great answer and solution to reducing carbon emissions and be sure we have greenery and beautification for our citizens. a lot of my friends celebrated chinese new years in china and this year for chinese new years, wilhelm wundt wilhelm wundt of the one of the gifts they gave to the employees is an air mask. if you don't start contributing to its purification, you don't get the kind of air like you do in san francisco. this is why trees are so important to our nature and this is what i love about the city because when it comes to our environment, we do make some serious investments,

whether it's green buildings, waste management or going into electric vehicles or getting everybody to change their habits, one of the habits that we want to continue having is planting trees. and so every year for the last 8 years, we have select a signatory to plant and we have taken the liberties of honoring people that have contributed to the quality of life for all of us. in past years, people like rosa parks, caesar chavez, people that we know and are familiar with, along with people that we are not that familiar with but have made some great contributions. today we thought we would take this opportunity to celebrate an icon of san francisco. the brown twin sisters have been with us for

many decades. mary is here today, she's here in celebration and memory of her sister as we all are and we want to take this opportunity to use the arbor day to have a cedar tree, a tree that will grow taller than mary or i. it will grow to be a hundred feet tall. it will be a tree that will be celebrated here in san francisco for generations to come and we thought it would be not only appropriate, but we thought it would be our honor by planting this tree in recognition of vivian and her wonderful contributions to our city. and we are especially

blessed with maryann honoring us with her presence. it's not that easy for her to get around these days but she has and continues to be part of an incredible twin sisters. but now she's also missing vivian as much as we are and we felt this would be a proper way to create a celebratory atmosphere on how we miss vivian, how much she meant to us and take this opportunity for arbor day to plant this tree in her name. how is that, maryann for a great celebration? >> wonderful. i know my sister from heaven is watching. >> all right. she said vivian is up there applauding us and we have a great time of celebrate. ing. with that,

supervisor lee, you should know, it's always been under dispute as to who is supposed to be responsible for this piece of land. was it the highway folks, the residents who built their homes here, was it dpw, we are trying to gift it to rec's and park for nothing because it's an incredible responsibility. look at how beautiful this place it. we do keep it up. it does barrier the intense traffic that we deal with here. i travel quite a bit and everyone i know always glances here and takes a breath of fresh air a midst all of this traffic. this

adds beauty and value to this area. i would like to give this proclamation to maryann and have her treasure this and the permanent memory of her sister and how we celebrate people who are part of our culture as the brown sisters have been and also have been on literally every page of our wonderful visitors galleries, they have been in movies, commercials, they have become a part of what we see in san francisco and how we advertise ourselves around the world as a great place to live and work in. with that, with this proclamation, declares today to be vivian brown tree day in san francisco and also appropriately names this california cedar to be the

tree for vivian brown in san francisco. >> beautiful. thank you all for coming. >> all right. like the mayor said, this is a california tree. the tree bark was used for making medicine for people with stomach aches. it's also been used as a wind break and been used in many many parks. tree comes from the cypress family and the botanical name. i'm happy we are adding such a

tree to san francisco and to honor the vivian brown sisters. now like we've done in many of our events, it's always an honor to introduce the supervisor of the district and like he said, we are very familiar with this piece of land. this land has had many trees that act as a buffer to the neighborhood and the neighborhood appreciates it but we are still trying to figure out who is the legal owner of it, but in that process, dpw and the neighbors always join and the one thing we do know is we need to take care of the trees and we do that with that, i introduce the supervisor norman yee. >> thank you, i'm just one of many san franciscans celebrating this day, arbor okay for vivian brown. i'm so glad that we have an

opportunity to have a celebration in this district 7 to be able to celebrate more intensely this great icon of san francisco and i just hope that i get to see the tree when it's a hundred feet tall. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thank you. also as part of our partnership as many of you know we partner with many of the non-profits i see san francisco beautiful here. welcome, kristin who is a great partner with us and we also partner with other great cities. i would like to ask mr. -- to come up and talk to us if you would. >> thank you. it's an honor to be here to celebrate arbor day with you. this is an okay to celebrate our trees, in 4,000

