Mayor Suzanne LaFrance recently celebrated a $100,000 “Beyond the Beige” public art initiative aimed at brightening up downtown Anchorage, which has fallen into an economic and social funk. The funding, provided by taxpayers through the Anchorage Community Development Authority, will pay artists to create murals and other installations meant to enhance the urban core.
But just a few blocks away from City Hall, at the corner of 4th Avenue and C Street, one of the most visible walls downtown tells a very different story.
In four-foot-high block letters, “NO FASCISM” greets passing vehicles. Nearby, “Free Palestine” is painted across the wall, alongside information for an upcoming anti-government protest scheduled for August 2 at City Hall, titled “Rage Against the Regime.” It even has a swastika on it, with a slash mark through it.
The messages span the entire wall of the building once home to the Big Ray’s logo at 320 W. 4th Ave., and they face directly into a municipal parking lot managed by the very agency awarding grants for beautification.
The owner of the building, Tommy Tomasi, is in an indeterminate dispute with the city, and this is his way of letting the powers that be know that he’s feeling abused.
He had an agreement with the municipality to use the parking lot to store road equipment in exchange for some improvements to the lot. But then the city decided to charge him for those improvements, sources say. We’ve reached out for his comment. This mural of political radical nonsense, which gets weirder by the day, is his revenge.
As visitors leave the nearby Wildbirch Hotel, owned by former US Sen. Mark Begich and former Department of Revenue Commissioner Sheldon Fischer, this is what they now see. Mark Begich cannot be happy about it after renovating the hotel into a boutique inn.
The stretch of 4th Avenue is a key artery for both tourists and commuters, steps away from Anchorage Market, the Performing Arts Center, and the heart of downtown government and commerce. What visitors now see isn’t part of any approved mural project, but instead a rolling canvas of radical messages that appear to be the work of hardline socialists. Not exactly great branding for the city.
The irony is not lost on passersby: While the mayor touts her administration’s commitment to activate public spaces with art, the city’s central intersection has a strange mural being painted by an Anchorage muralist known as Ziggy (Richard Zeigler).
For long-time locals, the wall is a familiar landmark, formerly home to a clean-cut outdoor gear ad for Big Ray’s.
The new official mural grants are part of a broader effort by LaFrance to revitalize the downtown area through cultural engagement. But in this case, the city’s investment in curated art is competing with unsanctioned street expressions just a few of blocks away from the Mayor’s Office.
A recent survey by the Anchorage Community Development Authority, which gathered feedback from nearly 750 residents, found that half of respondents visit Downtown less often than they used to, citing public safety concerns and a sense that the area has become stagnant. Not to mention starting to be the home of aggressive wall warfare.
Bring back the KitKat Club, which was located where the parking lot is now.
You can blame the death of downtown Anchorage on Tony Knowles, a former mayor.
I have some slogans, or more accurately Bible verses, I’d like to write on the wall. Could I do that? As I notice an anti Christian slogan written on the wall.
How about this one for the leftists of Los Anchorage >
“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.” – 2 Timothy 3:1-5
Maybe Mr. Tomasi would welcome some graffiti more critical of municipal government instead of Antifa crap?
If the owner of the building and the parking lot is, and has been, in a dispute with the city government, why is he sanctioning and allowing the painting of radical leftist propaganda on his building with which that leftist city government would agree? I don’t understand this story at all.
I’m still working to reach him for comment. – sd
The dispute mentioned probably could be resolved if Suzanne LeFrance and her administration allowed themselves to be accessible to Anchorage business owners and taxpayers. This administration has already set a pattern of declining to interact (without the mayor reading pre-written scripts) with those of us who contribute to pay the Muni’s bills.
I discovered recently that my requests to discuss code enforcement deficiencies with the municipal manager were unacknowledged. And, taking this up the chain of command, Marie informed that I would be unable to meet with the mayor about this without first providing years of emails so Marie could “conduct an investigation” to determine that my accurate facts would be worth any amount of the mayor’s time. The mayor’s default position is that anybody with a concern about code enforcement must be a “crack pot”, seriously confused, and/or completely dishonest. As an 80% service-disabled veteran paying property taxes on two Anchorage properties, I deeply resent the mayor’s position.
What happened to our town? How did we end up with this mayor, this administration, and this assembly?
Maybe it’s time to change the name of Anchorage to DEADWOOD.
Now do a story about how Patriot Front is in town, gracing us with their fliers and posters all over Southcentral Alaska.
The blame for the decline of Anchorage is on the VOTERS & NON-VOTERS. You either voted for the liberals or you sat on your butts on voting day . Take back your city .
A minor quibble with the respondents to the survey who, “cit(ed) public safety concerns and a sense that the area has become stagnant.” The area is not stagnant. It’s filled with squirming maggots writhing in the human detritus that the City leaders have allowed to infest a once buoyant business district.
Why is everything woke so damn ugly and annoying?
Had no idea Ziggy was such a radical leftist (I thought he retired from this)
But to his credit, Ziggy is not using beige paint ….. so he is compliant.
If Mr. Tomasi wants to bug the Muni, why is he posting National (leftist) crap?
Why doesn’t he put up anti-muni stuff, there’s plenty to work with there (is Ziggy calling the shots?)
The muni has a history of backing out one their “deals” or word. Just look at the navigation center they approved, then backtracked.
I think it’s a brilliant way to put leftist absurdity on display in more ways than one, whether it is intentionally done or not. A rundown city that has been rundown due to leftist policies, the gaslighting of the taxpaing population using taxpayer dollars to add murals as a way to revitalize the city that is overrun with vagrants because leftist policies allow it and subsidize it has a graffitti billboard on display for all to see that the empress has no clothes. Brilliant.