#vaillancourt fountain

[grrlmusic]

Vincent Woo

[therkalexander]

Goodbye, Vaillancourt Fountain.

You were a wonder, a safety hazard, and easily the weirdest thing in a city that also features a wave organ that sounds like a pelican choking on a burger.

The first time I saw you, I said aloud what the FUCK is that thing. In front of my kid and I work really really hard not to swear in front of him. Your twisted concrete columns, your putrid green water, the rusted outlooks i had to keep kiddo from climbing…

We need more public art like you. Not less. I’m serious. We need more thoughtful goddamn ugly public art if for no other reason than because it breaks people out of their solipsism and gets them talking.

The boundaries of human imagination and expression need to be stretched, not allowed to atrophy into what’s safe and palatable.

The City is just a little more beige and blah today, a little more techie campus, a little less city of the people, another toll of the bell for what used to be a rippling art and culture center. And every time that happens it’s like a death.

It was sculpted as a reaction to the real ugliness of I-480 cutting through the Embarcadero, the long scar of an elevated freeway that was finally taken down by the Loma Prieta earthquake.

Here it is in earlier days, before the rust and green water when it was just as fucking ugly and lovely

And what will inevitably l replace it will be more blah and beige. Even if it’s a public artwork it will be safe and easy. If it’s remotely interesting it might become a background for a million duck faced instagram posts. But it will barely register in the unconscious mind. It will say less than its intent and mean even less than that to those who view it.

When we live in a world that doesn’t give us a chance to say what the fuck is that we all suffer on a cellular level.

RIP fountain.

[vrupatel]

[sanfranciscoblog]

Vaillancourt Fountain at Embarcadero Plaza by artist Armand Vaillancourt.

[joeygallagher]

Bono spray paints the Vaillancourt Fountain

Justin Herman Plaza / Embarcadero

San Francisco, CA (11/11/87)

Photo by Fred Larson / SF Chronicle

[dbguidebook]

runneth over // darling bonnie was here: vaillancourt fountain / san francisco, ca. #societythings

[bhautikj]

pisses purgings As seen in Justin Herman Plaza, San Francisco.

[joeygallagher]

Québec libre !

Vaillancourt Fountain

Justin Herman Plaza - Embarcadero

San Francisco, CA (2019)