Bikes in the Mission

There was so much visual goodness in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood during Sunday Streets that I couldn’t help but add another post about it. This one is about bikes. So many bikes! I know this post seems more relevant to fashion or industrial design, but one of the bikes is also a piano- that’s furniture related, eh? Besides, creativity, regardless of the type, can always cross over and inspire us in our own design field. What was so great about the bikes was that they were like moving art. Multimedia installations of recreation and eccentricity.

There was the fuchsia duo emitting bubbles to the crowd’s delight.

My sister-in-law, Lobna, poses with this piano tricycle dude.

The double decker bikes whose riders got on so effortlessly. How do they do it????

And last but not least, these two were powering a band’s performance on this bicycle-thingie. Wow! Respect.

Oh, and I don’t have a photo, but ‘Deep from San Francisco’s Flashdance was there with his sound system 3-wheeler “trikeasurus” blaring out tunes as he wove his way through the Sunday Streeters. Very cool.

SF’s Sunday Streets in the Mission

It’s May and festival season has officially started! Today we took my sister-in-law Lobna, who’s visiting from Cairo, to her (and our) first Sunday Streets- a free festival/street party extraordinaire taking place every 2nd Sunday in one of San Francisco’s fabulous neighborhoods. Today’s happened to be in the Mission, which I hear is one of the best ones, and although I haven’t been to any other Sunday Streets yet, I agree already! As we walked down Valencia we found this fantastic retro loveseat on the sidewalk.  It was on display in front of a furniture store, and was a great place to stop for a sec and people watch.

Another great thing about events in the Mission: murals and graffiti make a great backdrop for all the craziness going on!

But my favorite visual of the day had to be the little band entertaining the crowd from their 1st floor apartment window along 24th street. It was one of those groups of people and environments that is just so cool, it makes you feel so uncool. Yeah, I know, we’re all cool in our own special way, but you know what I mean! I wish I could have gotten better photos to do justice to their small, dark, art-filled studio/theater/bay window but the light was not in my favor (and I was using my camera phone- lame). Oh and they sounded great, too.

We had a terrific time enjoying everything SF, got about 3 hours of exercise walking the streets and Lobna got some great pics to take home.