The 15-foot mural in Temescal (at 43rd Street and Telegraph Avenue) was created by the Bay Area street art collective The Illuminaries. Artists / Crew Members: Steve Ha, Tim Hon, and Eric Nodara. Inspiration: Inspired by a post on X by graphic designer Derreck Johnson (Dee Phunk) showing Liu making the “thizz face”.

Genere: Fangirl.

I saw her dancing on ice, so joyous, so playful, so free. I think I fell in love. She’s a lot younger than me, she has sparkling eyes, spiky teeth piercing, she’s fierce, unstoppable, the power of being young, I thought. 

She’s from Oakland, one more thing we have in common. She’s Chinese, just like me. She has freckles on her face, when she smiles, her eyes curl into a new moon. She’s so spirited, so lively, I’m a little bit jealous. Actually, I’m not jealous at all. It’s rare for me to not be jealous, but I’m not jealous of her, nothing but love. 

My celebrity crushes are kinda strange, a while back, in college, I had a huge crush on Jennifer Lawrence, for her performance in The Hunger Games, Mother, Silver Lining’s Playbook, Joy, AMerican Hustle, and most recently Die My Love, it’s a beautiful movie, I highly recommend. Everything else she’s in is shit. Don’t watch. I will only judge her by her best performance, since that shows me where she could be. People are not defined by their failures, anyways moving on. I think I fell in love back then, she’s what a director would dream of having, her performance is powerful, she really takes you in, get you absorbed in her world. I would actually say that compared to being a good actor, it’s more appropriate to say that she’s a fascinating person, the close up camera only magnified that. Her presence is strong, it’s like she’s born for the screen, for whatever reason her choices of screenplays were okay. I feel sorry, I came too late with my good screenplay, but I will write one for you Lawrence, I will.

I don’t exactly remember having a guy crush. Whenever people asked me, I always said a girl. I’m not sure why I never found anyone as magnanimous as the girls, it was always hard for me to say any dude’s my absolute bias. Until a little later, I saw Dominic Fike on The Hot Chicken Date with Amelia Dimoldenberg, he pulled up so casually, earnest and carefree in a way, I was like, ah, that’s the dude whose songs I always listen to. He’s cute, but I couldn’t really say that he was a crush. I did find Charles Melton mesmerizing, despite not necessarily like him in May December, I thought maybe I liked him as a person. 

Liking someone as a person is a weird thing to say when it comes to people you’ve never met. As it turns out, people are not always how you think they are after you really get to know them. They have their issues, insecurities, projections that they bring to your life, that sooner or later, their problems become yours. I guess I just like positive, happy, non-problematic people then. I thought. Being unproblematic is so underrated in this day and age. People focus on looks, wealth, sophistication, but I think actually most of that doesn’t matter to me. Some people say authenticity, but honestly what authenticity is is a philosophical debate in itself. I don’t care about that either, I thought. I like earnest, joyous people. Solid and proud, simple yet striving, full of life and hope, but not naive, I like when someone has a part of them that’s not contaminated, unharmed, still the simplest form of their inner child, because that’s something I couldn’t have, so that’s something I’m drawn to. 

I’m a depressive person, and that is not by choice, but by repetitively being put down and crushed, it’s becoming harder for me to stay focused apart from the mental cloud. I’m a positive person, but the positivity feels more forced and less autonomous, more like a form of self-help. I have to practice to pull myself back up. So that’s why I like grounded, strong-minded people, I thought. The people that stay focused and don’t stray away from what they want, the way they fight for their dreams is so inspiring, so encouraging, like a light beam breaking through the darkness, shines warmly on my heart. That’s why I like her, because I want to be like her, to be the person I could never be, to say sorry to the past self. I’m a grown-up now, what does that mean, I’m not sure. I’m finding a path forward more or less, it requires requires consistent effort putting into that direction day after day, it requires me to have faith in myself. It’s hard, but whether I have faith or not, I’ll still put in the actions, as people that inspire me guiding me as a northern light. That’s why I like Alysa, she’s my hero, just as she’s to many people as well. Be the norther light, perhaps that’s my life’s mission. I guess only time will tell.