Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Bronze bunny  1
Hoodline

Thea Selby's dream is coming true: the hideous Silly Bunny sculpture will now deface lower Haight Street forever.

The brief account on Hoodline doesn't mention Selby, who started an organization to further her political aspirations and, in the end, all she achieved is getting this hideous "art" project done:

Since the sculpture is a "greeter to the neighborhood," Fish would like to attract a large number of people this weekend for its return to the neighborhood. He also wants people to support other local artists and merchants in the area. "The Lower Haight is going through a weird transition, just like a lot of neighborhoods are," he told us. "It was of great importance for me to to send energy and attention and enthusiasm back into the neighborhood."

There's a term for the "transition" that neighborhood is going through: gentrification.

Neither Hoodline nor Fish refer to the planned site for his sculpture: the former UC Extension where working people used to take college classes. A predatory UC ended its education "mission" on that site, since real estate development is much more profitable for its property portfolio, ending that property's 150 years of serving the public interest (UC: Greed and lies and How greedy UC shut down the Extension).

City progressives allowed UC to rip off that property, since they gave it the zoning change that made it happen (55 Laguna: Another "progressive fiasco and Silly Bunny atrocity: A suitable memorial to the city's political community).

Labels: , , , , , , ,

1 Comments:

At 12:12 PM, Anonymous sfthen said...

These kind, Selby, the hipster "artist," etc. don't move into an area until it has been made safe for their kind. Twenty-five years ago driving along lower Haight St one night there was a gaggle of cop cars, lights all flashing, down the block and the group that hung out doing business by Nickie's was now standing in a puddle of little white packets that they'd jettisoned. Snow in Frisco! "No officer I don't know nothing about this stuff, I'm just here talking with my buddy."

Stopped at a corner market at Buchanan one afternoon to get a soda (the housing projects hadn't been bulldozed yet) and had a ten dollar bill. The gal behind the counter said, "You got anything smaller? To make you change I'm gonna have to come around from here and go lock the front door, then go to the back and unlock the room door there, then go in and get your change, then lock that back room, then go and unlock the front door."

They wouldn't even keep ten dollars in the register! And people like Selby and the bicycle crowd and the hipster artists wouldn't have moved there either. Not until it was safe for their kind.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home