, all of whom now live across the U.S., Mexico and Europe following a contentious legal battle with their corporate landlords. It’s an age-old story about the clash between working artists and the rising tech elite — but it was also an experience that shaped many former tenants' lives.
Before it was turned into a drab office building, 1061 was occupied by dozens of painters, musicians and filmmakers from the San Francisco Art Institute from 2011 to 2015. Their rooms were either small, cluttered and windowless or grand, lofty spaces that evoked Edwardian mansions. I heard that a mysterious tech mogul lived all by himself on the very top floor, but some say that was just a rumor.
I’m still good friends with one artist and former tenant, Maciej Makalowski, who wore thick-rimmed glasses and “obsessively” took photos because of a long-term memory disorder. A Polish immigrant by way of Pennsylvania, he barely remembers his childhood but knows that he grew up very poor based on the fragments. He estimates that he has thousands of prints in his archive: of women, of close friends, and life at 1061.
According to Makalowski, the building’s rooms were illegally occupied art studios, but the founders — SFAI alumni Kim and Joe Bender, who dreamed of forming an arts community — were reportedly well aware of this. Their three children and Kim’s “unemployed porn editor” brother, as former residents said he introduced himself, also lived onsite. “It felt like living in another country,” says Zaria Gunn, a production coordinator who rented a room there from 2011 to 2014.
As a result, she said living there taught her how to trust people in ways she didn’t think was possible. “Communal life offers something really beautiful,” she says over the phone. “Just having a community of people that check in on you. … It’s something so rare that we got to experience.”