From the window of a northbound 14R moving up Mission Street, muralist Ernesto Paul came into view, brush in hand and crouched outside That’s It Market at 23rd and Mission streets. He wore white Ben Davis overalls and a Warriors cap. A mural was underway.
Paul, 68, a self-taught muralist and commercial painter, has been making art since he was 15. Born in San Diego, he got his start under the Coronado Bridge at Chicano Park. Since then he’s painted in Germany, Paradise, California, and Los Angeles, but keeps returning to San Francisco, where his work can be found above El Farolito, on 23rd and Harrison streets, and across multiple walls on Treat and Alabama streets.
“This is the middle of the Mission mile,” he said as he leaned one hand on a milk crate and slowly rose to his feet. The old That’s It sign, he said, once proudly declared the shop was located in “the center of the Mission Mile.” The corner store again gained brief notoriety after Anthony Bourdain visited in 2009 for his show “No Reservations” and ate a giant Cuban torta from the sandwich shop inside.
Paul’s mural of dancing beer bottles and musical notes is vivid, surreal, and improvisational. “Right now, it’s off the top of my head,” he said. “I had drawings before, but it doesn’t look anything like them now.”
Instead of following a plan, he lets the storefront’s textures and the moment guide the brush.
As he took a few steps back to get a better look at the mural, he reflected on a mural’s deeper role as a form of cultural geography. “Every community has their own murals: Chinatown, Japantown, the Haight, Bayview,” he said. “You show the culture to people.”
This current iteration, his fourth version of the wall since first painting it in 1995, is done in bright acrylics over marble and glass. It marks a nearly 30-year relationship with the same storefront, a rare kind of consistency in the ever-changing Mission.
He describes the style as “commercial, with Mission flavor.”
“In some cities,” he said, “you can only use beige, white, and brown. Here? I use yellow, red; something that grabs people walking or driving by. It’s gotta catch the eye.”
It worked. From the 14R-Mission Rapid, it was hard not to rubberneck to see the building’s façade get a fresh splash of life.
Paul has even hand-lettered the signage above the shop, and says his son designed the logo. “He used to work with me,” Paul said. “Now he’s got a family of his own. Me? I’ll probably still be painting another 30 years.”
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