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Not only are the Olympics entertaining and distracting as spectacle, they can be educational too. While women's beach volleyball was on in the background (waiting to watch some fencing goodness), the USA announcers called the USA opponent's country Czechia. Stencil Archive never got the memo that the Czech Republic is now Czechia, but the news was a great reason to update this country's archive. Then the ball got rolling, so here are some B-E countries that also got upgraded with today's effort:

• Czechia
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Belgium
• Bulgaria
• Dolk, from Spain
• Denmark
• Estonia

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More fun San Francisco updates for your late-July summer musings. Off the bat (nods all to the late and great Willie Mays), we have updated Yon's stencil archive, and added a batch from his exhibit at The Neon this Wednesday down on Union Street (with cut outs). 

We also updated the Protest Stencils in SF archive, and added one from last year that was on the bench for a while in the dugout. 

And, the rest of the heavy-hitting crew from the mighty San Francisco streets:

• At first, a cool one in the Lower Haight
• Playing right field, a group from around SF
• A few in the Financial District are at short-stop position
• Josiah pinch hits for one in The Richmond
• Lynn Ray will be helping out with clean up in the Tenderloin
• Finally, pitching, a killer yard sale sign on Fillmore Street

Until the 7th inning stretch, enjoy!

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If anyone rides the MUNI Fillmore 22 bus, they will hear the computer call one street with an odd pronunciation. No one calls the always-interesting Mission District street "Vah-len-chuh", but there are probably tourists and newly arrived citizens that will do so until corrected by a cranky San Franciscan. 

Over this past weekend, tired Stencil Archive fingers updated the Valencia St. archive, including the long-running DAP wall. The fingers stayed itchy and wandered to the Clarion Alley archive too, home to one of the first painted alleys in SF and ground zero for what is now known as The Mission School. The fingers walked up 18th and revised The Castro archive, including Upper Market, Hayes Valley, and Octavia Street. To finish up, Eddie Colla's archive is all good for the new wave version of the site. Does anybody know where Eddie's been?!

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Before we head into some more San Francisco-based archive updating, a few friendly submissions got the ball rolling on some more European Stencil Archive updates. Today's updates also include Polish legend M-city as well as the late and great Miss.Tic. Sucht was pulled from the recent Germany archive update, and Nick Walker has been added thanks to the social streams. We cannot remember our 2009-2012 Polish stencil photo connection, but most of the photos in this archive are thanks to him. OK, back to work on some SF updating!

• Poland (thanks, Steph)
• M-city (PL)
• Miss.Tic - RIP (FR)
• >NEW< Sucht (DE)
• >NEW< Nick Walker (UK)
• France (thanks, Nate)
  

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Updating the Stencil Archive for Germany was filled with pleasant memories of wandering the streets of Berlin - one of the capitals of Stencil Nation - over the years, snapping photos and leaving a few stencils and stickers behind. Even with all the gentrification taking place in Berlin, stencils still run and appear. Going back to 1995, before any idea of documenting stencils and creating Stencil Archive germinated, the above Brecht poem graced the wall of/near the Reichstag. Three stories tall, and maybe our first-ever snapped stencil photo, the power of using stencils was organically felt! Years later, just about 700 Germany photos run on this site. This does not include the 100s in the recently-updated Hamburg Archive. Germany's stencil nation is serious!

Topping off this weekend's update, here are a few new photos (one for DE) from the EU zones. Thanks for submissions: BeneRegoef, Rob C., Jeremy Novy, @Louniki_, and @radicalgraffiti

• Austria
• France
• Italy
• Portugal

Swoon: Fearless from Fredric King on Vimeo.

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With over 400 images, the Italy Stencil Archive has been updated for the recent new wave redesign. About 5-6 new images were also recently uploaded, pulled for the social streams, thanks to rad accounts like @Louniki_ and @radicalgraffiti. We are forever grateful!

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Dropping some artist photos this post-Fourth Friday.

• Banksy Hates Me drops a few new ones in SF
• Max "Eon75" Ehrman garage door patterns at his former workplace
• fnnch gets involved with another Bear (Owsly Stanley)
• Misstencil starts the SF Lonely Hearts Club
• Seth Tobocman is figuring out IG, but showing up here first
• One from Praxis (thanks, Brooklyn Street Art)
• SNIK gets up at Boston Zoo (thanks, Brooklyn Street Art)
• Stefan Winterle dropping new and amazing works
• A few older Yon discoveries in SF, new to us

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Over 80 stencil images from Mexico have been added to the Mexico Stencil Archive.

Heading into Guadalajara from the airport a few weeks ago, the taxi occupants became sharp-eyed observers of the moving walls outside the car. As we got closer to our temporary Stencil Archive HQ, the seen stencils became more common. And just across the street from our lodgings, an empty building covered with graffiti. And stencils. Recent women's march(es) had gone down the Av. Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, painting walls and sidewalks with messages, images, and proof that stencils, as a tool of protest, give voice to those that cut their ideas out. The Colonia America district did not disappoint. Other stencils were found here and there in Tlaquepaque and the City Center - even in Calvillo, Aguascalientes - but our discovery team did not have to walk too far to fill up the camera roll!