Frisco's true colours

They don't just paint the town red in San Francisco's Mission district - they use every colour going. Inspired by a Latin American mural tradition dating back to Mexico's "Tres Grandes" of the 1920s - Diego Rivera, Jose Clementel Orozco and David Siquieros - this predominantly Latino neighbourhood went mural mad at the turn of the 1970s, its schools, shops and any other flat surface adorned as a generation spurred on by the civil-rights movement went to the walls to express their cultural and political frustrations.

But, with more than 200 murals scattered throughout the Mission streets, a guide comes in useful, and I wait for mine in the cosy Cafe Venice on 24th Street, where the welcome is warm and the coffee, on a grey northern California day, is refreshingly hot. Patricia, like all the guides from the Precita Eyes

Mural Arts Center, which runs the Mission mural tours, is a muralist herself, and, for the next couple of hours, I'm as impressed by her empathy with the local artists as I am by the work itself.

Murals are often art on a grand scale, and nowhere is this truer than at places such as the Cesar Chavez school, where the entire building has become a canvas for bright images of hope and aspiration.

There's also room, though, for the intimate, and some of the most memorable images are those adorning humbler surfaces - decrepit garage doors or crumbling-walls. The wonderfully named Balmy Alley offers the most concentrated taste of the Mission mural experience.

Almost every surface of this narrow passage near Harrison and 24th has been covered over the past 30 years with work ranging from homages to Latino film stars to heartfelt memorials to victims of Aids.

You might think seeing up to 80 murals at one go - many fiercely political - would be a hard cultural slog but instead you find yourself tuning into the pulse of the neighbourhood and wanting to see more.

It also makes you glad the dotcom crash chased out the net-geek start-ups who, for a while, threatened to overrun the Mission in the 1990s.

Now it's back to its true, vibrant, colourful self - in every sense.

Precita Eyes Mural Arts Center, 2981 24th Street (001 415 285 2287; www.precitaeyes.org) runs guided mural walks through the Mission, Saturday and Sunday, 11am and 1.30pm. Adults, from $10, under-18s, $2 . Personalised walks and bike tours by arrangement.