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Where to find Street Art in San Francisco

San Francisco is a colourful city, besides doing all the touristy things, there is a lot of art to be seen along the streets throughout the city. For the graffiti and mural lovers, here’s a guide on where to find street art in San Francisco.

Here’s a helpful Google Map where I’ve marked out all the spots in this particular post, useful if you are going to be walking those streets. You can also use Google street view to check out the lanes even if you aren’t going to be in San Francisco anytime soon – the works may be ever-changing but it gives you a sense of the areas to check out. San Francisco Mural Arts is also a pretty good resource.

Pin it: Where to find street art in San Francisco

Haight Street

Haight and Ashbury is apparently the birthplace of San Francisco’s hippie free-spirited culture back in the 70’s. Today, Haight street still retains some of this flair – there are a surprising number of ‘Tibetan’ or shops tinged with some sort of mysticism amidst the increasing number of hipster mainstream shops and food outlets. You can find various artworks in the stretch from the junctions of Stanyan Street to Central Avenue where the shops are – the rest of Haight street from Buena Vista Park and beyond is mostly residential with no artwork on the walls.

San Francisco Street Art Haight Ashbury Panther
Right at the junction of Haight and Shrader Street is an area with a number of works on the walls – keep a look out!
San Francisco Street Art Haight Ashbury Graff
Random alley off Haight Street close to the junction of Shrader Street – this alley was blocked by a gate – I stuck my hand through to get this shot
San Francisco Street Art Haight Ashbury Calligraff
I kinda love the patterns created by the repeated calligraffiti
San Francisco Street Art Haight Ashbury Pink
Bright pink and purple work
San Francisco Street Art Haight Ashbury Nychos
I recognized Nychos distinctive style of detailed animal innards and skeleton very quickly! This is at the junction of Haight Street and Ashbury Street

24th Street

This street cuts right through the Mission district, it does feel like you have suddenly been transported to Latin America because of the very strong Hispanic culture in this area, from shop signs and food options, to all the Spanish you hear spoken around you. Precita Eyes Muralists (PEM) is found along this street (more about them below) and are responsible for a large portion of the murals that you will see in this area. I mostly explored the stretch from Potrero Street to Mission Street – there are several smaller adjacent alleys that are chockfull of art as well listed below.

San Francisco Street Art Mission 24th Street 1
Our guide
San Francisco Street Art Mission 24th Street 2
Some of the more eye catching works along this street. There really are too many to feature here!
San Francisco Street Art Mission 24th Street 3
I kinda like this one which seems to be a paste up

Balmy Alley

This little alley is famous for murals and many of these pieces have been there for a long, long time – since the 1970s! The murals are largely painted by PEM and have a social slant to both their message and the execution. It even has its own dedicated web space here: balmyalley.com

San Francisco Street Art Balmy Alley 5
Artists touching up an old mural
San Francisco Street Art Balmy Alley 1
Every surface in this tiny alley is covered in murals
San Francisco Street Art Balmy Alley 2
This one addresses the issues with the influx of new residents into the old culture of the Mission district
San Francisco Street Art Balmy Alley 3
This was actually one full mural, but the center part of this mural was repainted and reinterpreted
San Francisco Street Art Balmy Alley 4
More colourful works

Cypress Street

A lot more graffiti-style artwork can be found along this quiet alleyway between 24th and 25th street, emblazoned on the back walls of the houses that line this alleyway. It was surprisingly quiet when I was there. Make sure you check out the car park area around the 24th street junction where there are more works as well.

San Francisco Street Art Cypress 4
Cypress Alley entrance – all the colour beckons!
San Francisco Street Art Cypress 1
Lots of throw ups
San Francisco Street Art Cypress 2
This was painted on a gate – kinda love the way the light and shadows played out
San Francisco Street Art Cypress 3
One of my favourite works in San Francisco is by tattoo artist Lango Oliveira (thanks Scotty for the heads up!)

Lilac Alley

Two streets down from Cypress Alley is Lilac Alley, you’ll find more graffiti style works here too.

