Volunteers Restore Vandalized Mural as Oceanfront Park Project Moves Forward

The day after the Upper Great Highway closed permanently to cars, the first piece of public art created to transform the space into an oceanfront park was vandalized.

Organizers of the project weren’t deterred and on Monday debuted the full lineup of temporary artworks set to adorn the roadway in time for the park’s official grand opening next month.

On Saturday morning, neighbors found a white spray-painted squiggly line defacing the 60-foot mural that artist Emily Fromm had been painting on the backside of Judah Street’s beachfront public restrooms for the past six weeks.

Fromm said on Instagram that she had been on track to finish the project this week, but repainting large sections of the work, tentatively titled “A History of Play,” would delay completion by about a month if she had to work alone.

“This was pretty devastating,” she told KQED in an interview. “I always put a protective coating on my murals for graffiti once they are done, but the mural was not done. It had a couple of days left to be finished, so it could not be scrubbed off or removed. We had to repaint everything.”

More than 100 volunteers showed up to help restore the work over the weekend. Fromm said she’s confident the piece will be completed by Friday.

“I’m so, so happy and grateful we were able to turn something like this into an act of community activism,” she told KQED.

“Whoever did this, and why ever they did it, it didn’t have the desired effect,” said Heidi Moseson of Friends of Ocean Beach Park.

The nonprofit group, which is helping lead the roadway’s transformation with the Recreation and Parks Department, filed a police report over the vandalism Saturday.

The incident comes amid simmering tension between supporters of the new park and opponents who want to restore oceanfront vehicle access between Lake Merced and Golden Gate Park.

Last week, opponents of Proposition K, which mandated the permanent closure of a two-mile stretch of the Upper Great Highway after its passage in November, announced plans to sue the city. They argue that placing the proposition on the ballot was invalid, claiming it violates the California Vehicle Code, which grants local jurisdictions the authority to permanently close highways to cars only when local legislators determine they are “no longer needed for vehicular traffic.”

Fromm no longer lives in San Francisco and couldn’t vote on Prop. K, but she said she wasn’t immune to the community tensions while working on her mural over the past month and a half.

“Throughout the time I was working, and especially during that week [of the closure], we did receive some hateful comments in person,” she said. “People made us feel unsafe and that was really unfortunate.”

Last week, a second artist began work on another of the 16 planned artworks for the site. In the coming weeks, more artists will add colorful tributes to the Outer Sunset along the two-mile beachfront stretch.

Fromm said she hopes that the artists’ work will be respected.

“All of these lovely folks who are going to be bringing art, they’re working really hard out there to improve and benefit the community and I’m hoping people can respect them and treat them with kindness,” she said.