Pacific Beach has had enough of deadly crashes.
Community members and local lawmakers are putting forward initiatives and suggestions to improve street safety after a spate of deadly vehicle-on-pedestrian or cyclist collisions rocked the community.
One such way is through art.
While Councilmember Joe LaCava is reducing speed limits as a way to combat road violence, the community organizations PB Arts Center and Beautiful PB are trying to slow drivers another way: By inviting the neighborhood to create eye-catching murals to improve street safety.
These murals can entice drivers to slow down to catch the view.
“With the recent three individuals who have died on our Pacific Beach streets, we just wanted to bring more attention to the need for street safety advocacy, and engaging the community in this and using art as a way to help people reimagine how we move through our neighborhoods,” said Michelle Sexton, a board member of PB Arts Center.
In February, two hit-and-run collisions in Pacific Beach drew widespread grief. The first killed 6-year-old Hudson O’Loughlin while on a family bike ride, and the beloved Tavern at the Beach bar manager, Qwente “Q” Bryant, was killed two weeks later while walking home from work. On March 10, a third person, Jamison Kimbrough, was killed while riding a bicycle through the Fanuel Street and Grand Avenue intersection.
The arts center is holding a series of workshops in April on its newly opened back lot, the PB Arts Commons. Participants will paint the future of safe streets onto murals for electric boxes throughout the neighborhood at the Streets Speak Art Jam. The murals do not need to have themes of cycling or safety; they just need to draw attention.
“We know that even just seeing art, and it doesn’t have to be on a topic, catches the eye and can slow people down,” Sexton explained.
The workshops take place on four consecutive Saturdays, starting April 11 and ending May 2, from 9:30 a.m. to noon at PB Arts Commons at 4606 Ingraham St. Registration is available online for $20, with paints not included.
The idea of art as a form of community intervention comes from tactical urbanism. Attendees at the workshop will learn about low-cost, scalable, and sometimes even temporary efforts for citizens to improve their community permanently.
They can also brainstorm other ways to make Pacific Beach safer.
“Anything that gets people’s attention (makes) people more alert and can improve safety by reducing speeds,” Sexton said.
The workshop will also teach concepts like Vision Zero, the effort to end road deaths, and how to make the murals, even with little artistic aptitude. Muralists will teach attendees how to use projectors to make tracing shapes easier and provide polytab mural fabric, so that murals can be completed at home.
Sexton expects the event to draw artists and art dabblers, cyclists, road safety advocates, and any neighbor interested in improving their community.
“It’s accessible to everyone, and that’s the cool thing,” she said.
By the end of April, the arts center and partner Beautiful PB hope to install many new murals on electric boxes throughout the neighborhood, including at problem intersections. Attendees will also help them find walls and potential locations for other public art, although those take more coordination with property owners.
They plan to celebrate with a community bike ride touring all of the new public art in May.
