“Everything about me is San Francisco,” said Jerry Ross Barrish, the artist and new owner of 33-35 Bartlett St., between 21st and 22nd Streets. “I knew [the Mission] when it was Irish, I have known it when it became Latino and I know it now.” One of his ancestors came around the Horn and settled here in the 1850s, he said.
You might already know his building. You may have watched outdoor movies projected onto its back wall from Foreign Cinema. Or, if you’ve walked down Bartlett, you know about the building’s former tenant, Santora Sales, from the mops and other cleaning equipment that graced the front window of the janitorial supplies company. Soon, the windows will be filled with art created by Barrish, a 79-year-old bail-bondsman-turned-plastics-sculptor.
Barrish discovered the warehouse for sale earlier this year and bought it immediately for $3.4 million. Having had his own idiosyncratic 50-year career in San Francisco as a bail bondsman (“Don’t perish in jail – call Barrish for bail”), he has reinvented himself as a plastics sculptor artist. The art world ranks plastic as the lowliest of creative materials. Not unlike keeping people out of jail, Barrish seeks to save plastic from an unworthy, destitute end. He only uses discarded plastics he finds on the beach at his Pacifica home and at recycling centers. His sculptures are large human-like stick figures, reminiscent of the way children tend to draw people: thin and long-limbed, they express themselves through art and eccentric outfits.
Lately, Santora Sales owner Abel David has been moving merchandise out of the 5700-square-foot warehouse. As he moves his pallets to his new warehouse in South San Francisco, incoming pallets stacked with toilet paper, toilet seat liners, disinfectant and floor cleaning products continue to arrive and have to be redirected. Shelving and outdated supplies are waiting to be donated.
Santora Sales has operated from the Bartlett location since 1984, when Magnhild Santora opened shop, replacing a carpet company. Although recently divorced from her husband, she kept his name, wanting to prove that “she could make it,” David said. Her ex-husband died in 2011, but his supply store, Santora Apartment and Business Supplies at 825 Valencia St., is still owned by their children and run by a management team.
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David joined Magnhild Santora in 1989 as an accountant to help the business grow, and formally took over when Magnhild retired. He bought the building from her in 2012 for $1.3 million, but recently decided to sell. “I only wanted to sell to someone who was going to contribute to the neighborhood” said David. Barrish fit that bill. “It’s not all about money. Kids will be impressed by recycled art. We need these kinds of ideals to help save the Earth!” For his part, he’s relieved to downsize the janitorial business and wants to focus on importing rum that is currently aging in Manila, the city he grew up in.
In the years he owned Santora Sales, the block underwent many changes. The New Mission Theater had become a thrift store before it re-emerged as a multiplex in December of 2015. In January of that year, the Mission Market on the corner of 22nd and Mission Street burned down, and a large, empty lot remains while, next door, the brand-new eight-story condo building called Vida had just begun selling its 114 units.
For years, Bartlett Street was also undergoing an extensive makeover that often made it inaccessible. “It looked like the world was coming to an end,” said Padmatara, a resident of the San Francisco Buddhist Center, right next door to Santora Sales. The block had turned into a no man’s land. She described a former neighbor living on the back roof of the unoccupied New Mission Theater, who would only come down to sell drugs. He vanished at some point during the renovation.
Barrish is hoping to add a second floor that will serve as his workshop. Art will be displayed on one portion of the ground floor and another section will be rented out to a commercial gallery.
An estimated thousand pieces will be coming from Barrish’s old warehouse in the Dogpatch. Three hundred pieces will fit on the ground floor and the rest will be stored upstairs, waiting for their rotating turn. Having already hired an architect and requested the proper building permits, Barrish isn’t taking it slow: “I am almost 80. I don’t know how much time I have.”
The documentary Plastic Man came out in 2014, chronicling the life and times of Jerry Ross Barrish.
