Photo by Lydia Chávez

I walked by this mural on Monday and remembered the wonderful story that  did on the mural and its history and thought that for those of you who are new to the Mission, you might be interested in reading it.

Here’s a snippet, but click on this link as there is a wonderful slideshow and article at the end of it.

Lou Dematteis was simply taking pictures. He used his Nikon F2 to document the first-ever 1979 Carnaval parade. From there, Carnaval committee member Mauricio Aviles pushed to get a selection of the photos onto a city mural.

“I was very happy to give [Aviles] my images,” said Dematteis. “I was a big proponent of neighborhood and community art.”

Twenty-eight years later, “Carnaval,” showcasing real people, real establishments and the real energy of the Mission, remains – dimmer, but still very much alive on 24th and South Van Ness.

“It’s the joy of life coming into the streets — it’s thrilling,” said Dan Fontes, one of five artists who worked on the mural with lead artist Daniel Galvez. READ MORE .

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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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1 Comment

  1. My father Jose humberto Aguilar aka Pelon is the man in the window and Lulu my half sister mother. The guy in the red shirt is my half bother James Aguilar. My father owned a auto body shop on 16th and Van ness. So many memories in the mission. I am 3rd generation ofy Nicoya roots

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