TODCO Community Art Initiatives

Celebrate The Soul of San Francisco

The Bay Area mass transit system transformed San Francisco into a corporate and finance headquarters of the Pacific, generating enormous wealth for the powerful. But as it was being constructed here in San Francisco, it threatened the Mission District with bulldozer redevelopment and gentrified displacement of its people.

In 1973 the Latino community arose in response, the Mission Coalition Organization, and other groups, to protest, oppose, and stop that top-down agenda for the future for their Latino neighborhood.

This revolutionary energy ignited a new era of Mission Latino community art and culture still embodied in surviving murals today throughout the neighborhood. The landmark 24th Street Station BART Plaza mural “BART” painted by Michael Rios with Anthony Machado and Richard Montez in 1975 following that seminal year of BART’s birth, powerfully depicts the crushing load of the elite BART vision on the shoulders of the Mezo-American peoples de La Misión.

Michael Rios and associates are now undertaking the mural’s three week full restoration process sponsored by the Calle 24 Latino Cultural District, coordinated by Precita Eyes Muralists, and funded by a $140,000 grant from the TODCO Group.

Rios, now 75 years old, and TODCO’s Artist In Residence, was first inspired as a young Latino artist by the great muralists of Mexico, Rivera, Orozco, and Sigueiros. In 1974 he brought his vision for the Mission neighborhood’s new BART station plaza to San Francisco Arts Commission President Ray Taliaferro, and with logistical support from the Commission and a $7,500 grant from the National Endowment For The Arts, Michael and his two colleagues completed the work… [read more]

THE UNTOLD STORY: HOW YERBA BUENA BECAME A REAL NEIGHBORHOOD