Ruth Asawa's “San Francisco Yesterday and Today”

After our visit to the Luggage Store Annex & the Tenderloin National Forest, we headed off to celebrate Amy's birthday.  En route we came upon the Parc 55 Hotel and took a detour inside to see Ruth Asawa's magnificent panels, "San Francisco Yesterday and Today." 

Seven bas-relief panels, sculpted from baker's dough by many hands, were installed in the porte-cochère of the Parc 55 Hotel in 1984 — The work celebrates it's 30th birthday this year. http://www.ruthasawa.com/art/pub6.html

Francisco Yesterday and Today" by Ruth Asawa. 

Assisted by Addie Lanier, Paul Lanier, Mae Lee, Robert Radziejewski, Peter Morenstein, Sara Morgan, Naoe Fukuyama, Mary Lee, Erwin Lerias, Aiko Cunieo, Tamie Passalalpi. 

Dedicated October 4, 1984.

Cast by Lafayette Mfg. Inc., 1984. 

The panels illustrate a variety of modes of transportation used by San Franciscans. If you look closely, you can see evidence of the Asawa family's longstanding support of arts education for San Francisco school communities.

School of the Arts at the McAteer Campus

Alvarado School sits below Sutro Tower

Rooftop's school mascot King Kong on top of the Transamerica Pyramid

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To wrap up our art day, we celebrated Amy's Birthday at Puccini & Panetti's.

Here’s the fun Tenderloin trivia that bought us lunch with a gift certificate from SHN.

Name the Broadway stars who were drawn by the Line King, Al Hirschfeld in the poster commemorating the 1979 "Best of Broadway" reopening of the Golden Gate Theatre.

(Answer: Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, Richard Burton in Camelot, Dick van Dyke in The Music Man, with a special toast to Alexis Smith who starred as Miss Mona in the National touring production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas!)

Here's a perfect lyric by composer/lyricist Carol Hall to accompany our day:

It's just a little bitty pissant country place

Ain't nothin' much to see

No drinking allowed, we get a nice quiet crowd, plain as it can be

It's just a piddly squatin' old time country place

Ain't nothing to hide at all

Just lots of good will and maybe one small thrill

But there's nothing dirty going on

Nothing dirty going on

Source: San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library

For a great website on the history of the Tenderloin, visit Up From The Deep.