There've been rumors that some new graffiti around San Francisco is the work of Banksy, the famous Brit street artist. The pieces certainly look like his other work (search flickr for a wealth of photos of Banksy pieces). I've got high rez versions of the photos below on my own flickr pages.
The rumors are that the Banksy pieces are in conjunction with the Bay area opening of the Banksy film Exit Through the Gift Shop. Anyway, after seeing the mentions of the works here here and here, we spent yesterday (Saturday) visiting all of the ones we could find, 5 in all. Here are the photos & a short description of each:
Valencia between 19th and 20th
Seems like this was the first one people noticed. It's over a business, Little Otsu & across the street from the pirate store. The text seems to reference the story about his recent piece in LA, which was supposedly taken down and will be or is for sale.
Sycamore @ Mission (between 17th and 18th Streets)
This one's at ground level, it's visible from the sidewalk on the west side of Mission Street unless there's a car parked right in front of it.
Here's some more detail on one part of the piece:
Belvedere Street @ Haight
Next up was a quick drive to the upper Haight - I wanted to get there fairly early in the morning (mid morning as it turned out), so we could get there before most of the skeezy sidewalk dwellers woke up.
Took us a couple of minutes to notice the whole piece - the most visible part is a large rat holding a spray can of paint and that part is clearly visible from Haight as it's positioned right over the Villian's Vault storefront on Haight. Look a few hundred feet up Belvedere and you'll notice the words "This is where I draw the line" scrawled on the side of an apartment building. The red line ends next to the rat. I'm guessing that this piece is probably best viewed from a rooftop on the west side of Belvedere at the corner at Haight.
Here's the whole piece:
Here's the text:
And here's the detail on the rat:
Chinatown - Commercial at Grant
Quick shot over to Chinatown was the next stop, actually, we ended up parking 6 or 8 blocks away (natch, since it's Chinatown and parking nearby is as fictional as unicorns) for the next piece. This one's on street level on the south side of Commercial at the corner of Grant. The locals seemed damned unhappy about the attention the Banksy was bringing to the neighborhood - an old guy sitting on the stoop across the street starting yelling at PM that we should be sure and warn Banksy that this guy'd be filing charges against Banksy for destruction of property. Telling him that we didn't know Banksy only made him madder, so anyway, Banksy, consider yourself warned: peace and love isn't a message that's popular in Chinatown.
9th Street @ Howard
This one took a little looking because all I knew was Howard at 9th. Actually, it's on 9th at Howard, on the west side, over the second building from the corner. Another rat. Was the basics of the stencil just a reversal of the rat on Belvedere? Maybe.
We wrapped up about lunchtime & headed over to the Atlas Cafe at 20th and Alabama in the Mission for a great lunch. Seen a couple of credible stories about some other Banksy pieces - the gold brick on Lexington seems pretty plausible & similar to some the stranger pieces that have been attributed to Banksy in the past.
