ORIGINAL SAN FRANCISCO ART DEPT:
Vesuvio Café, San Francisco. North Beach neighborhood, ground zero for the original San Francisco art and the west coast beat scenes. Beardo poets and scraggly “cats” and “chicks” with black turtlenecks and sleek ebony pageboy cuts and pale skin like Morticia Addams contrasted with dark red lipstick. Cats with dirty feet and red eyes and scrappy little beards. And this is in Ike’s America, mind you. The fiftiest part of the 1950s. But in Vesuvio, another reality swung in full.
And by gad, the place is still there! Still funky and still worth hanging out in. I know because I lived in SF for two years in the ’90s and spent hours at Vesuvio, the daytime doors wide open, letting that cool wet air roll in off Columbus Avenue on those quiet August afternoons. The place packed with buzzed tourists on Friday nights, the main floor hot with humanity’s humidity and the mezzanine just broiling. And then again, if you happened to be there early in the day you could get a civilized cup of coffee, sit at the table by the eastern Columbus-side window, and read your SF Weekly, Bay Guardian or even Herb Caen in the SF Chronicle if you wanted, all calm and quiet, just you, your java and your paper.
Damn, I love Vesuvio.
ORIGINAL SAN FRANCISCO ART FOR SALE NOW
Which is why I drew it, and printed it up as one of the Great Good Places of San Francisco. And now I’m putting the original ink work up for sale on my site. This original San Francisco art is 18″ by 14″, perfect for a standard size frame. It’s India ink on heavy 140-pound cold press Fabriano watercolor paper, which is some of the best stuff I’ve ever worked with. Seriously, it’s good. And it’s beautiful.
So check it out here if you’re interested in owning some original San Francisco art of this fantastic, historic and lovely place. And when in SF, please don’t forget to visit Vesuvio, after (or, hell, even before) that huge lunch in Chinatown. Take it in. Sit in the Morticia Addams chair to your right as you walk through the door and enjoy a fresh Anchor Steam beer or an icy-but-warming martini with three olives. Read Dan Savage in the Weekly (if they still carry him). Write some postcards at the bar and thank bejesus that you remembered to bring a hoodie on your jaunt to the wharf, because holy crap is it cold. But not you. You’re warm in ten different ways, ensconced in the rich organic goodness of Vesuvio.
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