The Upper Left quadrant of the Outer Sunset. There’s an anti-branding maker’s aesthetic here: hand ground coffee, chalkboard encomiums to the fog itself, a surf shop where neighbors make art on the couch and an ocean where dolphins and seals and surfers actually introduce themselves. And most recently the opening of the Carville Annex, named after the Outer Sunset’s first business, a speakeasy which served the residents of the abandoned boxcars dotting the miles of dunes that made up San Francisco’s Outside Lands. Like its predecessor, the modern day Annex seeks to provide a community space, a stopping spot for the creative folk who seem increasingly drawn by the unique traits of SF’s largest, but most often overlooked, district.
Along with a small, street-level gallery, the Annex offers second floor studio spaces, currently utilized by four artists, one writer, and one musician, arranged around a common space. More than any other aspect, this common space is key to the Annex’s mission: to provide a hub for the growing community of artists who have decided, with inexplicably consistent definitiveness, to call the Sunset their home. As one friend from out of town put it, “Folks just seem to be around in this neighborhood.” A community of beach bums, one might conclude? Quite the opposite… like the decision to live along SF’s sandy fringe, projects spawned by this community seem most often approached with a shared tenacity and enthusiasm that could be explained by the invigorating sea air, but is very much fueled by another Judah Beach characteristic, simple neighborliness.
We love this place! We ask ourselves: Why? Something is happening here. What? And, is this gentrification that will lead to any group’s exclusion? Does connection to place diffuse after a critical mass? What do ideas of location mean for us as artists and makers? How can a community face consciously, and with care, the issues of its next incarnation?