open acres of our city we are able to enjoy and benefit from over 140,000 trees and a couple interesting facts on arbor day, there are trees and responsible for the creation and monterey pine and different types of trees which you can find in the panhandle which was a laboratory to find what best trees can grow and they settled on those three specific trees. what i would like to say and i can thank another partner mohammed a friend of the forest who cares for the city so well. i

also want to give a big shout out to the men and women who take care of our trees, the gardeners, laborers. mary, i would like to end, did you read the book about a tree that gives and gives to a person who started out as a young boy and all throughout life he came to visit that tree and took a little bit from that tree until the tree had nothing left to give. i think you and your sister have given so much to this city and have contributed to its spirit that there is nothing that is more fitting in honoring the two of you than planting a new tree to give and give back to the community. so congratulations and i'm over joyed to be part of this honor.

>> san francisco [inaudible] you take care of people and that is wonderful. we have always enjoyed living in san francisco. it's you people, people that make this world. what would this world be with no people. so we love san francisco. never leave your heart in san francisco. always come and find it here. [ applause ] . >> okay. and also as part of my job being responsible for many trees and i can tell you that this has become one of the harder parts of my job and we have gone out and tried to get people more involved and

between the right of way there are about a thousand trees and from the parks about other 120,000 trees. we are working very hard to make sure we preserve that asset. many of our trees have aged and we need to start a process of reforestation and it involves good planning. i will ask the veteran of the department who has the policy group to advise us on what we should do as the city. melanie. >> thank you. good afternoon, everyone. it is an honor to be here on behalf of the department with all of to you celebrate arbor day. this is a department of the environment, one of our favorite days. what

we support is the climate program. we look at what is our carbon inventory and where is our carbon emission come from. we know it comes from the environment and we are working very diligently to mitigate the carbon sectors. we know that many trees is the answer to reduce the carbon emissions further. in addition it's critical to our adaptation strategy thinking about if we can't ward off, trees will continue to help us with storm

waters and they boost property value where they have a robust urban forest. i wanted to mention when i first moved to san francisco, i lived on russian hill, i would sometimes take the cable car and i would often see you and your sister see both of them smiling and the warmth they shared as twins, it brought a smile to my face everyday. as you said before you started your sister is smiling down today and it will live on for both of you, thank you. >> we are going to lower the tree and plant the tree in honor of vivian. miriam i'm so happy that you are here with us

today >> i have glad to have seen all of you and hope you have a great day and never forget the beloved city of san francisco. >> we should turn around and get the shovels. after 3. 1, 2, 3. all right. [ applause ] . all right. good afternoon and thank

you for coming. i'm delighted to announce that our first effort is unleashed upon the world. [ applause ] . it's only been two-and-a-half years since the moment of conception of this idea. it's an amazing tribute to our community. it reached three levels of impossibility, of getting a permit and designing it and putting it on this structure and the impossibility of getting it funded. it really is a tribute to so many and a lot of faces that i'm looking at this room tonight. it comes down to as always people. i'm going through a few moments here to give a real thanks to people who made this night and the next two years possible.

i'm going to list a couple of company names, but i want to think of them as members of our community that made this project possible. that included, bloomberg, guchie, it includes the partners, magazine, california home and design, magazine, aluminum illuminary sponsors and the folks tonight. and, you know that first level of impossibility. i'm going to list some agency names. it comes down to a lot of people in this room to make it

possible. my first phone call in this project was to cal trans. in cal trans working together with the bay area with the mayor's office here in the county of san francisco and coast guard, official wild life, all of these came together to find a way when typically the system is designed to say no, people found a way to say yes to this project. the arts commission, this collusion support from the san franciscmuseum of modern art. i apologize for the folks i will be missing because this is a cast of a thousand that made this happen. we certainly love our lawyers in this

process. morrison who helped it become a very established and professional way in getting the contract involved in getting this project to an amazing legal footing. the technology network in san jose who made this a crucial project. i want to call out a thanks to or tactical team. we know how to make it small, not over 150 feet in the air. we have a studio, zone engineering and i have to say thanks to hmr who has been a rock star and directly one of the reasons this is happening. an extremely talented project. thank you all. i also want to just take a

