For as long as anyone can remember, the underpass at Third Avenue and 39th Street offered pedestrians two things: shade and gloom. As of this afternoon it offers a third: 300 feet of mural, painted over six weeks by artist Yara Mendoza and eight teenage apprentices, depicting Sunset Park from the harbor to the hilltop in a single continuous scene.

The mural, commissioned through the city's arts-under-infrastructure program with paint donated by a Gowanus supplier, reads like a neighborhood census. There are pupusa vendors and dumpling steamers, a quinceañera, dominoes players, the finger piers, and, at the exact midpoint, the park's famous skyline view rendered at sunset, naturally.

Mendoza, who grew up on 44th Street, held listening sessions at the recreation center before sketching anything. "People kept telling me the same thing in different languages," she said. "Paint us busy. Nobody in this neighborhood is standing still, so nobody in the mural is either."

Her apprentices, recruited from two local high schools, were paid through a summer employment grant and handled entire sections solo. "That's my grandmother's fruit stand, and I painted it, and it's twelve feet tall," said Kimberly Zhagui, 16, pointing. "She's coming today. She's bringing everybody."

The ribbon-cutting is at 4 p.m., with music and, reportedly, the fruit stand itself.