Balmy Alley

This guide to Balmy Alley in San Francisco follows muralist Ray Patlan, who in 1984 gathered three dozen painters to answer the wars tearing through El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua with paint instead of protest signs, all funded by a grant of just twenty five hundred dollars. It walks wall by wall past individual works, including Herbert Siguenza's fictional post-revolutionary El Salvador and Carlos Gonzalez's Olympic eagle crushing a dove. Look closely at the details worked into each wall as you pass, from fake shoe logos to painted grime.