On Wednesdays, we only dispose of our trash inside this off-pink receptacle in San Francisco.
The massive queer mural being painted outside of OASIS in SoMa debuted just about a year ago to glowing fanfare and widespread praise.
SF-based painter, muralist, and founder of the event’s company Electroluxx Elliott C. Nathan (@elliottcnathan) — whose work you might recognize from Underscore’s banner art on The Bird App — told us that the mural has nods to “queer history.”
“The mural will have artwork referencing SF queer history, as well as Oasis’s history, and references to famous icons from theater, drag, film, and disco,” Nathan tells Underscore. The group of five queer artists — which, in addition to Nathan, includes Simón Malvaez (@simonmalvaez), Serge Gay Jr. (@sergegayjr), Christopher McCutcheon (@mccutcheon_art), and J Manuel Carmona (@manuel165) — painted the mural on 298 11th Street with red, pink, and purple Pantones.
One of the smaller, more utilitarian projects Nathan completed during the mural’s creation was embellishing one of OASIS’s dumpsters a crimson shade of pink. And to this day, it remains San Francisco’s prettiest dumpster — if one can exist at such a nexus.
From top to bottom, the massive steel container features some of Nathan’s iconic cartoons that have graced numerous murals across the city, as well as commissioned home paintings. Large sun-faded stickers that feature queer icons like drag queen Divine — the inspiration behind the original The Little Mermaid’s Ursula character — and other queer iconography, e.g. a leather-wrapped daddy figure, attached to the dumpster via an adhesive offer contrast to the fresh pink backdrop.
All in all, it took Nathan just an hour to complete. And it can absolutely sit with us (metaphorically speaking… because, you know… it’s a dumpster).
All images: Courtesy of Elliott C Nathan
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