San Francisco is planning a renovation of a plaza that would destroy one of its most distinguishable features: a fountain that was an iconic backdrop to the city’s skate scene in the ’80s and ’90s.
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San Francisco is moving forward with plans to dismantle an iconic and controversial fountain. The fountain has sat on the city’s waterfront for more than 50 years. The city’s skateboarding community says that if the fountain goes, so will an important piece of sports history. From member station KQED in San Francisco, Katie DeBenedetti reports.
KATIE DEBENEDETTI, BYLINE: On a recent afternoon, the vast brick Embarcadero Plaza that’s been home to the Vaillancourt Fountain was quiet. Commuters bustled past, and a few workers sat on nearby metal benches, but most ignored the 700-ton tangle of blocky concrete tubes built by Canadian sculptor Armand Vaillancourt in 1971. That’s pretty typical these days. But Bay Area pro skater Karl Watson says in the ’90s, it sounded more like this…
(SOUNDBITE OF SKATEBOARD ROLLING)
DEBENEDETTI: That’s the sound of a skater launching over a set of stairs at the plaza in 1991. Watson says at that time, people came from across the Bay Area and way beyond to take part in developing a new style of the sport.
KARL WATSON: It was truly the mecca of skateboarding.
DEBENEDETTI: He says the Embarcadero Plaza’s architectural elements – like one concrete concave wall they called the wave – helped create new skate moves.
WATSON: Modern-day street skating was actually developed here at the Embarcadero.
DEBENEDETTI: While the skaters didn’t usually skate the fountain itself, it towered over the plaza. Skater Jacob Rosenberg called it the anchor.
JACOB ROSENBERG: It was the landmark of this destination skate spot.
DEBENEDETTI: Watson and Rosenberg are part of a group of skaters that’s been advocating to save the fountain. It’s set to be removed as the city makes way for a new waterfront park on the Embarcadero. That could happen as soon as March, after their appeal to slow the process failed at San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors last week. City officials say the fountain has to go because of major structural deterioration and sky-high restoration costs. Here’s Tamara Aparton with the Recreation and Parks Department.
TAMARA APARTON: There is a real risk of one of its arms collapsing. It has lead and asbestos in it, and the risks are really unpredictable.
DEBENEDETTI: While the fountain is iconic to skaters and modern architecture fans, not all San Franciscans feel a similar connection. Terry Kraus has lived in an apartment a few blocks away for more than 20 years. At a city meeting on the matter in November, she supported removing the fountain so the city’s revamp can go forward. She says it’ll bring new businesses and foot traffic to her area.
TERRY KRAUS: This is a golden opportunity to revitalize my neighborhood.
DEBENEDETTI: Vaillancourt’s brutalist style has never been universally beloved. When it debuted, critics compared the fountain to the droppings of a robot dog and dynamited debris. Here’s Margaret Crawford, professor emerita of architecture at UC Berkeley.
MARGARET CRAWFORD: The aesthetic of kind of fragmentation, collision, et cetera, a lot of people don’t like that.
DEBENEDETTI: Still, Rosenberg says removing it feels like losing the last piece of skate history at the spot.
ROSENBERG: The plaza has changed over the years from that original era. But I think that the loss of the fountain really expresses, you know, a sense of finality.
DEBENEDETTI: The city plans to move the fountain’s parts into storage for a few years. It says what happens after that is still up in the air.
For NPR News, I’m Katie DeBenedetti in San Francisco.
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