fessel who created covers for Detective Comics during the 1930's, the art of Disney legend Mary Blair as well as a book signing for David Hajdu's The Ten Cent Plague, a book about the infamous 1950's anti-comics crusades.
On just on that one block of Mission that houses the CAM you can also find the Museum of the African Diaspora which is currently hosting the exhibit Africa.Dot.Com about the changing face of communications on the African continent, The California Historical Society and The GLBT Historical Society. The largest and most recognizable museum in the area, SFMOMA is right around the corner and the next block has the Contemporary Jewish Museum, which is set to reopen in June at it's shiny new Daniel Libeskind designed digs-looking like nothing so much as a freshly landed Borg cube, except unaccountably friendlier.
The dominant feature in the surrounding landscape are the various buildings of the Moscone Center which surround the Yerba Buena Gardens, home of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Metreon building which sometimes hosts it's own exhibits such as the recent Da Vinci and Titanic shows. But somehow there's still room and interest enough to sustain the Zeum, aimed at kids and often featuring science and technology focused exhibits and events, the Museum of Craft and Folk Art (how can you not love a place that had a ukelele exhibit) and the Society of California Pioneers.
The Academy of Art is seemingly located all over the place and aside from various gallery spaces which exhibit student paintings you can also catch a glimpse of the work of graduate illustrators on the 500 block of Mission where the Academy showcases a rotating exhibit in it's windows. The surrounding area is filled with all sorts of galleries as well, including the genre friendly 111 Minna which many years ago hosted the exhibit I most regret missing titled 'Sci-Fi Western', the nearby Catharine Clarke Gallery which has some interesting upcoming artists like Julie Heffeman and Timothy Cummings and Varnish Fine Art which used to show episodes of Firefly and featured in my very first event write up of it's Nemo Gould exhibit. Varnish is currently holding an multi-artist exhibit celebrating it's five year anniversary which will include Gould as well as other pieces with science fiction, fantastic and surreal overtones by artists like Jennybird Alcantara, Chris Anthony and Dylan Sisson.
Summertime is always the best time to experience everything the city has to offer, the cafes and restaurants start putting tables out on the sidewalk. The event listings are suddenly full of open studios, art walks, author events like Writer's With Drinks and LitQuake, and outdoor movie screenings begin popping up all over the place. But even if all you have is your weekday lunch hour there are still a thousand wonders within walking distance. ~Espaņa Sheriff
SF/SF Issue 64, April 2008