All That Glitters: Sgt. Garrity in the Marina District, 1989

All That Glitters is an homage to the dreamers and schemers that make the Bay Area unique. San Francisco artist Kaytea Petro uses a homemade hibiscus ink to illustrate historic photos, lovingly depicting a bygone era. More of her work can be seen at kayteapetro.com or on her Instagram.

All the the writings were created by students at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts. Many of the source photos used to create the drawings come from the San Francisco Public Library’s Photo Collection.

Sgt. Garrity in the Marina District, 1989

The Price of Beauty

By Gigi Ginocchio and Farrah Zimmer

The sunrise was so beautiful that day,
I could see the painter in the distance
Waving it’s paintbrush like an American flag
Painting coarse wooden houses, red
Splattering a red that bites the houses
And turned them into ashes
The type of red teenagers were told to stay away from
Because they could get addicted
Addicted to its smell, nails digging into door frames
Or its touch, leaving your skin fried

…

She must have heard me
In my arrogance
Think this tragedy was a beauty
I thought it was a sunrise
Thought the colors
Were sweet
And I could dip my spoon in them
And taste the rainbow sherbet clouds of a sunrise,
Not an earthquake
Followed by a nasty fire

…

Now as my neighborhood lies,
Sporadic piles of crisp burnt wood
And wet pipes leaking cement
Or flames creeping onto trees
And trees collapsed onto houses.

The earthquake was a
An orange burst of energy
A scorching static
It was beautiful at first
A sunrise to mark my morning
A bright seductive red
Seeped into the corners of orange
It was a giant painting filling the white canvas our sky had once been,

So yes
The paint palette was beautiful
The colors stung my eyes, drew closer
Deeper into red, and orange
And magenta, color, fuschia flames
But the canvas was being wrecked.
If this shaking came again
We wouldn’t have a canvas to work with in the first place
So it was beautiful,
But beauty comes at a price

About the poets: Gigi Ginocchio and Farrah Zimmer are students at the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts.