Reflection of a neighborhood
The Outer Sunset district by the ocean is becoming the “new Mission,” despite the area’s foggy days and geographic isolation from San Francisco’s hipper precincts. Long a home base for surfers, this slow and lazy-feeling beach-town neighborhood is now the latest “in” spot for young creative types. Mission is famous for its murals and the Outer Sunset is catching up on this bountiful public art tradition, which mostly depicts the surf culture.
Head out to Noriega between 45th and 46th Streets one morning and note the surfboard shop on the corner called the Church of Surf, located in the former home of the Lutheran Church of the Holy Spirit–Sunset Extension. One door down is the Devil’s Teeth, a trendy bakery with a wooden parklet outside, and usually a line of people waiting for their breakfast sandwiches. Next to that is a shop selling shoe soles made from recycled tires, and then San Franpsycho, a store that produces silk-screened T-shirts and locally made apparel. Old and new San Francisco, side by side.
Info
Address 3830 Noriega Street, San Francisco, CA, 94122 | Public Transport Bus: 71, 71L (Noriega St & 45th Ave stop) | Tip You can learn how to design and build your own surfboard in a private one-on-one lesson at Sunset Shapers (3896 Noriega Street).
The neighborhood is summed up in a two-story mural above the shops: an airbrushed, richly patterned depiction of a surfer entwined with a sea snake, pursuing his passion with a near religious intensity. The persona is of a Maori warrior-surfer, or Melville’s Queequeg.
The painting was created by Zio Ziegler, a young Bay Area artist and large-scale muralist: “I’ve always been a fan of symbolism throughout visual history and the weight it carries, everything from Egyptian art to Dada—and how the same icons can be present in myriad periods but carry different interpretations based on their settings.”
There are those who insist the iconic spirit of the city has disappeared. To see this mural is to realize that San Francisco, for all its extravagances and misleading appearances, is not dead at all, but merely in transition.
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