It’s become second nature for me to monitor the sidewalks as I walk the city, mostly vigilant to avoid unfortunate organic matter. In most other cities, I like to stare up and around, admiring architecture and cloud formations and squawking flocks of birds, but here it’s smart to keep an eye on the ground.
Turns out always looking down has impacted how I’ve experienced San Francisco. While gazing at the ground proved to be a real downer at first, that changed when I came across some pipe coverings that a street artist had painted to look like toadstools, just a few blocks from Union Square. I snapped a quick photo.
Pipe coverings painted to look like toadstools in the Financial District / Photo by Rowan Walrath
Shortly after, I discovered that local artist fnnch had stenciled these, along with two brilliant blue butterflies on the sidewalk in my neighborhood. I took a photo of those too—they were the seeds that launched an Instagram account I’ve been running ever since—@sfsidewalks. I scan for not just what to avoid but also what to admire. And in doing so, I’ve come across a handful of street artists whose stencils adorn the concrete across these 49 square miles.
fnnch is potentially San Francisco’s most well-known street artist; he has been laying down stencils on the city’s sidewalks for nearly 10 years. His first-ever piece took place around Duboce Park, where he painted over a city-created stencil requesting that dog owners keep their pups on-leash. Where there had once been a generic dog, fnnch painted in a poodle—then a dachshund, a boxer, a German shepherd and so on.
A man walks a stenciled corgi at the entrance to Duboce Park / Photo via fnnch, Instagram
“It’s fun reaching people where they are,” fnnch told me, adding that sidewalk stenciling is as fun as it is practical. “You’ve got this incredible amount of horizontal property in public streets, which is probably what made me interested in it.”
When he was just getting started, fnnch got inspiration from other street artists around SF, including Jeremy Novy, famous for his paintings of koi fish, as well as Todd Hanson, known for colorful stencils of characters and everyday objects like socks.
Hanson, who goes by the handle @toddah.sf on Instagram, is no longer an active sidewalk artist — he mostly sculpts, but the impact he’s had from his time on the streets is long lasting. As for Novy, he’s moved away from San Francisco but visits frequently to paint koi and teach stencil workshops at Art Attack SF.
I have spotted Novy’s work along Divisadero and in the Lower Haight; more than 2,000 koi exist across the city, according to SFGate, making it more likely than not that a pedestrian will stumble across the stenciled fish circling one another in groups that correspond with Chinese lucky numbers.
“The process of viewing art is a therapeutic thing. So public art is a very important aspect of people’s day-to-day psyches.”
— Jeremy Novy
Although Novy now lives full-time in Los Angeles, it’s clear he’s inspired a small generation of street artists — beyond just fnnch — who create on the sidewalks of San Francisco. Among that cohort is Sol Mission, a Mission-based artist who paints small stencils in places that hold personal meaning for him. He refers to sidewalk artists like himself as “groundlings.”
Novy’s koi stencils “swim” on the sidewalk outside the 16th and Mission BART station / Photo via Jeremy Novy, Instagram
“Novy doesn’t like it when I tell him he is an inspiration to me—he deflects with the clever demand that I call him #instigator,” Sol quipped in a recent Instagram post.
Sol’s stencils are usually small animals, like cats and hummingbirds. The animals may be cute, but they carry a lot of weight — they usually symbolize gentrification, homelessness and the (metaphorical) seismic changes San Francisco has undergone over the course of his nearly 30 years in the city.
“I mark the places where my friends used to live or the restaurants where I used to be able to eat that I can’t now because they’re too expensive,” Sol said.
Recently, he’s diverted from animals to create a series of ornate arrows that serve as a contrast to other bland markers that corporations and contractors spray-paint on sidewalks to denote power lines and other projects.
“It’s illegal for me to go out there and put something cute on the sidewalk, but corporations can mark up any way they want with their crap,” Sol said.
Sol doesn’t mind, however, sharing space with other groundlings, including Eclair Bandersnatch. (“My kudos to Eclair, because her new work is just really, really good,” Sol said.) Taking her artist name from a fictional creature in several Lewis Carroll works, Bandersnatch has stenciled several galleries’ worth of political art over the last several years, including works in support of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Other pieces on the street depict intense high-heeled women and other snapshots of San Francisco culture. True to her name, Bandersnatch was elusive and did not respond to my multiple requests for comment.
“Without women, nothing would get built” / Photo via Eclair Bandersnatch, Instagram
All the artists I spoke with agree on the importance of street art to all cities, especially San Francisco. Novy, the artist behind the koi, operates on this premise: public art, he says, is a public service. The sidewalks have no gatekeepers.
“We have a lot of museums and galleries and plaes of that nature in San Francisco, but we also have a lot of homeless people,” Novy said. “And these homeless people aren’t going to galleries and museums. The process of viewing art is therapeutic, and public art is an important aspect of people’s day-to-day psyches.”
In our imaginations, Novy says, street art can take on a life of its own, depending on the viewer, the canvas and the location.
“It’s not like I set out in the world to make the koi knowing what they would do and how they would interact,” Novy said. “The second I’ve completed them and stand up and walk away, they really have their own life, and they relate to the neighborhood or people who actually live there in their own way.”
As for future work, Novy is traveling in Mexico City with plans to stencil more koi fish there; fnnch is mostly working on wall-based art and commissions but likely hasn’t given up the sidewalk completely; and Sol Mission has several upcoming projects planned, including a series he plans to call “Real San Franciscans” with stencils accompanied by phrases that have long described residents of the city.
The series won’t be about policing who gets to call himself or herself a San Franciscan — rather, the idea is to bring us together, providing an opportunity for both natives and newcomers.
“It’s an invitation for people to think, ‘What does it mean to be a San Franciscan?’” Sol said.
Some of the phrases so far, Sol says, include “Real San Franciscans…” are “…gentle people who wear flowers in their hair if not much else” and who “…stand on the right—except politically.”
Although he feels nostalgia for old San Francisco, the decades-long resident isn’t resentful toward new residents. He just wants them to feel invested in the city — and he wants to provide some positivity for everyone who lives here through his colorful stencils.
“For anybody who’s been around for a while, it’s hard—our friends are moving away, and the soul of the city sometimes feels like it’s fading a little bit,” Sol said. “I’m trying to be positive about it. My little character animals are cute for a reason. I want people to smile and have a little piece of old San Francisco, maybe.”
