2 weeks ago
It was a surreal, fitting extremity for 1 of San Francisco’s astir divisive nationalist artworks: nan Vaillancourt fountain, an tremendous actual sculpture looming complete Embarcadero Plaza since nan 1970s, had burst into flames.
The hulking fountain’s angled arms were being dismantled successful early May aft nan metropolis voted to perchance switch it pinch an open, grassy parkland – a determination mourned by skateboarders for illustration myself, who based on nan metropolis was losing an important portion of its skate civilization and architectural heritage.
But arsenic crews began to return it down, a spark from 1 of nan torch-cutters apt ignited debris that had accumulated successful 1 of nan fountain’s tubes during nan past twelvemonth of its dormancy, sending flames and fume shooting into nan aerial complete a building that erstwhile pumped 30,000 gallons of water. It was a cleanable past riposte of a fountain that was ne'er not controversial.
Built successful 1971, nan fountain designed by creator Armand Vaillancourt was nan move centerpiece to a red-brick plaza that became nan epicenter of San Francisco’s skateboarding segment successful nan 1980s and 1990s. One of nan astir heavy photographed and filmed skate cities successful nan world, San Francisco’s unique, concrete-covered characteristic is perfect for skateboarding, and though nan fountain itself didn’t connection overmuch for skateboarders prevention for nan daring fewer who person attempted to rotation down its chutes, its proximity to EMB (the acronym that stood for some nan unit of skaters there, “Embarco’s Most Blunted”, and nan Embarcadero location of nan plaza) exalted nan fountain from backdrop to landmark. Along pinch nan Ferry Building crossed nan street, Vaillancourt’s fountain was nan beacon that drew you to nan plaza, nan one-time halfway of skateboarding’s universe.
In caller years, nan fountain became a touchstone for debates astir nan bequest of modernist spaces successful nan city. Adjacent spot owners and San Francisco’s parks section ran a run to condemn nan fountain nether an emergency injunction, claiming it was nary longer functioning aliases safe. Others simply declared it an eyesore.
Activists, skateboarders and Vaillancourt himself, meanwhile, based on nan metropolis should support and sphere nan activity for its taste significance. Skateboarders showed up to organization input meetings, requested backstage chats pinch San Francisco’s parks section and generated online petitions to effort to prevention nan fountain and plaza. (Disclosure: I started a petition to admit nan skateboarding history astatine Embarcadero.)
After galore debates complete nan artistic merits of nan fountain, nan San Francisco Arts Commission voted to decommission it. The fountain is presently being taken isolated portion by portion to nan tune of $4m for “storage and further assessment”.
Lawrence Halprin’s Embarcadero Plaza and Vaillancourt’s fountain were designed together arsenic portion of a move imagination of what San Francisco mightiness be. Born of nan era of freeways that drained galore cities of their middle-class residents, nan fountain, plaza and integrated subway strategy were each portion of an effort to prolong a tone of vibrant urbanity successful an era erstwhile astir group shopped and socialized successful suburbs.
The plaza and fountain boldly evoked medieval piazzas and baroque waterworks, encouraging immersive relationship – 1 could cautiously traipse crossed nan actual lily pads down its torrents of h2o – and get a consciousness of rambunctious quality wrong nan density of nan actual jungle. Yes, it was primitively adjacent to a freeway, but it was besides adjacent to a four-block-long mall, sandwiched by parks, pedestrian boulevards and quiet piers.
What made nan fountain special, for me, was its contiguous recognizability. Nothing other successful nan world looked for illustration it. As personification who grew up worshiping astatine nan twinkling altar of thoroughfare skateboarding successful San Francisco, Vaillancourt’s fountain loomed ample successful my teenage fantasies. From nan precocious 1980s onwards, each skateboarder recognized EMB agelong earlier it showed up successful video games.
The best-known spots successful skateboarding are often named aft useful of creation nearby, from Love Park successful Philadelphia (Robert Indiana’s sculpture astatine JFK Plaza), Pulaski Park successful DC (Kazimierz Chodziński’s equestrian statue astatine Freedom Plaza) or, my individual favorite, “Tinker Toy”, nan skater-generated nickname for Joan Miró’s monumental and multicolored avian shape that stands sentinel complete a once-skateable plaza successful beforehand of IM Pei’s Chase Tower successful downtown Houston. Each plaza, each built from 1965 to 1980, offered soft granite chromatic surfaces, steps and ledges, and each were anchored, for illustration Embarcadero, by a move activity of modern art.
Each hours-long convention spent skating astir these modernist sculptures was, though we whitethorn not person known it then, person to an immersive creation experience. Spending clip successful aliases astir these useful of art, we generated caller interpretations beyond nan stated goals of these projects. The plazas, nary of which was built for skateboarding, each produced caller forms of nationalist life, from nan crushed up, led by skateboarders.
Halprin apt could not person imagined his red-brick plaza astatine nan ft of Market Street would person go nan epicenter of thoroughfare skating immoderate 20 years aft its completion (and pinch important additions by William Turnbull Jr successful 1982 of gradual steps, seating and a shape that became nan astir celebrated features of nan skate spot), but nan open-ended quality of nan plaza, and plazas astir nan world from nan aforesaid era, appealed specifically to skateboarders. We needed nan unfastened space, soft surfaces and unexpected configurations of thoroughfare architecture that Embarcadero offered. Vaillancourt’s fountain was a summation of nan impulse to skate thoroughfare successful nan first place: it whitethorn beryllium challenging, perchance painful, but if you commit, it’s worthy it.
While eulogizing this fountain, I should explain different thing: it was ne'er brutalist, arsenic galore critics person described it. The fountain was so unsmooth concrete, its standard massive, but astir brutalist structures are raw, their serrated edges forged by nan process of their creation. Instead, elephantine sculpted vermiculated patterns connected nan piers successful nan backmost of Vaillancourt’s fountain and oversized, sediment-like protuberances encrusting nan quadrate tubes successful beforehand evoked nan striated patterns of travertine.
Riffing connected nan minuscule patterns of fountains for illustration nan Trevi successful Rome, Vaillancourt besides harmonized his sculpture pinch nan late-modernist cityscape starring to it. To telephone this confrontational fountain “brutalist” is to flatten immoderate of nan astir textured and participatory aspects of what made this plaza special.
Less typical person been nan spate of banal renderings of what nan caller Embarcadero Plaza mightiness become, from an AI-generated mash-up of everything that’s bad astir Manhattan’s High Line and Chicago’s Grant Park transposed to nan foot of nan Embarcadero Center, to nan globular description of sure-to-be-soggy greenish lawns successful nan astir existent loop of nan plaza’s early landscape. While nan original hardscape plaza was open-ended and designed for progressive play and passive leisure, each of nan caller renderings suggests specific, atomized activities.
The 6 May occurrence was quickly extinguished and Vaillancourt’s fountain will soon beryllium gone. Many modernist projects for metropolis centers person not aged well, but fewer sparked a paradigm displacement successful skateboarding for illustration Embarcadero. The occurrence lit by that plaza, nan municipality skate scenes astir nan world straight inspired by Embarcadero’s incandescent example, still burns successful our imagination, while these cherished skate spots person go landmark destinations successful cities different than San Francisco.
Ted Barrow PhD is an creation historian, writer, curator and lifelong skateboarder who lives successful San Francisco. He hosts nan YouTube bid This Old Ledge for Thrasher magazine
