Street roots., March 18, 2016, Page 10, Image 10

Street Roots • March 18-24, 2016
News
Page 10
Art in the face
of gentrification
Erick Lyle, editor o f
'Streetopia,’ discusses
the legacy o f a five-week
San Francisco art fa ir
aim ed a t bringing a
com m unity together in
the m idst o f increased
displacement
B Y A N N -D E R R IC K G A IL LO T
STAFF WRITER
n April 2011, when San Francisco risked
losing one of its most valued residents,
Twitter, to Silicon Valley, the city rolled
out a new six-year payroll tax incentive to
tech companies willing to make their homes
in the Tenderloin or Mid-Market districts of
the city. Twitter decided to stay, and soon
companies such as Square, Uber and
Spotify followed, flooding the once
economically depressed Market Street. In
the years since, the City by the Bay’s
unemployment rate steadily dropped and
Google bus stops and Airbnb rentals started
popping up. Meanwhile, rental prices
surged and evictions in downtown San
Francisco’s once low-income neighborhoods
became increasingly common.
While San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and
city officials were putting what is now
known as the Twitter Tax Break into
motion, local creatives Erick Lyle, Kai
Spelletich and Chris Johanson were
gathering fellow artists, writers and
community organizers for an event that
would unite Market and Tenderloin
neighbors in imagining what they would like
to see become of their neighborhoods, a
possible utopia in place of the proposed
“Dot-com corridor.”
Streetopia, a five-week anti-gentrification
art fair in 2012, was the result of their two
years of planning and organizing. Each day
featured free programming including dance
and music performances, art installations,
lectures and workshops, as well as free
meals from The Free Cafe, a cooperative
kitchen and popular meeting place at
Streetopia’s Market Street home base, The
Luggage Store Gallery. In the end,
.Streetopia featured work from more than
i
PHOTO BY BOOKLYN
Above: “Streetopia, ” edited by E rick Lyle,
includes photographs a n d speeches fro m the
2012 S a n Francisco a rt fa ir Streetopia.
Top: Ryder Cooley performs a t the Streetopia
Free Cafe in S a n Francisco.
100 artists and activists including Swoon,
Barry McGee and Emory Douglas, all
exploring what the Mid-Market area could
be if determined by its residents instead of
city officials and the tech companies they
courted.
The legacy of Streetopia is memorialized
in the documentary book “Streetopia,”
edited by Lyle and including photographs
and speeches from Streetopia and essays
about the event’s impact. With .writing from
Rebecca Solnit, Chris Kraus and Sarah
Schulman and interviews with Streetopia’s
participants, the book hums with the
energy of the original art fair, whose ideas
and discussions remain relevant to
gentrifying city residents today.
Lyle spoke to Street Roots by phone from
his home, now in Brooklyn, about
Streetopia the show, “Streetopia” the book,
and how artists and gentrification interact.
A n n -D errick G aillot: W hat went into the
p la n n in g o f Streetopia?
E rick Lyle: I had been pretty heavily
involved in art and activism and music
scenes in San Francisco, so I knew quite a
few people and I had a sense of what kinds
of things people could offer such a large-
scale extravaganza. It was a very proactive
focus. The idea was, what do we want it to
be like, more than, what are we opposing.
A.G.: In your essay (in Streetopia), “Utopia
in the Tenderloin,”you write, “TheFree Cafe
would quietly become the most im portant p a rt
o f the entire Streetopia show, the place where
the show ’s very values were p u t to the test.”
Can you talk a bit more about its importance
a n d h o w it p u t theshow ’s values to the test?
page
the conditions
In Portland are
really difficult
for housing
right new, so
I would hope
that people
would come and
see the people
around them
and he encour­
aged by the DIY
spirit and
optimism of
Streetopia/'
ERICK LYLE,
EDITOR OF
'STREETOPIA1