Sunday, June 29, 2014

Italian Street Art Fest - 2014



Part 2 here.

Normally this is the superbowl of chalk art for this area. You can see last years photos here, here, and here. 2009 here. They fly people in! It's normally this massive thing. It went on for blocks. This year was maybe one block. Which kinda freaked me out. Last year the organizer did have a heart attack on the day of the festival because it was over 100 degrees. It was even hotter on the concrete I'm sure. Story here. But also, the city has had a hard time finding funding for the event. Here. So, I wasn't sure which issue was really driving the size.

Really - to tell you the truth - the whole thing kinda freaked me out this year. Let me explain. San Rafael never seemed to be affected by the reccession. Even in the deepest parts. It was the most fascinating place. We'd go there and it seemed to be recession proof. It always felt really great. Vacation great. It was like this odd insulated bubble. It never felt bad there. Sure they had shops that went out, but it was never as bad as the rest of the Bay Area.

After going through all the artists I asked Mr S. - does it look like they have a theme this year? Perhaps all the previous years they also had a theme, but it was so big you just couldn't pick one out. Clearly, this year was very centered around the WWII imagery. Not just a few pieces - pretty much all the pieces. Which I thought was super odd and freaky. It wasn't really the best of times.

Mr S. said the music they there playing was very Bioshock-esc. I wasn't paying attention to that because my mind was consumed with trying to get good shots, and trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I could feel the event was different before I even got there. The place we normally go for breakfast wasn't packed like it normally was, and town in general was way emptier.

All I know is normally I feel really happy when I leave San Rafael because you could forget the world. This time I felt worse than I have ever felt after I left that city. It really made you feel like things weren't going to be that great soon.



This was a forced perspective shot.











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