There's still a little soul here -- in the alley

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August 9, 5:22 PM

by Tony Long, North Beach Examiner

 

 

So it was gratifying to see the community's biannual art fair, Art in the Alley, selected for the Bay Guardian's 2008 Best of the Bay feature. The category was kind of lame -- "Best Beats Keep Boppin'" (What the hell does that mean? What was the competition?) -- but the accolade was well-deserved.

For the uninitiated, Art in the Alley is held in spring and fall in Kerouac Alley, the cobblestone lane separating Vesuvio (speaking of drinking before buying) and City Lights Bookstore. It features the work of local painters, jewelry makers, collage artists and photographers, as well as artists using other mediums. It's a purely homegrown event -- what? no corporate sponsor? -- that brings out the eclectic local talent in a festival-like atmosphere. Since pretty much everything you'll find there is for sale, it's a good place to bolster your collection, assuming you're finally ready to lose those Monet water lily reproductions that pass for art at your pad.

More importantly, Art in the Alley serves as a tangible reminder that there is still room for creative types in this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. The writer of the Guardian squib nailed it when describing North Beach as "more frat boy than the best minds of a generation starving, hysterical and naked." Howl was a long time ago. What's happening to the 'hood now would be enough to make Ginsberg howl some more.

Art in the Alley is one of the things reaffirming that the bohemian spirit lives on in North Beach as more than just a museum piece. (Live Worms, the gallery on Grant Avenue that features the work of locals on a regular basis, is another.) A culture that turns its back on its artists is finished.

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