Art Trip

San Francisco is known as a city of neighborhoods, but people can live here for decades and draw a total blank on the words West Portal. Some of us let years pass between North Beach visits and think Glen Park is some kind of zoning mistake. Blame the hills, the parking, the public transportation all you want, but the real culprit is apathy. We stick to what we know, then go to work. The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery’s Passport 2009 project is hoping to change that, luring people with art. It’s a brilliant idea: Create passports for neighborhoods in the city, commission artists to create site-specific stamps, then force everybody out to those neighborhoods to visit various points of interest and collect those stamps, one by one. Fantastic. Only thing: It’s going to take years, since the SFAC is limiting itself to one neighborhood a year. But the first one, the Mission, is a gem, and the lineup of artists is equally impressive, with Libby Black, Veronica de Jesus, Maria Forde, Maria Porges, Andrew Schoultz, Marci Washington, and more.
Sat., Oct. 24, noon, 2009