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A battle over this Inner Richmond wall speaks to a very San Francisco crisis 
Column: The Green Street Fund's Luke Spray on the tyranny of the gray wall

Luke Spray
May 9, 2025, for SFGate

There’s a battle underway on Clement Street. The battlefield is a plywood wall between 9th and 10th avenues, and it’s attracted a wide array of challengers. Local artists, party promoters and wheatpaste advertisers. Teenage taggers, protesters and walking club enthusiasts. Each takes their shot. But the victor here is always the same: another thick slathering of gray paint.

It’s a gray that’s more relentless than the afternoon fog. A gallery-sized version of photographer Michael Jang’s famous shot of the Golden Gate Bridge’s 50th anniversary was gone so fast I didn’t even get a picture of it — though, amusingly, a small print of it was glued to a wall nearby a few days later. Typical Jang. In between the bouts of gray, the space quickly reverts back to a delightful hodgepodge, a mix of protest statements, comedy night flyers and Converse ads. By contrast, each fresh slathering of gray is monotonous, only seeming to draw attention to what a dead zone the wall creates on an otherwise vibrant section of Clement. Yet this battle isn’t just graffiti vs. the gray; it’s part of a longstanding tussle over San Francisco’s streets that goes back to the 1800s and continues to confound us.

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Sunny Sunday here in SF. Before we walk to stencil search and enjoy the day, some photos to share with flowers, brunches, cards, hugs, and all that other Mother stuff....

• Hijack (tnx Street Art Utopia)
• Falco (tnx Brooklyn Street Art)
• NYC (tnx BSA)
• NC
• Turkey (tnx social streams)
• Financial District, SF
• Polk Street, SF
• In Media (fm "David Lynch: The Art Life")

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We took a long break from the Stencil Archive updating project. It is a bit too tedious, and hand-crampingly painful, to crank out in one go. The most active Archives have been updated (for this current round: fnnch, Eclair, Eon75, Jeremy Novy), and we do update an Archive if there's a new image to go in. This week focused on "let's make a dent in the San Francisco Stencil Archives", so we took a flashback trip down the years, which included all of our exhibits and art shows. FYI, the image sizes are smaller because hosting size was pricey 20 years ago!

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The Stencil Archive-produced Negative Spaces exhibit Archive is updated, along with Russell "Klutch" Short's 2005 SF Vinyl Killers Archive. Negative Spaces inspired Klutch to start the Vinyl Killers project, and Stencil Archive was at the SF opening with our digital camera out. We have already updated Klutch's personal site, but just added text from his online obituary. We also added text and updated obituary text to James Sellier's Archive. James was always a light and fun presence back in those heady "street art" days. We sometimes miss his humor and thoughtful stencil work. 

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Then we headed over to the SF Artists Archives and started A-Z. This current update's effort ends with the letter K. Some great browsing this week includes Claude Moller, Craig McPhee, Hole in the Head, and Kate DeCiccio. 

We're hoping to get through the rest of the SF artist Stencil Archives this spring, and look forward to checking out these dusty corners where some of the artists hit the streets decades ago. After that, the EU zones artist Archives remain the last section of the site to update. New uploads keep happening in real time, so no need to trip backwards to stay fresh. xoxo....

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The Story Behind Sydney’s ‘Eternity’ Graffiti
​Kaushik Patowary, AmusingPlanet

For over twenty five years, from 1930 to 1956, the people of Sydney woke up each day to a one-word sermon—”Eternity”—handwritten in yellow crayon on footpaths, train station platforms, and perimeter walls lining the city’s many walkways and streets. Each day a fresh batch of graffiti rendered in beautiful copperplate lettering style  would appear at places where there weren’t any the previous night. Somehow, for twenty five years, a mysterious figure had managed to sneak into the city every night and leave his presence on the city’s walls and sidewalks. It attracted the ire of Sydney City Council at first, but as the weeks become months, and the months became years, the “Eternity” graffiti became an iconic symbol of the city. Pedestrians stepped around and over the words, and street sweepers and cleaners left the elegant writings untouched.

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...it is a beautiful night out there in Los Angeles (Soul Coughing). A recent quick trip to Hollywood this past weekend means a batch of stencils from LA, with two thrown in from the gracious BeneRegoef. Since LA has billboards the size of skyscrapers, we are not surprised that most of the stencils we discovered were ads for music releases and other products. There were some creative ones thrown in, especially a utility box painted by Ricardo Tomasz near the Hollywood Bowl. For such a quick trip, Hollywood sidewalks have more that stars on them.

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Today is the day to ask those you love if you have a plan. It can be for hurricanes, ICE raids, or tornadoes. Here in San Francisco, the 1906 earthquake destroyed a huge portion of the City on April 18. Three huge fires destroyed even more and about 3,000 died from the disaster.

Have a plan! Discuss with room-mates, loved ones, coworkers. There's a disaster kit just down the hall from here. If you feel a large earthquake, get under something and hold on.

With the serious part done, click on through to some recent SF/415 stencil photos.

• Divisadero St.
• Fillmore St. (thanks, EG)
• Financial District
• Mission District (thanks, Josiah)
• Sunset Dunes
• Protest signs
• Tenderloin/Van Ness

Frankie Says.... Sock it to me biscuits, now!

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‘They act with total impunity’: Paris city hall declares war on graffiti vandals 
Officials promise to track down and prosecute those who ‘tag’ city’s historic monuments, statues and grand buildings 

Kim Willsher for The Guardian (LINK), April 17, 2025 

In Paris’s central Place de la République, the magnificent lions at the feet of the statue of Marianne are once again covered in graffiti. 

Along the nearby Boulevard Saint-Martin – part of the Grands Boulevards that bisect the north of the city – the trunk of every plane tree has been crudely sprayed with a name. 

The front of majestic stone apartment buildings, some dating back more than 200 years, are similarly “tagged” with stylised initials or names. So are the benches, flower boxes, front doors, post boxes and the plinth under the bust of the half British 19th-century playwright Baron Taylor. In fact, anything that does not move has been tagged. 

Now Paris city hall has declared war on the vandals and promised to track them down, prosecute and seek fines for some of the estimated €6m (£5.1m) of damage they cause every year. 

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Protecting Art in the Street (Dokument Press) explains, with words and images, how copyright laws apply to street art and graffiti, and how they can be of help to creators within these artistic communities. Knowledge about these issues does matter. There has recently been a spike in legal actions or complaints against corporations and individuals that have tried to exploit commercially street artworks without the artists’ consent; and more importantly without sharing with them any profit. Also, legal actions have been brought by street artists to fight destruction of their pieces.

By adopting a simple language, Protecting Art in the Street constitutes an easy-to-understand guide aimed at navigating street artists and graffiti writers through otherwise difficult and intricate legal issues concerning the protection of their artistic outputs.