Story: Life on the Walls

Stroll through San Francisco's predominantly Latino Mission district on a sunny afternoon and you'll see the vibrant life of its streets reflected in the scenes on its Technicolor walls. Painted children play games and lick ice-cream cones amid the laughter of real-life kids and the jingle of a passing Popsicle cart. Musicians on the walls jam on guitars, horns and drums while salsa and reggaetón blare from storefronts and car stereos. It's hard to tell where the murals stop and life starts.

More than 100 such murals illuminate the blocks around the 24th Street neighborhood. This is where, in the early 1970s, San Francisco muralism got its start, inspired by the political activism and cultural pride of the Chicano and civil rights movements and the traditions of early 20th-century Mexican muralists like Diego Rivera.

Since then, muralism has become a bona fide neighborhood tradition, uniting the community and preserving its cultural identity in the face of the rampant gentrification that has plagued San Francisco neighborhoods in recent years. “We now have a strong local tradition of making murals that are essentially about ourselves,” says muralist Patricia Rose.

Rose leads tours for Precita Eyes Mural Arts and Visitors Center, an artist collective and community education organization founded in 1977. The center’s artists paint and restore murals, its classes have trained kids and adults to become neighborhood muralists themselves, and its “Mission Trail” mural walks have introduced thousands to this community-art movement.

A hallmark stop on the Mission Trail is Balmy Alley, a private lane between 24th and 25th streets where nearly every wall, fence and garage door is emblazoned with a mural. The alley’s first piece, a mural project for local kids, went up in 1972, and over the years, the street was transformed into a block-long outdoor art gallery. The exhibit is always changing: when fences and garage doors need replacing, the property owners commission new murals, often seeking out the original artist to create the new piece.

Balmy Alley is an explosion of colors, styles and themes. In “The Five Sacred Colors of Corn,” wood cutouts inspired by Huichol Indian yarn paintings pop in primary hues. A tribute to Mexican cinema employs whimsical details like a doorknob transformed into the spangle of a movie star’s headdress. There's even a pair of mural sneakers hanging from an electric wire spanning the alley.

But the murals aren't just playful: political activism has always been a defining feature of the Mission murals. Muralists in the 1970s promoted Latino heritage with images of Aztec calendars and pre-Columbian historical tableaux. In the 1980s, as the civil wars in Central America brought many new immigrants to the neighborhood, muralists used the art form to protest U.S. intervention in the region and to call for peace. More recent murals reflect broader global issues like the AIDS pandemic.

On Balmy, a preschool teacher used the wolf-suited Max character from “Where the Wild Things Are” to teach a lesson about water conservation. In one of the alley's most recent additions, "Victorion: El Defensor de la Misión," a Transformers-like robot made of the neighborhood's trademark Victorian row houses stands in defiance of property developers who would turn the Mission into a hive of high-rent condos. In another new addition, a tribute to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, collaged images of lost items—car keys, jewelry, a child's doll—float among rooftops in a sea of brown water.

One of the most poignant murals on Balmy Alley, "Indigenous Eyes: War or Peace," is both a political statement and a testament to the enduring nature of the neighborhood's mural tradition. Painted on a garage door in the 1980s, the original mural showed a countryside panorama of Nicaragua, which was at that time mired in a civil war. Several years later, a car smashed into the garage, and the door had to be replaced. Precita Eyes founder Susan Kelk Cervantes created an entirely new image on the door, but seamlessly integrated it with what remained of the original mural on the surrounding wall. The door now shows the face of a Nicaraguan child. Look closely: in one eye, you'll see the image of a skeleton in a soldier's uniform; in the other, a dove taking flight.

Two Balmy murals display a distinctly San Francisco cultural twist. On one side of the alley is an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint; on the other is the Tibetan Buddhist god Manjushri. But it’s the Buddhist god, not the Virgin, whose creator is Latina. Precita Eyes’ Patricia Rose, who painted the Virgin, explains that it’s a natural consequence in a city with a rich mix of cultures. “Here," she says, "you can have a Latina who’s a Buddhist and an Anglo who identifies with Mexicans.”

Rose and other Precita Eyes muralists lead tours through Balmy Alley and other points along the Mission Trail every Saturday and Sunday at 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. ($10-$12 for adults, $8 for students, $5 for seniors and $2 for those under 18). The afternoon tours include a slide show. Tours start from the Precita Eyes Mural Arts and Visitors Center at 2981 24th St., or from the nearby 24th Street BART station. The center also sells Mission Trail maps for $3.95. For more information call 415-285-2287 or go to www.precitaeyes.com.