SF Tech Trio Turns $26K Alley Into Community Art Canvas

When JJ Hollingsworth accidentally spent $25,000 on a dirt alley she thought was buildable land, she called it "a big liability hanging over my head." Now that mistake has become the canvas for San Francisco's newest community art project.

Three local tech workers bought the 82-foot alley from Hollingsworth for $26,000, spent another $10,000 to pave it, and launched a website where anyone can submit art designs. The project, called Paint a Street, lets internet users create small digital drawings that will be arranged into a massive collage covering the entire alley.

Software engineers Patrick Hultquist and Theo Bleier, along with recent OpenAI employee Riley Walz, are behind the creative venture. The trio previously organized Pursuit, a citywide scavenger hunt that has run across San Francisco for two years.

Starting now through April 7, anyone can submit their artwork on the project's website. Each design occupies a 6-by-6-inch square in the final installation. Users vote on submissions, and the top 1,280 pieces will make it onto the pavement as a large sidewalk decal.

"We want to let everybody, the whole internet, paint this street," Hultquist says. The project draws inspiration from Reddit's r/place, the 2017 community art experiment that let users paint a digital canvas one pixel at a time.

To keep things appropriate, an AI program will flag questionable images for manual review. Hultquist acknowledges they can't control everything but hopes the community will create something special rather than chaotic.

The Ripple Effect

Neighbor Stanton Glantz, a retired professor, calls it "a little part of San Francisco weirdness." Hultquist dreams bigger, imagining the alley becoming a tourist attraction where people visit to see a unique community creation.

For Hollingsworth, the project turned her expensive mistake into something meaningful. After initially being skeptical of the buyers' intentions, she hired a lawyer to verify the deal was real. "They told me that the art was intended to bring people together, so that's a good thing," she says.

She's planning to celebrate the installation's completion with her real estate lawyer, who happens to be a songwriter, performing for neighbors. What started as $25,000 worth of stress became a permanent gathering place where strangers collaborate to make something beautiful together.