Origins of the late Barbara Shawcroft's infamous "Legs" sculpture at Embarcadero @SFBART station. My favorite piece of public art that nobody could tell what it was. After years of controversy was removed in 2013 due to it being a giant fire hazard. 1/6
BART had completed the giant Embarcadero BART station by 1975 and held a competition for two pieces of art to utilize the ends of the train walls. Two Berkeley artists won. One of them, Shawcroft, had proposed a giant pair of bell-bottom legs made of macrame rope. 2/
BART failed to approve Barbara's 4,000 lbs macrame until it passed fire retardant tests and material. She claimed it was sexism. BART said it'd be here forever and needed testing. She was also late in completing it, irritating BART further. Here it is under construction. 3/
Barbara released it to BART in 1978, filling the "barren wall". The name: Legs. The orange macrame would fly around as trains flew in. Illuminated by stage lights, Barbara believed all her art was to be made for people to touch and play with. Kids played with the rope. 4/
But it didnt last long. Muni trains idling spewed break soot meant BART had to clean it. Each cleaning cost $24,500 to clean. So BART fenced it off and it got dimmer, angering Barbara. BART couldnt find any place to put it. By the 80s riders couldnt always tell if it was art 5/
By the time I saw it, it was fully blackened. Condemned in a dark corner. The huge, intimidating rope was the most fascinating art I had ever seen. I thought it was a train washer or ship ropes as a boy. Nobody I asked knew what it was. BART had enough and killed it in 2013.
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The other piece of art is still there on the opposite side of the station. A boring slab of concrete on a wall of marble elicits not even a fraction of the curiosity or mystery the giant rope legs had for me. But it doesnt need to be cleaned and makes more sense for a subway
This thing was a huge mistake like carpets on BART was. But I loved it. I dirtied my hands grabbing it, stepping into the fence area. I just stared up in awe every day. Others just gawked at it in confusion. Now its a boring blank chasm. It had a fan account! @bartmacrame
My bad, Barbara is still alive! Here's snippets of Barbara accusing BART of sexism when testing her art vs approving the concrete slabs.
One reason BART decided to get rid of it is if you touched it and your hand was coverted in dust and soot, its an unfortunate reminder of what you're breathing in
Take a look at this thread for how a growing metropolis remains affordable while Western cities are failing. Tokyo did all this in 30 years almost exclusively with the private market, and has a homeless rate 1/4th that of San Francisco despite being 7.5 million more people.
I dont know why Lookism doesn't get more focus but its absolutely true. Conventionally attractive people, particularly women, get way more positive treatment than conventionally unattractive people in every segment of life wholly unrelated to attraction. nytimes.com/2021/06/24/opi…
From people stepping aside, to being spoken to politely, to being compliment, to receiving promotions, to winning competitions. Things that have nothing to do with attractiveness will heavily weigh in the attractive persons favor.
I dated a magazine model who told me: I have life on easy mode. I never fear being homeless because i won the genetic lottery and people will always take care of me.
Versus my "unattractive" friends who get insulted constantly, even by family, and have to work their ass off.
The truth that gentrification anthropologists will never explicitly admit is that the anti-housing growth movement in the 70s was 1,000,000 times more successful at displacing Black residents than urban renewal ever was.
Urban renewal displaced and ruined the lives of many Black residents but it did not succeed at making neighborhoods attractive for white newcomers nor did it really add any whites but the preservationist stuff absolutely did everywhere it was applied here.
I see some writers more or less state this but the big lesson from the redevelopment era was that the successful way to gentrify districts wasnt with destructive freeway and public housing projects but themed districts, population limits, expensive anti-blight maintenance rules.
This is the inevitable end credits of NIMBY cities in California and why affluent Moraga went bankrupt years ago. You can't have stable tax revenue from an aging retirement community of homeowners in single-family homes with Prop 13 tax reductions.
Suburbs are expensive and a net loss in revenue relative to their cost of sewer and water systems. Dense urban areas pay for themselves because they have enough residents to prop up the tax base and consume less.
California cities are fucked because a large % of the population aren't paying property taxes assessed at current land values. Many cant even afford to pay tax on a million dollar lot. But we could pay it if high density housing had many people dividing up a lot's value instead.
Tonight at Berkeley City Council we're mobilizing to get council to support SB 9, two-family housing only in single-family zones. It'll be early in the meeting. NIMBYs will show--will you?
1: Research from UC Berkeley's Urban Displacement Project has compiled virtually all major peer-reviewed housing studies and revealed that building all-income housing ranks as the #1 strategy to combat displacement. Including their own research. urbandisplacement.org/sites/default/…
2: Micro survey data from the 5-year Census reveals sampled residents who live in duplexes, even recently built ones, in the Oakland-Berkeley area earn a household income significantly less than single-family renters and homeowners (h/t @UrbFuturistDem ; github.com/UrbFutDem/IBTP…)