The Bayview Graffiti Warehouse: The Bombers' Temple

In the weary streets of the Bayview district, slabbed down against the gooey Bay waters of the Central Waterfront, nestled in between the funneling lines of the colossal highway buzzing with destination and a shiny skate park clanking with consecration, lies a behemoth brick and cement structure, abandoned by those in charge of the means of production, opening up the space for its artistic renovation.


Seek and ye' shall find the foreboding gateway to a land few and far between in these modern days of urban gloss overs. Jump the weeded blocks, scale the seaweed clad fence, rusted by the hands of bronzed clams, and fiddling through clunking sewage waters, just a hopscotch distance from brittle tire isles, a punctured tin opening calls to you, my wide eyed urban explorer.

The solid tin lining of the gateway reach towards the heavens like a Romanesque Church's ribbed vaults. Paralleling the hierarchal scaling of Church murals that divides the secular and the sacred, the graffiti elevates in accordance with risks indulged and craftsmanship mastered. The ambitious bomber seeks the highest point to make a mark that leaves a legacy.

And just like the sweeping windows of a thick walled basilica, the white sunlight washes the towering gateway in a luminescent glow, spotlighting stylized letters of the English language, bathing wooden planks and haloing swirling lines in a celestial splendor.

Oh, let us baptize this behemoth the Bombers' Temple by dunking its goliath skull into a vat of bubbling aerosol. I walk softly on my toes in your gateway with head cocked upwards so as to respect the gods and their idols that leave behind their earthly spirits to linger naturally according to the toils of time!

But higher than all fly the nomadic pigeons, who dive through the broken plexiglass and swoop across the rectangular arches, finding refuge in the heights that encourage an avian paradise for feces dropping and psychotic wing flapping. Tarred feathers stick to the muddied grayish black soil that mars the gateway floors, making the city slicked explorer trudge deep through even more shit to pass through the portal.


Slide through the portal, and cross the brightly lit basilica that stretches further into the outlands, supported by cigar shaped drum columns, each colored with vibrant geometrical designs overlapping one another in a fresco frenzy. A coating of sandpapered wood chips graces the floor, fooling the visitor in a disturbing trompe l'oiel, as if the ground was the natural soil of the Earth, and not the desolated erosion of human junk.


I know not of the machinery that still straddles the many rooms of this behemoth warehouse. Perhaps ships used to be stationed in the stalls, like horses waiting for the necessary cycles of grooming and sleeping, or perhaps even a changing of parts, hanging on tightly to the same definitive form, but gradually becoming a whole new structure over the course of many physical replacements of parts.

At what point may we call the abandoned warehouse an urban museum, glorifying the works of hundreds of participating community artists, and free to the public viewing for appreciation, cognitive development, and cultural criticism?





View the entire flickr set here.