Bus stop on Masonic Street, near Oak, Haight-Ashbury. When I first saw it I thought “How cool.” Someone in the neighborhood is having a little fun. San Francisco, be sure to wear flowers in your hair, right? The plastic flowers and fruits on top of the bus stop certainly looked like they had been found over the weekend at a yard sale in Concord, smuggled across the Bay Bridge and re-purposed as art. I even suspected the artist was probably watching me from the window in the apartment above as I snapped photos.
Yet something about this didn’t seem right. Muni, San Francisco’s beleaguered public transportation system certainly wouldn’t let plastic flowers and fruit sit on top of one of its shelters for long if it was an act of urban guerrilla artistry. But — if it were part of a multi-million dollar ad campaign by Degree deodorant? Well, there’s a good chance those flowers on this Masonic Street bus stop (as well as those in other parts of the country, including one on Chestnut St. in San Francisco) will be there for a very long time.
Photo by KazzaDrask Media via Twitpic.
Kathy Drasky regularly writes about online culture. Her marketing and communications work with the ANZA Technology Network, Advance Global Australians and with various Australians and Australian enterprises has led to at least a dozen trips Down Under.
An accomplished digital photographer, her photos have appeared in 7×7 Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and Google Schmap.
