Ground Scores

Ground Scores: Guided Tours of San Francisco Past and Personal, guest curated by Valerie Imus, is an interactive project that is both situated within the YBCA galleries as well as offering tours or self-guided explorations of sites in and around San Francisco. Ground Scores will offer cartographical and audio portraits of sites that reveal the city’s forgotten histories, as well as mapping out invisible networks within the city’s infrastructure. The Ground Scores artists are BARGE (Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics), Jonn Herschend, Alison Pebworth with James Goode, Jeannene Przyblyski and the Bureau of Urban Secrets, The Studio for Urban Projects, Michael Swaine, and Syndicate (organized by Jessica Tully, Kim Munson, Wendy Crittenden, Christine Wong Yap, Greg O'Toole, Tom Griscom and the Labor Archives and Research Center).

Ground Scores Tours:

Ground Scores tours leave from YBCA, unless otherwise noted

Sat, Jul 26 & Oct 4, noon–2:30 pm, Syndicate
A walking tour of sidewalk art installations which nod to the history of labor unions at performing arts venues in San Francisco. This tour will be led by Jessica Tully, Kim Munson and historians from the Labor Archives and Research Center. To reserve your place, call 415.978.2787.This tour is accessible.

Sat, Aug 23, Aug 30, Sep 20 & Sep 27, noon–4 pm, How to Organize a Public Library
A short story by Umberto Eco inspires Michael Swaine’s walking tours of individual home libraries. Tour locations and meeting place to be announced.
To reserve your place, call 415.978.2710 x136.

Sat, Sep 6, noon–4 pm, A Lover’s Line thru the Presidio
6 stories leaving the Presidio, but just 1 coming back (because water always runs downhill)—Jeannene Przyblyski and the Bureau of Urban Secrets examine the history of Lovers’ Lane in the Presidio on this bus tour. To reserve your place, call 415.978.2787.

Sat, Sep 13, 3–5 pm, Everything Is Better Now
Jonn Herschend embraces absurdity on this bus tour of locations of public and private emotional crisis. To reserve your place, call 415.978.2787.

Sat, Oct 11, noon–4 pm, Buried Treasure Island
Bus tour led by BARGE (the Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics) explores the history of land use on Treasure Island. To reserve your place, call 415.978.2787.

Sat, Oct 18, 2–5pm, An Unnatural History of Golden Gate Park
Walking tour. The Studio for Urban Projects team up with landscape designers, ecologists and park historians to illuminate Golden Gate Park’s complex history. Tour meets on the steps of the Conservatory of Flowers on Kennedy Drive.This tour is accessible.

Self Guided, Third Street Phantom Coast
Alison Pebworth and James Goode
Third Street Phantom Coast guides us down the corridor of 3rd Street and explores past and present neighborhoods adjacent to San Francisco’s eastern coastline. James Goode and Alison Pebworth’s audio and cartographical portraits of the area layer these latent phantom histories over the surface of the contemporary landscape, inspiring us to see afresh the communities and businesses along the present coast.