On the roof of the Wells Fargo bank on 22nd and Mission (sorry, about the point-n-shoot digital zoom)
No matter where you fall on the graffiti/street-art debate, you have to give these vandals some credit. Any builderer can tell you that getting to the roof of the Wells Fargo bank isn’t the easiest ascent in the Mission and spraying down a bank with a paintball gun is just ballsy (with bonus points for the Christmas theme–I love presents).
UPDATE: Reader LibertyHiller points out that I’m completely unobservant and that the building was actually paintballed 10 years ago in an anti-gentrification riot. Ant-gentrification riots = SWEET, not noticing the aftermath until last week = LASIK SURGERY TIME.
Spraying down U.S. Bank with paintballs
The paintball stains on US Bank’s building are leftovers from the anti-gentrification riots of the dot-com era, around 1999. The building was occupied by BayView Bank at the time; I guess they hoped it would just wash off.
Are you serious? Wow, I’m fucking observant. I just noticed them a couple of days ago
what’s inside that building now?
If the bank had been smart, they would have bought more paint guns and turned it into a giant Seurat mural. Or the Mona Lisa, like Mythbusters showed. (The slow-mo in the last 20 seconds in epic…)
Speaking of which. have you seen the tag on the top of the Safeway sign @ market & Church? I wonder how they got up there.
I was just going to say this.
heard there was one of those pg&e type crane things near it, at least that’s what the graf forums said. Shit is nuts no matter how it was done
There’s a ladder built into one side of the sign. They may have simply climbed up.
aww I always had the idea that they used a water balloon launcher with paint in them. Always walk by that ugly building happy to see the marks
Read “On the Lower Frequencies” by Erick Lyle to get a personal story about how those paint splashes ended on the side of the building.
Offices above the Bayview bank were rented by non-profits and community groups. The lease for those spaces was taken over by a web site hosting company BigStep (which is no more). MAC organized the protest that took over the offices and paint balled the building.
hm. i do seem to remember that. what was the result of the protest (other than the paint)? did BigStep move out?
who’s in there now?
Best I remember, BigStep promised to employ mission residents and engage the community, but they ended up eventually going out of business or being bought up. Looking up the address on superpages.com it looks like there’s a various group of businesses on the 5th floor.
[...] View Bank, established in 1911, was taken over by US Bank in 2002. The building got paintballed by MAC 10 years [...]