Prosperity from the Land and Sea: A Portrait of Alameda Using Street Signs

Hi, 

So this is my first Patch entry. 

I live in Berkeley not Alameda, but currently I'm working on a project and the project really only has relevance to the city and people of Alameda.

The project itself is a huge digital collage of pictures I pain stackingly took all over Alameda. Recently I've been doing Photoshop projects for school in Berkeley and they always revolve around transportation, and the history of it. Below you will find a photo of my VERY rough draft of my Alameda street sign project and my finished version of the one that I did for the city of San Francisco.

You are probably wondering why on earth I'm even sharing this.Who cares about street signs in Alameda? I must be crazy. But through doing this project with the cities of Walnut Creek, Berkeley and San Francisco, I've realized its actually not even about the streets. It's about you.

Who are you? Probably someone who lives on Alameda. Perhaps you have lived on many different places on many different streets in Alameda and this project is a portrait of your experiences and your interpretation of what each street means to you, what memories come to you when you think about each sign, its name, its meaning, its location among the other signs.

I really want to share this with the city of Alameda. It's kind of my gift, my way of saying "thanks for letting me come into the various neighborhoods with my camera and monster flash and taking pictures of the signs on your streets and not being paranoid and calling Alameda PD to hassle me for no reason."

This project will take me a few more days to finish. The one i did for San Francisco took me about 5 days to complete and 24+ hours worth of combined photoshop and Picture taking.

The idea behind these projects is that the street signs are really a riddle. Asking us Why in many different ways. When I'm finished I hope that the editor of the Alameda Patch may be so inclined to feature my story and final version of this Alameda street sign project so the people of Alameda have a chance to see it. I'm also very curious to see what the people of Alameda think about the project, what the project means to them, what streets they are fond or not fond of and why. I will check back here regularly and post the final product here on Patch for all to see. In the mean time feel free to leave comments letting me know what you think about the project and my ideas for it. 

Thanks! : )
Sincerely,
Alex
From Berkeley