Lively times in Latino San Francisco

Sunset, Oct, 1989

No time is better for exploring San Francisco's Latino community than the period from October through mid-November.

This is when Hispanic arts organizations pool resources to celebrate an ancient Meso-American holiday, El Dia de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead), offering a month's worth of related exhibits and demonstrations. Taken together, these events give outsiders a lively introduction to the city's uniquely cohesive Latino culture-concentrated in the flat, walkable blocks of 24th Street east of Mission.

The Day of the Dead, November 2, occasions its own nighttime parade-the oldest and largest in the nation. Anyone can join, and thousands do

As processioners gather, an eerie festivity animates the night. The faltering light of hand-held candies pulls whitened faces, hundreds of them, out of the dark eye sockets blackened so they all resemble skulls. They parade down 24th Street and throng bougainvillea-draped Balmy Alley not to mourn, but to celebrate the life-indeath of family members and friends, and, indirectly, the vitality of their ethnic heritage in their new California lives.

The procession ends with a street-front explosion of music and dance: feathered figures whirl through the dark, bodies flashing with Aztec gold.

The neighborhood of the parade's route Mission Street east to Potrero Avenue can give you an immersion in everyday Latino culture. It's a part of town not often frequented by tourists. But for the price of a BART ride to 24th and Mission, you can enter the color-splashed world that waits just behind the district's fading Victorian facades.

An unconventional tourist itinerary

There are lots of ways-and times to experience Latino San Francisco. You can take part in an artist-led walking tour of the area's famous murals or sign up for a workshop and help create a new one. Pick up a samba or salsa lesson at the Mission Cultural Center -then buy a cassette or two at a Mission music store and bring some sizzle to your next party.

Watch a Mexican artist spin a sugar skull or whittle a fantasy afterworld for the Day of the Dead --then shop for colorfulIy macabre holiday artifacts (like the mariachis on page 32) at Studio 24, a folk art shop that helps support Galeria de la Raza. Sample calaveras (breads in the form of bones, strewn with tiny colored candies), conchas (sugar-dusted shellshaped pastries), or churros (deep-fried twists) from a 24th Street bakery; use tongs to help yourself from trays.

Then there are wonderful, slow-simmered stews and thick, broth-rich posoles to sip with a cold cerveza in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant; spicily satisfying cilantroscented burritos for carry-out snacking; and, in the pinata-hung markets, a treasury of exotic produce fresh green chilies and purplish brown dried ones, jewel-like tropical fruits, plump chorizo, leafy epazote, crumbly white cooking cheeses (try them on black beans), and piles and piles of different kinds of bananas.

When you've savored your last slippery mouthful of after-dinner flan, you might sip a Colombian coffee, then try an evening of bilingual drama with Teatro de la Esperanza (you need only one language or the other to follow the plot).

As you explore the Mission, forget any "less is more" esthetic. Here, there's always room for more: another ruffle on a shirt, another color in an embroidery, another pinata on a ceiling, another face in a mural, another candle on an altar. As in Churrigueresque architecture, there's a love of visual complication, of ornament upon ornament. In a way, it's a willingness to accept all possibilities, as one waits, like the celebrants of El Dia de los Muertos, to awake from the dream of life into eternity

Try to use BART or the Muni (bus 48 serves 24th Street between Mission and Potrero); district streets are congested, and parking can be difficult. From 24th and Mission, wander east as far as York. How to take part in the parade

Unlike Halloween, with its fearsome spooks, this pre-Columbian holiday welcomes death as an inevitable (and almost humorous) part of life. Altars (ofrendas) commemorate the dead with foods and objects they favored in life, and marigolds are gaily strewn over graves.

For the November 2 parade, costumes are optional, and various. Some processioners bring contemporary interpretations to the event, bearing crosses for people killed in Central America, or people who have died from AIDS.

Meet at Mission Cultural Center (address at right) at 7; bring a flashlight or candle. Parade down 24th (with a short detour past the murals of Balmy Alley).

Art for El Dia, and for any day

We list special holiday exhibitions and also ongoing interests at each art space. Call for details; area code is 415. Galeria de la Raza, 2851 24th Street; 826-8009. Tuesdays through Saturdays. This community-oriented gallery and resource center emphasizes contemporary Latino art. The gallery's 19th annual Day of the Dead show exhibits traditional and contemporary altars and folk arts of the holiday. Artists give demonstrations in papel picado (paper cutouts) October 17 through 21 and make sugar skulls and toys October 24 through November 2; call for details. Studio 24 sells posters, books, cards,