San Francisco Parallel Streets: Artist Unlocks The Code To The City's Street Names

Salvador Dali once said, "Just because I don't know the meaning of my art, does not mean it has no meaning."

This quip is not only perfectly encapsulates surrealist's philosophy on art, but it can also be applied to virtually any situation in which someone plucks beauty from a seemingly random cacophony of information.

Take, for example, the names of consecutive parallel streets within San Francisco. SF streets aren't exactly named to tell stories (other than Potrero Hill's tale of a particularly disjointed cross-country road trip or the Sunset's captivating yarn about the numbers between two and 48).

But that doesn't mean there aren't vignettes embedded within a map of San Francisco's seven by seven. And in a piece of smirk-worthy brilliance published recently by our friends over at The Rumpus, artist Evan Mascagni takes some of the city's clusters of parallel streets and turns them on their head, creating entire new stories of their own.

Check out this slideshow featuring a few of Mascagni's drawings, and then head over to The Rumpus to check out the full set for yourself. You won't want to miss it!