It was a week that we thought the Bee's Opinion Blog would break through with a moment (normally we don't consider the opinion blog part of the blogoshpere) since it had conservative and former Fresno Mayor Jim Patterson, squabbling online against conservative and former City Councilman, Jerry Duncan.
But that was before: Art happened.
If you've been following your local media outlet the past few days, you've heard about the Tower Mural aka Neighborhood Thrift Shop Mural. A team of local artists were asked to paint a mural on the side of the thrift store. But before they finished, some neighbors decided they didn't like it and voiced they're opinion, convincing the owner's of the building to think twice about the mural.
During all that, a viral story breaks out. Here is the timeline as we saw it:
- Wednesday 11:30am: Vida en el Valle blogger, Rebbeca Plevin, hears about the bubbling mural controversy and goes down to check it out.
- Wednesday 6:30pm: A neighborhood meeting happens where people voice their opinions about the mural.
- Thursday 9:30am: Mike Oz posts about the mural hullabaloo and a massive comment thread ensues.
- Thursday 10:23am: Famous Whitewater gets in on the buzz with a breakdown of the politics of murals in public spaces.
- Friday morning: It's discovered that vandals splashed blue paint over the mural and Jim Guy takes some video:
- Friday evening: Thriftshop owners, The Well Community Church, decide the controversy isn't worth it and say they will paint over the mural.
- Friday night: Fresno's Twitterverse is awash with the news that the artist are working into the night to finish the mural before it's painted over. Here's our quick video of that:
Saturday Afternoon: The mural is planned to be painted over at 2 but a last seconded mediation job causes the thrift shop owners to reconsidered, deciding instead to keep the mural for now until they can work on a solution to please all.
So there ya go. And whether you liked the mural or not, it's done a great job of sparking public-art-in-Fresno discussions, surely raising our dumb-city rankings (#55) up (or is it down?) a notch or two.
If you'd like to see the mural in person (highly recommended to really judge it) it's at Olive and Wilson, east of Palm.
