Photo Essay: Bohemian Rhapsody: The Clarion Alley Mural Project

Clarion Alley runs between Mission and Valencia parallel to 17th and 18th streets. The neighborhood news board at the Valencia end of the alley announces last year’s block party where hundreds of people gathered to dance and celebrate new art works.

I visited Clarion Alley on a much quieter Saturday while one resident swept his driveway and another reached out a DayGlo painted door to grab the morning paper. As I stopped to consider a photo angle, a woman entered the alley from Valencia Street. She looked at me with disinterest, casually pulled down her pants and urinated underneath one of artist Cynthia Ross's long-legged girls. The aroma of fresh coffee brewing in a resident's kitchen almost covered up the stench of crazy-woman piss.

Clarion Alley is gritty urban life at its finest: dozens of street art masterpieces line a full city block. Over the years, homes off this rainbow-colored alley have housed some of the City’s most bohemian artists, including the infamous Cockettes, who completely rejected the conventional rules and practices of the late 1960s. (The band was a gender-bending ensemble of both sexes who performed musicals with titles like "Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma.")

The building where both the Cockettes and the Clarion Alley Mural Project offices were once housed is now gone, but the street art of Clarion Alley remains.

Even on a quiet Saturday morning sans live music and party-goers, a tour of Clarion Alley is the hippest thing you can do in San Francisco.