moment to really acknowledge that while leo and i have done a lot of things m in this world, we would not be able to do it alone. there is only one person responsible for this project and that is executive director of the arts. luminarias. i can go on and on. i think i will throughout the night. do know that she's a special person and this entire community owes her a debt of gratitude. i want to thank leo and his family for bringing the level of artistic integrity for this work that somehow slipped

through the progress of a work of contemporary art parallel in art history. it has everything to do with leo and our interpretations with our discussion and that one minute that transformed how people will be receiving this project and how i can make this happen and lieutenant governor will join us at the ceremony at the bay light.org. i really want to thank our mayor who is a visionary in his own right and common good and who i had the pleasure of working with other projects and he's making this city better every single day. people should know that mayor embraced this team, this project ma way that had nothing

to do with really -- even, it was a matter of passion, a personal desire to see the work of art radiant and shine in our community it was an amazing gift. mayor lee, we owe you a great debt of gratitude. thank you so much. [ applause ] >> thank you. welcome everybody to the building in san francisco. gosh, your vision, i have been living with this vision for almost two years now ever since our city engineer said, come with me to this event and you are going to be surprised how we can turn infrastructure to a piece of

art. i have worked with so many projects with roads and buildings that we oftentimes cannot lift this heavy piece of metal or holes in the ground an construction and not be able to see the work of art that contributes to this city and future. amy, thank you for your incredible leadership on this. i met you first at this event here but was immediately sold on the possibility that we can unleash art in the most creative way. this is in fact a beacon for our arts community, for a world class city and it has the ability to attract some $50 million of contributions to our economic vitality a huge base of fans that will visit

our city. there is going to be 150 million visitors, i think it's going to be $97 million contribution to our committee already scaled by our travel association. so part of it is economics, but i actual, without even having those numbers in front of me knew that this was going to excite us. i actually know that when we unveil this tonight, the feeling that i'm going to be having, is we just won another world series because it's going to bring that kind of excitement into city. and to have this timed in a way in which we have just finished the 75th anniversary of the celebration of the bay bridge, we have opened the auditorium

and on our bay for the first time we have just finished the world series and the 55 sealing on our bay is a celebration for san francisco and this incredible rebounds that this city is experiencing can really only be complimented by the arts, because allows the arts to celebrate all the other things that we are trying to do economically to be covered, i think is an incredible cap on our future on what we can experience and exemplify to the rest of the world. this leaves me to an appreciation to the artist that he has not only visualized what 25,000 led lights can do but discovered a fashion in which will not see the same pattern at any time experience. this is kind that

have innovation that we are experiencing in san francisco that creativeness, that we've always wanted to have from our arts community to us with all the other things that we are doing in struggling everyday and sometimes there are good stories but art has always been an inspiration to me. you can imagine anything you want in these lights. the artist will say that leo has always said it and documented in so many other interviews to give yourself a chance to work with these 25,000 light is. to me it's the mustache. it will be for every child in us, the ability to celebrate, to see what's good and what we have done here, but i think it will be the beacon

for world class to happen here in san francisco. i look forward to -- we talked about this being a 2-year commitment. but we all know with the success this has, we are already and i will predict that people, including myself will want this to be on going certainly during my lifetime. [ applause ] >> so i have every expectation we'll about be right there hand in hand celebrating with you to create even more art in the city. by the way, it's budget time, so tom in the art commission, you have done very well with the opening of this timing with everybody else that we have the proper level of art to be creative, to bless us with all the things that are so positive and to exemplify the

arts community for what it's done. with that, i would like to introduce our artist leo villa real. >> thank you so much. i'm beyond thrilled to be here today. this has been an incredible 2-and-a-half years from the initial idea when ben davis asked me to consider the bridge and how it can be turned into a canvas and having thought about it and created an assimilation on the computer, animation that so many people saw and were inspired to get behind and enabled to happen. so many people to thank, but certainly folks at cal trans and mayor's office, governors office. there were so many hoops we had to jump through.

getting the permit was one of the miracles. i thank you for believing in public art and helping us get this done. amy has been amazing, our executive art director. [ applause ] amy was able to shepherd this impossible project through all the intricacies, i'm in incredibly grateful for her help, grateful for his efforts in another monumental task. he's raised $6 million of our $8 million. this project is an incredible gift by our pat