Visual Narratives: “Shut Up Honky”

By Leena Prasad

 

 

Your Existence Gives Me Hope, a sidewalk stencil proclaimed. I pulled out my tiny digital camera and snapped a quick shot, happy to add another entry to my growing visual journal of these phrases stenciled into the sidewalks of The Mission neighborhood. A few weeks later I noticed a similar stamp, except with a small update. Next to the Your Existence Gives Me Hope was also stamped Your Existence Gives me Diarrhea. Although I enjoyed the gushy sentimentality of the original graffiti, I was delighted to see that the original clichéd stencil had been retrofitted into the mission culture.

 

 

Several months ago, I had written a column about the Kill Yuppys sidewalk graffiti.  Since then, there has been an exponential increase in these pavement graffiti and an antagonistic conversation seems to have started between the original ‘artist’ and some of the graffiti audience. A quick search on Google revealed a wide fascination with these sidewalk stencils: there were photos posed on Flickr.com, Webshots.com, Tribe.net, and many other websites.

 

Who is behind these sidewalk musings?  I met a documentary filmmaker who wants to find and interview the 'artist.' On the social network tribe.net, some guess that the messages are from a Christian group spreading its gospels.  There is an ongoing debate whether these are art, vandalism, or public service.

 

I'm not interested in knowing the artist or the culprit or the religious fanatic. The stencils have simply added a new dimension to my regular walks. Whenever I see the ubiquitous I Want You So Bad or You Make My Dreams Come True or any of the other original stencils followed by an editorial Shut Up Honky, I feel an affirmation of the character of The Mission, a place with a personality that I love more than any other neighborhood in San Francisco.  I love finding a stamp that I have not seen before or a response to existing ones.  I especially enjoy the fact that the new stencils are attempting to wrestle back The Mission voice from the original mushy gushy potentially religious messages that are out of tune with the ‘rebel with a cause’ Mission culture. It is kin to experiencing an emotional discussion between two friends.

 

I’m sure that not everyone is as gushingly supportive of these minor forms of entertainment as I am and might look upon them as nothing more than vandalism. During a recent walk, I started looking around the graffiti to see if they were destroying the ambience of their surroundings.  The effect was actually quite the opposite. They detract from some of the old, worn our and sometimes dirty sidewalks.  I don’t see these stencils in my own Noe Valley neighborhood where flowers and plants abound on the sidewalk and where these stamps would probably be washed out immediately if they were ever to make an appearance. I’m not sure that it’s necessarily a good thing to paint over them – they would add a delightful character to the immaculately clean Noe Valley. 

 

To anyone who dislikes them, I’d say ‘just walk over it.’ The objective of art is to stir emotions, to force people out of their everyday existence and to think beyond their world.  These stenciled stamps have managed to do that by stirring a dialogue.  They’ll dissolve into the landscape in a few months so we won’t have to use taxpayer funds to wash over them. They also bring attention to sidewalks in desperate need of maintenance.  If the graffiti causes Mayor Gavin Newsom to clean up the pavements, these stamps would have achieved a much needed neighborhood restoration service.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a case to be made for these as a valid genesis of art.  The tradition of mural paintings, which started as unsanctioned painting of public walls, has become a publicly funded San Francisco tradition. Artists like Keith Herring whose works now hang in major museums, got their start via graffiti art. If those voices had been turned off, we would have missed the core influences of much of modern visual art and had been stuck with the tired centuries old art that does not

speak to the new generations or to the people whose ancestry is not rooted in the European traditions.

 

I hope these stencils cheer up some people.  I’m certainly entertained by the sarcastic responses and would be happy to support their existence with my tax dollars.

 

 

 

For comments/complaints/kudos/article ideas/etc., please write to Leena Prasad at art@WeAreNotAmused.com.  Please let me know in your letter if it’d be okay to publish it as part of this column.