S.F. bitterly divided over honey bear art

Anonymous creator’s ubiquitous murals raise questions over who can put stamp on city

For years, you’ve seen them featured in murals, pasted on boarded storefronts, and in the windows of homes and businesses: images of bearshaped bottles of honey in an array of guises like ballerina tutus, Bay Area sports teams gear, sunglasses and a gold chain honoring hiphop group RunDMC.

Now this legion of honey bears has become among the most polarizing figures in San Francisco. As has fnnch, the alias of the artist who created and marketed the bears to mass proliferation across the city.

In just about a decade, fnnch has taken the bears from spraypainted street stencils to an online industry that sells everything from $18 “bear hunt kits” meant to be hung in windows to 22inch plywood bears that can cost up to $600. The bears multiplied even more during the early months of the pandemic.

Maskwearing bears now appear prominently on buses and transit shelters, part of a COVID19 vaccination campaign by the San Francisco Public Health Department and the Municipal Transportation Agency. In March, the artist sold a nonfungible token, the digital art known as an NFT, of a honey bear portrait of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for $64,000, with 20% of the proceeds donated to a coronavirus relief fund.

The San Francisco artist began painting the bears “because they make me happy,” he told The Chronicle in a statement, agreeing to comment only through email. “I continued painting them because they make other people

Top: Honey bear artwork, created by fnnch, can be seen in windows and walls throughout San Francisco.

Photos by Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle Above: An anonymous artist’s Ricky Rat trolls a mural at a Union Street cafe during the shutdown last year.