San Francisco

Alexis Laurent's sculpture "Be A Flaneur"

A Letter from San Francisco:

Last night I went to a party at an art gallery in an industrial space in the Mission District. The gallery was owned by Alexis Laurent, a Frenchman who grew up in the south of France and didn’t decide to be an artist until he was 34. In 2009, at the age of 40, he and his wife and daughter moved to San Francisco where he began to paint and do sculpture.

I didn’t know any of this when I went to the party. In fact, the party wasn’t about Alexis or even about art; it was about food. Canadian food. A group from Calgary had rented out the space from Alexis in order to have a party there showcasing “the best of Calgary cuisine.” But during the party I started walking around the gallery looking at these amazing sculptures. I came around a corner in the warehouse that separated one room from another and there, leaning against a wall, was what looked like a giant chunk of concrete sidewalk, ripped from the street. There was a little medal medallion in the concrete, like you might find indicating a sewer line or a gas line, and dried weeds in the cracks. And there were words in the concrete too. As if someone had taken their finger and dipped it into the still-wet concrete to write their name. Except it wasn’t a name. It was this: “BE A FLANEUR.”

I about went crazy. Do you know what page on my blog gets the most hits? “What’s a flaneur?” Because nobody, evidently, knows what a flaneur is. And here was a giant concrete piece of art with the words “BE A FLANEUR” etched into it. It was amazing to me.

So I asked around until I discovered that Alexis Laurent was actually at the party. After some searching, I finally found him and the two of us spoke. He told me that he came up with the idea for the art piece after seeing those words written in chalk on the sidewalk in front of his daughter’s French school near The Panhandle. And the installation includes his daughter’s ballet shoes at the bottom (look at the bird’s beak). Because kids were always leaving their shoes on the sidewalk with the chalk graffiti. This is the exact same neighborhood I wrote about earlier this week where I found all the abandoned shoes on the sidewalk. So Alexis had noticed the same thing.

I can’t tell you how much I’d love to own this artwork. Even though it probably weighs several tons and costs tens of thousands of dollars (when I asked Alexis how much the piece cost, he wouldn’t even tell me; he probably was just being nice and didn’t want to shock me).

But I’m wondering if there is any way I could get Alexis to make me a smaller version of this sculpture. After all, it was almost exactly four years ago that I told myself to “Be a flaneur.” It’s as if, even without knowing me, Alexis had made the piece specifically for me.

A Letter from San Francisco:

According to my buddy Mark Orwell, editor of Travel + Leisure, one of my favorite San Francisco bars, The Tonga Room, in the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill, may be closing. Mark writes: “Since 1945 the Tonga Room has been a local favorite for its bamboo-heavy “Polynesian” decor, dance floor made from an old schooner, rattan furniture, floating bandstand in the room’s “lagoon,” and simulated thunder-and-lightning rainstorms. How many umbrella drinks have been emptied here? How many anniversaries celebrated? How many lonely sailors have met the girl of their dreams, her silhouette cast against the glow of a tiki torch, head swaying to the music of ukuleles and steel guitars? There have been tentative offers to buy the room’s fixtures and relocate it elsewhere. But if that doesn’t happen, it may be time to say aloha to a sentimental slice of Bay Area history.”

Word on the street in San Francisco.

A Letter from San Francisco:

There’s graffiti everywhere in Los Angeles but it’s usually on the walls (when it’s not scratched into bus windows or sprayed across freeway overpasses). Walking around San Francisco I’ve discovered that much of the graffiti is chalked or etched on the sidewalk. And, for the most part, it’s not the lame gang tags that inflict themselves on the City of Angels but words of wisdom, sarcasm, and poems—sometimes combined. Like this little gem I found down in the Mission District near 24^th Street. It’s like you can read it and decide which side of the issue you prefer. Either way, it will make you laugh.

I wonder if anyone has started a blog site to document all the wonderful San Francisco street graffiti? If they haven’t, someone should.