I imagine we would all like to receive the message that awaits Jacob this morning in Dolores Park. Earlier today, his friend from high school, Adrienne Sevilla, laid out rose petals in the shape of a heart on a slope of the northwest corner of the park.
“Love or Lunacy?” the artist asks, in petals, below the heart.
Sevilla and Jacob both live on the streets. The ephemeral art was simply her way of saying that she was sorry for not hanging out last night. He’s just a friend, said the artist who also paints and makes jewelry.
By 9 a.m., she had finished her composition and was ready to dash off on her bike.
This is what she left behind for Jacob.
Heart, by Adrienne Sevilla. Photo by Lydia Chávez.Adrienne Sevilla. Photo by Lydia Chávez.
I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still here.
As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.
As founder/executive editor at ML, I've been trying to figure out how to make my interest in local news sustainable. If Mission Local is a model, the answer might be that you - the readers - reward steady and smart content. As a thank you for that support we work every day to make our content even better.
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