Miss Jo's San Francisco

MISS JO ARRIVED AN HOUR BEFORE DARK YESTERDAY FOR THE ANNUAL DAY OF THE DEAD Festival of Altars in the Mission District’s Garfield Square Park, just as the last of the lovingly created ofrendas were being set up.

At this time of year, the late afternoon light all over San Francisco is warm and golden, and south of Market the neighborhood’s old wooden Edwardian flats and storefronts seemed to glow.

By sunset, and under a full moon, altars dotted the park’s few grassy spaces, surrounded trees, adorned the soccer field fence and natatorium walls and graced sidewalks across the street, like outside the Bernal Dwellings Senior Youth Community Resource Center where the life of Sophia was being celebrated (above).

Some of the most moving altars were the tiniest, like a charcoal drawing of Ruby and Gain Fong taped to a tree trunk above a candle in a paper cup and a book of matches (below).

Speaking to the spirits of memory, one ofrenda reflected on a mother who fell to Alzheimer’s like Miss Jo’s mom. Crowning the altar was a dark pink gelatin oval with wavy striations of a brain, encircled in a halo of orange marigolds (below).

To the memory of Carolyn, there was a tiered white altar like a wedding cake for an angel, with small notes that read “Fuck Cancer.” (below).

In homage to the Mission’s carnicerias, an altar recreated a butcher’s glass case with colored tissue-paper cuts of meat (below).

Some altars embraced the dead with the abstract, like the colored yarn and small mirrors Lauren strung between trees in memory of her community-activist mom. To her web, she asked people to attach notes to their dead (below).

An altar to those who died homeless was stark in its message, “Will Die for Lack of Shelter,” tacked to a blue plastic tarp protecting a grocery cart full of possessions in plastic bags (below). On the ground were tiny cardboard tombstones with names of the departed and where their bodies were found, like under a highway overpass.

A colorful Guatemalan-inspired altar paid tribute to eight members of a Guatemala City arts organization, which has an exchange program in the Bay Area. Caja Ludica uses theater, music and street performance that encourages youth participation. Among its fallen members celebrated in the sidewalk altar were the lives of three hip hop artists advocating social change, Nexo Peneda “El Gordo,” Manuel Orozco “El Fin,” and Saulo Estrada “El Chucky” (above).

The evening built toward the 8:30 p.m. arrival in the park of the Day of the Dead procession, which started around 7 p.m. a five-minute walk away at the corner of 24th and Bryant streets. On the way there, with the sun now set, Miss Jo past several celebrations on doorsteps and more altars.

Along 24th Street leaving BART, Day of the Dead celebrants streamed by cafes and bodegas— all kinds of people of all ages carrying candles, some dressed in skeleton white-face or in ghoulish gothic.

One young woman and her friend pushed a boom box in a granny cart blaring old Michael Jackson that got people moving as it passed. (Perhaps the moving DJ later provided the soundtrack for the MJ altar in the park ?)

With the crowd’s mood seeming to wave between reflection and celebration, the procession headed down Bryant. By tradition, Aztec dancers led the peaceful throng

The rhythms of congas and bass drums set the pace, as a wooden coach out of Dickens, pulled by a team of bicyclists in skeleton face, got a lot of attention. Miss Jo thought the apparatus was out of scale for the community celebration, observed since the early 1970s.

More in spirit with the intimate nature of Day of the Dead was a group of men and women dancers joined by a satin ribbon who swirled about like old souls enjoying a visit (above).

It was on their lightness of being, and feeling full of loved ones past, that Miss Jo floated home.
Photos by Miss Jo