Image

At just about 1,200 photos, the Mission District Stencil Archive is one of the largest collections of this project. Remember, this archive does not include any stencils on Valencia St. or Clarion Alley. Together, totaling almost 2,000 jpgs, these locations have been the heart of stencil art in San Francisco, with the Mission also covering Dolores Park, the Inner Mission, other mural alleys (Lilac, Stevenson, Blamy, etc.), Liberty Heights, and parts of The Hub. While correcting image info, some photos were moved to other places. This caused some side-updating, which can be found here:

• Pneu
• Gay Shame
• Borf
• Nils 
• FKZ
• and the SF Poster collection

Image

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

Image

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!

Image

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?!

Image

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)
  

Image

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.

Image

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!