I first met Brian back in February on 18th St. while working on The Mural of Possible Futures, a mural next to the Bi-Rite commissioned by two of my favorite art patrons.The first day that I started working, he was ill and immoveable. It had been raining for three solid weeks. The garage overhang offered some shelter from the elements and I was relieved that there was some protection to prevent the weather from getting to the paint that would eventually be there.
When I first spoke to Brian, I said, “Hello,” politely enough not to alarm him. He said “oh, hello,” and attempted to get up but coughed and collapsed back to the cement. I said, “you know buddy, how would you like to stay and or come back every day?” This little kindness caught this poor soul off guard. It had been a while since anyone had had a personal interaction with him that wasn’t contentious.
Over the course of the month as the mural was being drawn out and sketched, then moved towards completion, I came to know Brian better. He had gone to Brown University and had been a chemical biologist and astrophysicist at one point in his life. I had attended RISD myself, which is also in Providence RI, so we reminisced about that hauntingly historic town together. I would learn that he had contracted HIV when he was in his late 20’s which forced him to come out to his family and which resulted in his expulsion from the family as well as graduate school. He, “left for California and never looked back,” he said. Now 48 years old, he was in LA for four years and had been in SF for two. Brian’s story was sad but not unfamiliar. Many street urchins of SF have suffered some tragedy that brought them low and onto the street somehow.
Each day as worked on the mural I watched San Francisco walk by Brian or stand by the Bi-Rite and wait for their $16 sandwiches. They were either directly tuned out on their phones, or tuned in to their new AirBuds and had become less human and more machine. They ignored Brian and it seemed inevitable and less humane that Brian himself, would be nothing but a white chalk outline on the street mimicking all those Apple iPod ads I used to see on TV.
I reached a good stopping point to the mural on 18th st. and returned to LA to participate in artshows in Los Angeles. I said farewell to Brian and on the last day he brought me and a friend gifts given to him by the thrift shop to use or sell. It was a lovely gesture and something I would not forget.
I departed feeling truly disenchanted with #sadfrancisco. I have become accustomed to the difference between LA and SF by describing it thusly: “Everyone in SF tries to fake being genuine and everyone in LA is genuinely fake.” In my opinion it is still better to be genuine at something.
I wasn’t in any hurry to return to SF but the money was good, and by all appearances seemed to be legit. A new space called ONEDOME that had opened on Market Street in SF and I was specifically requested to participate with my art.
ONEDOME was, yes it is appropriate to say WAS, a pet project of two Crypto Currency Millionaires who invested $5,400,000 into their own playpen. I never really got their names. ONEDOME was designed to be a fully immersive VR and AR environment, utilizing the latest technologies to entice the crowd. It was “Ready Player One,” the best of the best, the Microsoft HoloLense, Magic Leap, the Wurkz. So I was excited about this ONE. The DOMEless dome, was evidently supposed to mimic the WizDome in LA in its scale and grandeur but had fallen short in its appeal to the sleepy audience of SF it seemed. It was almost immediately apparent that something was up when I arrived in SF. During the three months that ONEDOME had been operating very few if any participants paid to come inside. Tickets started at a hefty $60 but quickly dropped in price to $35.
Sure enough, when I started to prep, days before the scheduled event word got out that ONEDOME would be shutting its doors forever the day after our event. They tried to renege on my contract but were reminded that that is why we had a contract in the first place. The day before the ONEDOME event they laid off %80 of their staff!
The event? Well, believe it or not, it went off without a hitch! Oh boy! It was the great -old-days of San Francisco again with cacoughenous societies and real live weirdos aplenty, bursting from the seams of the Dome itself! So many volunteers, so many living breathing creative folks just playing the game on themselves.
ONEDOME closed its doors to the public on Saturday May 11th. When I went to the venue on Sunday to collect my paintings. I was informed by the skeleton crew that they had forgotten that Facebook and Apple were coming on a tour! Their actual words to me were, “you are not to speak to anyone! And if you can run, you should run! You have 10 minutes!”
My earlier enthusiasm turned to irritation. But we either allow life to laugh at us, or we choose to laugh with it. Or perhaps it is best to think of all of life, as laughter. Because when we look back its just so funny…Now running with my paintings and trying to find safe storage for the next hours I prepared to depart but I still wasn’t finished… I had to go and see Brian.
When I arrived at the mural Brian was there begging for change as usual from the hapless, indifferent automata that seem to dominate SF these days.
He was crying to himself.
The first time we met, Brian told me that he, “so wished to see LA again, if not just one more time before the end.” Someone had been kind to him there and he wanted to say thank you.
Perhaps it is because artists feel more emotion. Perhaps, it was only that we shared time together and had reminisced about respective Universities in Providence, RI. Whatever it was that compelled me, I am grateful. I said, “Brian, I am going to LA and this time I am not coming back! So let’s go Brian, let’s get you out of this town.” I gave Brian a ride all the way down to LA so that he could rest in the city of Angels once again. Rest in peace with the knowledge that there is one less lost soul left for dead on your streets, one less set of bones for the children to trip over on their way to church.
ONEDOME was just another $5.4 million, rookie mistake in the city of Androids from Phillip K. Dick’s novels. It’s not Blade Runner, that’s LA but it still draws its inspiration from the same book.
Do Androids (truly) Dream of Electric Sheep? Well not exactly… Androids only dream of sleep because it is the only thing they can’t do. So sleep well #sadfrancisco, and dream big for all of us. My advice for ONEDOME, try try again, its not your fault that the sheep were counting themselves to sleep.
I won’t be back to SF I said, but the truth is I am addicted to this city. I can’t stay away for too long, I have too many friends and extended family there. It may be #sadfrancisco right now but it is just going through a serious transformation. In order to completely become whatever it is that it is trying for, which is in my eyes to become just another city like LA or NYC, it has to do away with its previous identity and deny the existence of anything that happened before. Its a shame for all of us, but its not a sham. I hope for the best, I hope to see the gleaming city of the future rise from its weird roots and become the best of its selves. #SadFrancisco needs to become #SanFrancisgo!
Hopefully I’ll be around to see it happen.
—
Harrison Macdonald Love, is a contributing journalist and artist in SF, NYC, and LA.
His artworks can be found in the collection of the SFMOMA Artist Gallery at Fort Mason in SF. Visit www.harrisonlove.comfor more information.
You can visit The Mural of Possible Futures on 18th St. in San Francisco or see it online at www.brightfuturism.com
