Ever worry that you’re imagining things? From the fact of a Current TV ad in Milan’s Pasteur subway station, to it’s content, it was hard to shake the feeling that my mind had prearranged the decor in advance of our visit to the city.
Shepard Fairey’s Obama gets the once-over treatment by a keffiyeh-savvy Italian book illustrator. I like this version more than the original, as well as the visual allusion to Jordan’s late King Hussein, the pun on Barack Hussein etc.
Last summer, discussing the new Bug record, London Zoo, an American friend remarked how many times he heard references to guns on the recording. “Its repeated so much, you’d think the record was made in the United States.” Indeed, the number of gun-related crimes in the UK pales in comparison to the US.
Though we can hear gunfire in our ‘hood (Brixton is considered Britain’s gun capital) most talk of violence in the UK news media has as of late either been in terms of reports of child abuse or stabbings. Nevertheless, certain icons, like this painting of an AK-47 on display in a Camden gallery, seem universal.
Given the current deployment of British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, the prominence of such symbols, whether in the form of paintings, or in terms of musical references, makes a great deal of sense. Especially given how, this weekend, the country focused on the deaths of four soldiers killed in Afghanistan on Friday.
The fact that a thirteen-year-old suicide bomber was responsible for the deaths of three of these troops would be enough to make anyone want to paint a Kalashknikov, let alone one that appeared to be in the process of melting.
I don’t know of another city in America with as many comparable Israel and Mideast-related visual signifiers as San Francisco. As documented in my recent Zeek photo essay, Welcome to My Neighborhood, and this blog, (and, also, in a chapter in my forthcoming book) they’re impossible to miss.
This retail display above, of the classic 1950s children’s introduction to Zionism, sits quite unselfconsciously two storefronts down from the window arrangement below, of a keffiyeh and Phoenician-themed bowls, on Valencia street. If you want a mirror of SF’s increasingly Semitic character, the proof is in the pudding.
Out running an errand later this same day, I took the following picture, below, of a pickup bearing the inscription TRUCK AK-47 on the upper left rear panel. Though there is nothing specifically Levantine about an American naming their truck after the infamous Russian assault rifle, it still made me feel more at home, however awkwardly.
Considering how common the AK-47 was in criminal circles here during the 1980s and 1990s, and before that, in Vietnam (where they were used by the Viet Cong and the NVA), and how frequently they’re encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan today, to Americans, the Kalashnikov has become synonymous with conflict.
Yesterday, Jennifer and I went looking for evidence of a recent poster campaign about Israeli Arabs, that has been taking place in San Francisco this month. Already displaced (at least in Noe Valley) by Monday Night Football ads, apparently there is one left downtown. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to capture it on film before we leave.
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