Blank Walls Better than Murals

Is mural fever once again sweeping Ukiah? 

Ukiah went a hundred years without murals, and today you can hardly spit without hitting one, hint hint. Having learned nothing from the examples that festoon city exteriors, there is talk of yet another mural, our umpteenth in 15 years. Why now?

Were citizens 100 years ago ignorant of art? Unaware of beauty? Not from the appearance of surviving buildings and homes of that era, which indicate a better looking town than today.

Were city leaders back then shortsighted and disinclined to undertake civic improvements, great and small? Not if we judge by what they left behind: Todd Grove Park, Anton Stadium, our swimming pool complex and well designed streets and boulevards.

So why murals now? Are we afraid to seem judgmental? Do we think we’re empowering children? Or are murals the end product of grant money funding nonprofit agencies that invent feel-good programs fueling the idea that spending money on art results in beauty?

Nothing suggests this latter notion is true. Not a single local mural has improved the blank wall it covers. These ugly, primitive works are a sad series from artists with no skills showcasing naive political views, glued together with stale hippie philosophical residue. 

(Not all murals. Lauren Sinnott’s on Church starting at School Street, is an epic that draws together elements of the past into a cohesive whole, a grand achievement by an artist who deserves to be called one. She’s obviously trained and skilled and earned her way into the select arena of accomplished muralists.) 

But today we’re forever eager to issue paint buckets and brushes to anyone with nothing better to do, then lead them to a blank downtown wall to inflict whatever visual damage they can, which always turns out to be a lot. 

Allowing governing agencies to collect grants and dispense funding for art projects can only lead us to where we are, though it took 100 years to get here.

Fruits, Veggies, Problems

We all admire the lone fellow who starts at the bottom with nothing but a shovel and a wheelbarrow, works hard until he’s able to afford more tools, a used pickup and a couple employees. Eventually he builds a robust gardening business his children inherit and take to greater heights.

This is America of course, and so the story and dream have been repeated countless times in fields as disparate as construction, clothing, wineries and restaurants. Everyone applauds and roots for the little guy.

And that’s why we’re of two minds when we observe the spread of small fruit & vegetable stands around town. On one hand a popup peddler might be an heroic little guy, (though funding sources for these stands remains a mystery). On the other hand, who is looking out for longstanding merchants trying to make a living under rules and regulations the popup operators ignore?

A block from my house a fellow built a large display on a neighbor’s front lawn. Around town mini-stores sell everything from flowers and candy to teddy bears and items familiar in any gift shop in Ukiah.

But Ukiah shopkeepers are required to pay rent, get taxed, licensed and regulated. Supermarkets like Food For Less depend heavily on sales from produce sections; last week a stand selling fruits and vegetables appeared in the Food For Less parking lot. 

Where do their goods originate? How do they cross the border(s)? When does the FDA inspect food items? Where do the profits go? 

City officials need to talk. The city has to realize that if left unchecked, streetside vendors will multiply, shopkeepers will mutiny, the tax base will dwindle and Ukiah will devolve into an impoverished, third world collection of ragtag rogue operations.

P.J. O’Rourke

A belated tribute beats none, and I’d regret offering no praise for one of the towering figures in the past 50 years of American writers.

P.J. O’Rourke blazed a path through a sclerotic news landscape beginning in the 1970s as writer and editor of the National Lampoon, and from there never slowed until cancer took him out a couple weeks ago. He was a marvel.

P.J. was born in Toledo and was among the first liberal journalists of our generation to outgrow the mean, pinched world of leftism. He adopted a jovial “pants-down Republican” approach to life and writing; he loved and wrote about fast shiny cars, good aged whiskey, and drugs for fun. He was a brilliant, funny writer, seemingly unable to produce a paragraph free from scalding humor.

P.J. O’Rourke, along with H.L. Mencken, was a major influence in my own modest keyboard undertakings. They defined and expanded what the art of writing on deadline could be.

But it was P.J.’s gentle, savage mockeries of our politicians, plus his cheerfully brutal insights into the follies of American society, that were his literary gift; he passed his gifts along to us. 

(TWK gets the byline, but poor Tom Hine does all the work. They sometimes live in Ukiah, and sometimes get along with each other.)