Day 52 of the 16th St. crackdown: Plein air oil painter arrives amid lull

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Ariel Liu sat in the southwest corner of 16th and Mission BART Plaza at 1:03 p.m. Friday, oil paints and brushes arranged on a folding tray placed on her lap. On the canvas in front of her, the silhouette of an older man sitting stark and steady on the plaza steps was already emerging.

“People stay still enough for me to paint—that’s a really big thing,” Liu, an oil painter, said, of the plaza. “I feel like I could probably paint here every single day for the next several months and not run out of ideas.”

Liu has lived in the Mission on and off for five years, she said, but only started painting here last week, inspired by an open call for artwork “from the Mission and about the Mission” hosted by Mission Bowling Club. “I thought, if I want to paint about the Mission, I should be out here—on the street—actually engaging with it.”

As she spoke, the man she was painting never moved. His posture—shoulders slumped, hands resting by his side—seemed to confirm what Liu already believed: that there’s a stillness in this plaza, even in the middle of its noise.

Just a year ago, she said, she wouldn’t have sat here for any length of time.

“I would have been like, oh, hell no,” Liu said. 

“I used to go to the Manny’s trash cleanup,” she recalled, referring to cleanups organized by Manny’s at the intersection of Valencia and 16th streets. “Ten people out here, and we would fill dozens of bags of trash just from the plaza.”

Now, she said,  it’s cleaner and safer. And her presence is appreciated. People have come up to her and thanked her for sitting out there and painting.

Earlier this week, officials talked to more than 150 residents about the city’s efforts at 16th and Mission streets.

Mission Local has been visiting the plazas daily and today spent more time at the plazas and side streets to get a better sense of the city’s efforts.

Between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., city presence on the plazas remained steady but subdued. The Homeless Outreach Team (HOT) made brief appearances, while San Francisco police and Department of Public Works (DPW) workers cycled through in familiar patterns—light walkthroughs on the plazas and sidewalks of 16th and Mission, and vehicle patrols of Caledonia, Julian, Wiese, Capp, and 17th Streets. Most interactions were low-contact: officers largely stayed in vehicles, HOT staff engaged minimally, and individuals moved slowly away when vehicles approached. Few direct conversations or interventions took place.

HOT staff were spotted on four occasions: one employee entering the Gubbio Project around 9:30 a.m.; a brief conversation with two individuals near Gubbio at 10:56 a.m.; a white sedan with three HOT workers exiting Julian westbound onto Mission at 11:21 a.m.; two workers distributed snacks to individuals seated in front of Mission Neighborhood Resource Center on Capp Street at 1:31 p.m. In nearly all cases, HOT workers remained inside or beside parked vehicles, and kept interactions brief.

DPW presence was more consistent, with workers on foot clearing trash along 16th, 17th, Julian, and Wiese throughout the morning. One crew, which passed through the area at 10:41 a.m, said they were only responsible for clearing the sidewalks surrounding Mission Plaza Apartments, a public housing complex facing the southwest plaza. 

SFPD officers drove slowly back and forth along Wiese and Julian, occasionally pausing with lights on. At 1:40 p.m., a patrol car entered Wiese and idled for eight minutes as people who had gathered on the sidewalk slowly cleared out. Officers never exited their vehicle. Other squad cars looped repeatedly around Mission Bank on 16th and Julian Avenue, as well as 17th and Capp streets.

Andrew Sickens, a resident ofJulian Street, said that he once again found himself intervening directly in public drug use around the plazas. Around 9:30 a.m., he said, he asked three people using foil and torch lighters near his home to move along. “It’s a daily thing,” he continued, adding that he also regularly cleans the sidewalk. Sickens pointed across the street to a pile of human waste. It had been there for two days, he said. At 1:05 p.m., the pile was still there.

By 2 p.m., city staff at the plaza had thinned. The northeast plaza remained unoccupied by both DPW and SFPD, as city workers and outreach teams cleared out.