Tag Archive "san-francisco"

Ralfka Gonzalez returns to Philadelphia

Two days before tonight’s opening, folk artist/gay activist Ralfka Gonzalez was sitting in the middle of A Seed on Diamond slipping final touches on to a painting. He was a little apologetic of as he reinterpreted the virgin’s traditional gold fleur de lis into runic gestures.

San Francisco walk and learn

San Francisco City Guides free walking tours (donations encouraged) are quirky, rendered so by the volunteer nature of the whole operation. The guides do their own research and bring their passions and interests to the enterprise. The weakest spot in the enterprise is the titles of the tours, which are made to sell rather than to really describe the content.

San Francisco laughs at itself

The Esalen spirit beclouds San Francisco like a fog. But out of the miasma of navel gazing and self-help for the soul we experienced a couple of refreshing bouts of revisionism on our visit earlier this month.

Merchandising San Francisco from Alcatraz to Chinatown

The highlight of Alcatraz might have been the boat ride if it weren’t as cold as Philadelphia in San Francisco. Oh, I don’t mean to be sour. Really, the video of interviews of Native Americans who occupied the place was wonderful and passionate. But otherwise, I’d rather be at Eastern State Penitentiary, with its philosophical underpinnings as a system of incarceration and social thinking.

San Francisco report–Star Wars: The collection

Like most of America, I think of San Francisco as a civic Valhalla. So imagine our shock when we encountered a fracas on an overcrowded trackless trolley–with people screaming at each other and the driver refusing to move until they piped down. There were racial overtones–judgmental Asian man, non-stop mouthy African-American woman. Oy! Finally, some African-American men restored the peace, but all in all, SEPTA was looking good!!!

San Francisco street art — scatology meets religion

Steve, who just returned from California, saw this piece of street art outside a church in San Francisco.  To say that Steve is not religious is like saying the Pope is Catholic.  Anyway, Steve’s been using this particular phrase about the Pope for years.  We think his use dates to the Pope’s trip to New Orleans in 1987, a time when our friends Chuck and Iris lived there, and we had some funny back and forths about the Pope relating to the irreverent Pope products they were seeing around NOLA (Pope-alope pictures; Pope soap on a rope).  This street art ... More » »

The last possible minute–Quentin Morris in San Francisco

Oh, well, I was just a few blocks away from George Lawson Gallery in San Francisco. Little did I know that Quentin Morris had some of his drawings up there. And they are due to come down the 29th! If you’re around the area, you might want to check out his work. Morris is a dyed in the wool Philadelphian who has against all odds made only black drawings during his career. The blackness can be taken as a political statement–Morris is African-American–or as a purely artistic one.

San Francisco dreamin’

[Here's Shelley Spector's last dispatch from San Francisco. Bet you thought she'd never get out of the Yerba Buena Center, huh? Read parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.] Whole lotta town to seeJan. 14 report by Shelley Spector San Francisco is great. On Friday, my last day, I went around the city for the first time. I got up thinking that I would go to the Mission district and tool around galleries and the area that inspired Margaret Kilgallen. Somehow I switched gears on impulse and ended up on a cable car going in the other direction. It was an ... More » »

San Francisco Gallery going

A small item in yesterday’s Inquirer caused me to sit up a little straighter. It told about an underground utility explosion in San Francisco’s Crocker Galleria area that sent one woman to the hospital in critical condition and blew out a bunch of windows when a PG&E transformer burst, a manhole cover popped, and a fire started. See SF Chronicle story for more. somerville, travisI mention this because Crocker Galleria is where Anna Conti and I had lunch before gallery-going back on Aug. 2. And Post St., site of the blast, (see map) is where Newmark Gallery is, one block ... More » »

City of neighborhoods, San Francisco

After our great chat in her studio (see post), painter Anna Conti and I hopped the “Muni” (trolley) and traveled from her neighborhood, “The Avenues” to downtown San Francisco to see her work at Newmark Gallery and to check out a few more venues. It was cloudy in “The Avenues” near the bay but bright and sunny just a few miles away. Did I mention in that other post that midway through our talk in Conti’s studio the city’s tsunami warning alarm went off? It sounded like a typical firehouse fire alarm or one of those Civil Defense warning sirens. ... More » »