The building boom continues unabated in the South of Market district, with cranes popping up everywhere.
This particular hole in the ground is on Folsom Street next to Brainwash between 7th and 8th Streets.
Watching workers assembling the monster crane over the weekend was quite entertaining.
Let us hope that the subsequent building is not as desperately ugly as the Trinity Plaza apartment complex which continues to malignantly sprout at 8th Street between Market and Mission Streets.
Over at the 40 Going on 28 blog, TK has sarcastically proposed that every San Francisco neighborhood should have at least one if not more of these monstrosities constructed so we can solve the housing crisis, complete with Photoshopped illustrations.
Maybe they can all have replicas of the 92-foot stainless steel statue, Venus, by Australian sculptor Lawrence Argent which was commissioned by the late real estate developer Angelo Sangiacomo.
Sangiacomo, long known as "the father of rent control" because his price-gouging ways in the 1970s prompted San Francisco City Hall to pass legislation protecting tenants, died last year at the age of 91. He leaves a mixed legacy of ugly buildings, this shiny, gargantuan version of the Venus de Milo, and rent control itself.
That that...thing...is hideous. It's fascist art.
ReplyDeleteSomeone put one of those horrid stainless steel sculptures in front of a fast food place in downtown Hilo. Small, but it catches the sun and glares right into your face as you drive by it.
The ongoing uglification of our downtown includes gang graffiti inspired murals.
It's so hard to explain why these things are so awful. My reaction is mostly visceral, like they are an attack on my well being. I think a lot of it's the medium. If it were a bronze it might be tolerable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_Forms_of_Continuity_in_Space
I'm not too fond of this, but it is definitely a work of art!