Cool guerrilla marketing campaign for Red Hot Chili Peppers tour hits local Muni bus

[via The Fog Bender]

UPDATE: The last time we mentioned the Chili Peppers on this blog was 5 years ago and it was also a “Give It Away” reference!

Unsanctioned graffiti (2008) vs. sanctioned mural (2015)

Our pal Many Machines takes a moment:

Top: Potrero hillside, 2008.  Bottom: same hillside, 2015.

I was especially fond of the earlier version, as it featured the work of several artists who had an outsize significance in my mind in the first few years after I moved to San Francisco.

Few things make me feel quite so bad about how SF has changed as this hideous current incarnation. [link]

An outsize number of this blog’s early posts were about Girafa. Let’s take a look:

Sad face

Messages from another world, scrawled on the sidewalk

Click to enlarge:

Hey what kind of beans are those?

[via Alejandro]

Who’s the worst?

[via Kayla]

Guerilla street art viral marketing campaign for new Apple-Nike-McDonald’s collaboration

Hopefully they get slapped with some fines or something for de-beautifying our community like this.

[via Matt]

San Francisco’s graffiti hierarchy and the Case of the Honey Bear

In a lengthy piece about why graffiti artists often don’t tag murals, KQED considers the Case of the Honey Bear:

In January, street artist fnnch began creating stencils of honey bears within a four-block radius around the Mission District.

“We all take this image for granted as being totally acceptable,” says fnnch. “But really it’s a surreal idea that you would put honey into a container that’s shaped like a bear.”

On the first night he painted five honey bears, some of them directly on top of tags that graffiti writers had left on mailboxes. Within a week, someone had taken a blue spray-paint can and made a mark right through the center of the bears — the ultimate sign of disrespect.

“When I posted [photos of my work] on Instagram, people started to comment and say that I shouldn’t paint on top of tags for my own safety,” says fnnch.

He had upset the graffiti hierarchy.

Read on for lots more insights into the world of graffiti and murals and why “street artists” are sometimes not respected.

What’s your graffiti name?

Yeahhhhhhhh!

[via Abby]

Some interesting poetry about the SFPD, I think

[via Capp Street Crap]