Wild Side Walk: Pt 16.

(Unexpurgated) 1982: Report from the astronaut

photo: CHiPs at Pier 23,
San Francisco (1982)
©1982 www.stuartpage.com

This part of town known as 'Mission' (after Mission St. that cuts through from Market South for several miles) is inhabited by communities of Mexicans, Italians, South Americans and a large gay community. There are also a number of theatres and cinemas that show experimental films, ethnic films, and educational films. I ended up spending most of my time in the Mission when I visited San Francisco; there was such a variety of events. A low rider exhibition, large American cars with the rear suspension jacked up as high as three feet, lots of paint and often brushed on, fibreglass additions, and-mostly owned by Mexicans. A lot of the cars were apparently stolen and part of the remodelling is to conceal the identity of the car. I also saw a huge demonstration of Argentineans with Malvinas banners, and ran into a guy called Frank McCabe who was looking for someone to play percussion with him.

Although I already felt that I could learn more about people and Art by walking the streets, riding public transport, visiting bars and other hangouts, I also visited a selection of galleries and museums. The U. C. Art Museum in Berkeley was exhibiting a 1:1 Polaroid copy of the 'Transfiguration' (which must have been approx. 40ft across), together with the camera that the Polaroid Corporation had built around the painting. The photograph contained incredible detail, each brush stroke and speck of paint reproduced faithfully and accurately coloured.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art had exhibitions by Ed Ruscha, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and an excellent bookshop full of books on recent US Art and catalogues of exhibitions at SFMoMA. The World Print Council have their offices and Gallery in Fort Mason, an ex-military establishment on San Francisco Bay. Prints made utilising new technologies such as computer-generated images, colour Xerox-transfer, and video enhanced images were hanging on the walls, but I found the images not as interesting as similar use of these techniques in advertising images, and the colour-xerox work I'd seen at the Compound. If reproductive processes are not used with thought, they become merely reproductive, and not as creative as they appear.

I had a folder of slides and some screen prints to show the director, and they were quite excited by the work I had been doing. The World Print Council maintains an inventory of colour slides of prints by artists all over the world. I asked them what they do with all the slides and who has access to them, whether they are protected by copyright etc? Publishers and authors of books, curators of exhibitions as well as museum and gallery buyers from around USA and other countries look through the collection, and the World Print Council serves to promote Prints as works of Art. People interested in this system should contact the World Print Council, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, CA 94123, USA.

The old haunt of the acid-eating hippies, Hashbury, and the present day Haight-Ashbury scene probably have little in common. Before the hip travel agents such as Scott McKenzie started singing "If you go to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair", 'Frisco' was probably a cool place to hang out. Pretty soon after though, hundreds and then thousands of lost souls drifted into the Golden Gate and the result was a lot of dead and dying acidheads and junkies. Nowadays, there are still a few signs of the psychic explosion; cosmic ladies and all kinds of longhaired, bearded, and begowned mystics are to be found, especially at the annual Haight-Ashbury Street Fair.


(To be continued).

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