San Francisco Street Art Lilac 4
Junction of 24th street and Lilac Alley
San Francisco Street Art Lilac 1
A mix of tags, throw ups and visuals
San Francisco Street Art Lilac 2
Some surprisingly religious looking stuff too
San Francisco Street Art Lilac 3
I like the colour and energy of this

Osage Street

Just a bit further down from Lilac Alley – unfortunately, I was running low on time so I didn’t have time to check this street out, but from the brief look I got, lots of graffiti-style art here too!

San Francisco Street Art Osage
Osage Street – lots more down that alleyway

El Capitan on Mission Street

I chanced upon this while walking down Mission Street between 19th and 20th streets – what looked like a fancy old movie theatre actually leads to a carpark in the back and its walls are covered with graffiti.

San Francisco Street Art El Capitan 1
From across the street
San Francisco Street Art El Capitan 3
Walking through to the carpark
San Francisco Street Art El Capitan 2
The carpark behind is surprisingly large

Clarion Alley

Not far from the Mission Dolores Park and located between Mission Street and Valencia Street is Clarion Alley. The Clarion Alley Mural Project was kickstarted in 1992 and inspired by the success of the murals along Balmy Alley. The art here is a mix of murals and street art, though they all carry very strong social messages. This alley saw quite a lot of tourists!

San Francisco Street Art Clarion 4
Walls on both sides covered with murals
San Francisco Street Art Clarion 5
The murals here were more about social issues
San Francisco Street Art Clarion 1
Big variety of styles
San Francisco Street Art Clarion 2
It’s a small alley but absolutely jampacked with art
San Francisco Street Art Clarion 3
Stop Hate!

Bonus!

San Francisco Street Art Turk and Taylor
Os Gemeos‘s distinctive yellow people

I saw this on the bus en route to the Golden Gate Bridge area at the junction of Turk Street and Taylor Street. Note that it is near the Tenderloin, which is notoriously quite a dodgy area – I was warned several times online and offline not to go wandering around in there even during the day, so just make sure you exercise a little caution.


Street Art Walking Tours in San Francisco

I signed up for two walking tours to get a sense of the city’s street art:

Precita Eyes Muralists

San Francisco Street Art - Precita Eyes Muralists Building

They have a long history of creating murals in the Mission district of San Francisco and conduct a mural tour at 130pm on Saturdays and Sundays. The front bit of the tour is quite a long slideshow presentation on various murals in SFO’s history. While I appreciate getting some of that background, I wish that some of the actual mural explanation happened on the tour itself rather than in a dark room right at the beginning and you barely have any context. The second half involves walking around to see the various murals around the area, where you get to see some of these murals in real life, and we even saw artists at work while on the tour.

This group also comes from a very specific point of view of creating sanctioned murals versus unsanctioned graffiti, and there is a lot of focus on social messages, community building and participation – anytime there was some youth participation my tour guide’s face would light up – which is a bit different from other street art tours I’ve been on that lean more towards the graffiti/street culture.

1am graffiti walking tour

Sadly this was cancelled because of lack of participants on that particular day. I would have liked to have seen how this compared to the muralists point of view!


Thanks to United Airlines for sponsoring my trip to San Francisco – read my review of the non-stop flight from Singapore to San Francisco or check out my San Francisco posts for more.

Looking for more street art? I have guides on where to find street art in Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Monty

Friday 13th of December 2019

Excited to test out my game plan. Have a BART ticket, route, a camera, and some enthusiasm. Thanks much for the ideas and suggestions. We'll see what treasures there are to find.

Jaclynn Seah

Friday 13th of December 2019

have fun exploring!

Aryan

Friday 1st of March 2019

What a great work of arts. This will reflect how artistic the people living in that place but they should be responsible where to put their arts for. This is a great source to those who love arts.

Austin

Friday 14th of December 2018

Thanks for compiling this great resource for art fans! You might also enjoy the map provided here: https://findmasa.com/city/san-francisco

-M

Wednesday 20th of September 2017

Hi. Thanks for this page. you might like my videoography pertaining to the subject matter. San Francisco, The Art Within' [Ep. 2] https://youtu.be/iRSSSoWQPzc

Snowfrog

Thursday 8th of September 2016

Thanks for sharing:) Great info!