San Francisco
All Around Town
Stencils
Stencils are a fun, down and dirty way to place art on the street. Most of their creators you will never know, but the creator of these is out in the open. Jeremy Novy began stenciling koi fish on the sidewalks, often on top of graffiti tags, to “beautify the area.” There are now more than 2,000 of his koi throughout the city, including commissioned ones at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Quan Yin Meditation Center, Cafe Flore and the hair salon Every Six Weeks.
This was on a mailbox on Folsom Street (since painted over). I often thought it was a representation of Matt Taibi’s book Griftopia, where he uses the term Vampire Squids to refer to Wall Street – (notice the Lincoln of the five dollar bill.)
