On June 29, 1776, Fr. Francisco Palou dedicated the first site of Mission San Francisco de Asis on the shores of Dolores Lagoon. At the time, it was a just a patch in the village of Chutchuii, the home of the Ohlone people, and Palou could never have foreseen the vibrant city that would eventually spring up around the humble settlement. The final mission building, popularly known as Mission Dolores and San Francisco's oldest complete structure, was dedicated on August 2, 1791, at what became Sixteenth and Dolores Streets. After the gold rush, the district around the mission began its dramatic evolution to the diverse area we know today, a bustling mix of immigrants from other states, Europe, and South and Central America.

In the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, residents of the city’s iconic Mission District bucked the city-wide development plan, defiantly announcing that in their neighborhood, they would be calling the shots. Ever since, the Mission has become known as a city within a city, and a place where residents have, over the last century, organized and reorganized themselves to make the neighborhood in their own image. In Making the Mission, Ocean Howell tells the story of how residents of the Mission District organized to claim the right to plan their own neighborhood and how they mobilized a politics of place and ethnicity to create a strong, often racialized identity—a pattern that would repeat itself again and again throughout the twentieth century. Surveying the perspectives of formal and informal groups, city officials and district residents, local and federal agencies, Howell articulates how these actors worked with and against one another to establish the very ideas of the public and the public interest, as well as to negotiate and renegotiate what the neighborhood wanted. In the process, he shows that national narratives about how cities grow and change are fundamentally insufficient; everything is always shaped by local actors and concerns.

With 600 stunning photographs, this comprehensive book showcases more than three decades of street art in San Francisco's legendary Mission District. Beginning in the early 1970s, a provocative street-art movement combining elements of Mexican mural painting, surrealism, pop art, urban punk, eco-warrior, cartoon, and graffiti has flourished in this dynamic, multicultural community. Rigo, Las Mujeres Muralistas, Gronk, Barry McGee (Twist), R. Crumb, Spain Rodriguez, the Billboard Liberation Front, Swoon, Sam Flores, Neckface, Shepard Fairey, Juana Alicia, Os Gemeos, Reminesce, and Andrew Schoultz are among the many artists who have made the streets of the Mission their public gallery. Essays and commentaries by insiders involved with the movement document the artistic, social, and political forces that have shaped Mission Muralismo.

"A beautiful coffee table book celebrating the Maestrapeace Mural that adorns San Francisco Mission District's Women's Building, in time for the 25th anniversary of the mural in 2019"--

A photographic trip through San Franciscos legendary district, the changes it has experienced, and those that it faces.

John Ross has been living in the old colonial quarter of Mexico City for the last three decades, a rebel journalist covering Mexico and the region from the bottom up. He is filled with a gnawing sense that his beloved Mexico City's days as the most gargantuan, chaotic, crime-ridden, toxically contaminated urban stain in the western world are doomed, and the monster he has grown to know and love through a quarter century of reporting on its foibles and tragedies and blight will be globalized into one more McCity. El Monstruo is a defense of place and the history of that place. No one has told the gritty, vibrant histories of this city of 23 million faceless souls from the ground up, listened to the stories of those who have not been crushed, deconstructed the Monstruo's very monstrousness, and lived to tell its secrets. In El Monstruo, Ross now does.

A must-have for any street art enthusiast, this book presents the most mind blowing examples of renegade creativity in San Francisco. San Francisco's vibrant street art scene exists in areas off the city's well-worn tourist paths. The alleyways and hidden side streets of the Haight, the Tenderloin, and especially the Mission district's Clarion Alley offer unexpected treats to visitors lucky enough to stumble upon them. For more than five years, photographer Steve Rotman has obsessively documented this scene as it evolved on walls, sidewalks, billboards, fences, doors, and other public spaces. Culled from thousands of images, the result is a collection of work that attests to the artists' personal and stylistic diversity, from Mars1's robotic depictions of alternate universes which reflect the local counterculture spirit, to Neck Face's whimsically ghoulish creatures that serve as a testament to entrepreneurial hipsterdom, to Bigfoot's friendly green primates inspired by the area's rich graffiti culture. San Francisco's charm as an international destination also causes foreign artists to contribute to the street dialogue--Brazilian duo Os Gemeos, Londoner D*Face and German painter Dome have all graced the city's walls with their unique points of view. An enterprising photographer, Rotman has forged relationships with many of these often-reclusive artists, allowing him access to some of the lesser-known corners of the street art world.