SAN FRANCISCO MARKET STREET FASHION:
I am living in Japan, and felt homesick, so I drew pictures of S.F.’s weirdos.
Why???
Every city has homeless and junkies, and every city has regular working people, but only in S.F. do you see people who are just unclassifiable. The guy with the giant fancy cowboy hat, cowboy jacket, and Dolphin shorts. The woman in a jogging suit and spats. The transvestite with a pleather trenchcoat and a sack full of golf clubs. It’s like. . . “OK you clearly are not homeless if you have that specialized garb, but nobody would hire you. What is your deal???”
Even people who ARE obviously homeless, there are some that still hang on to one particular garment that is a remnant of their former life-a special coat or scarf that they can put on and say, “OK, never mind I’m living in a box; this is who I REALLY am.”
This random unclassifiable unique outcast stuff -a category based on not being a category - is way cooler than any fashion show at Paris or Milan, so when I was living in Cali, I went to Market Street and sketched people- everybody on here is drawn from real life.
Partly it is a tribute to S.F.’s uniqueness, and partly it is my attempt to figure out just what constitutes the Market Street “Look.”56 portraits later, I still can’t say exactly makes the “look”, but definitely the following tips should give you a head start:
the portraits:
Laces (toothless resistor)