He could have been talking about David Benzler, an artist and sign painter who has lived in the blue shack on Folsom Street for nearly 15 years. Starting its life in Precita Park before being hauled less than a block up the hill sometime later, the shack was most recently purchased in 2022 alongside a larger home on the same lot.
Benzler came with the rent-controlled unit, which itself has a long history of being passed between parties, from ex-girlfriend to friend, boyfriend to former lover, usually after a relationship dissolved or passion dimmed — the occupants using the earthquake shack to lick their wounds and rebuild themselves after surviving their own personal shakeups.
Benzler can rattle off at least half a dozen names of folks who came before him. He was offered the place by a friend, the writer Andrew Leland, after splitting from the mother of his child. He wanted to stay close to her place in the neighborhood but needed some solitude — and an affordable rent.
Like a sturdy little flower pot, the house practically blooms with Benzler’s creative output. The street-facing front window is a collage of his bright, graphic, hand-painted signs, whose topics range from the political (“Protect trans youth”) to the prosaic (“Ground beef $5.99”).
A step over the threshold reveals his painting studio, where a collection of quiet and contemplative landscapes in various stages of completion are propped up, and tubes of oil paints are piled, neatly rolled and labeled.
