Spraypaint Sally must be stewing.
The woman caught spray-painting over a Black Lives Matter message emblazoned on a famously quirky rock atop Bernal Heights Park a few weeks ago said it was time for the rock to sport “some pizza, something nonpolitical ... I just want to go for a walk and have a nice day.”
But the boulder brouhaha hasn’t gone Sally’s way. Not even a little bit.
You’ll recall a Bernal Heights artist repainted the rock to say “Black Lives Matter” a whopping six times after somebody kept painting over it. A middle-aged white woman dubbed Spraypaint Sally on social media was caught in the act and griped that the rock should be fun. But it wasn’t entirely Sally’s fault. The city’s Public Works Department painted over the rock the fifth time after complaints of graffiti to 311.
Well, the stone saga has continued. Big time.
On Thursday night, the rock was repainted again — but this time, the original artist whose work was covered loves it. It reads “Black Trans Lives Matter” with a raised black fist and pink, blue and white stripes. On Monday morning, the message remained, along with six smaller rocks painted in rainbow colors forming a semi-circle in front of it as if standing guard.
“To wake up and see that someone had emblazoned it with this super timely, super powerful message and it straight up came from the community was really exciting, and a perfect thing for Pride,” said Kseniya Makarova, who painted attempts one through six.
And the new message on the rock isn’t all. Somebody else painted huge letters reading “The Future Is Black” on a nearby walking path circling the park hilltop. A flyer taped near the rock recommends painting small rocks with Black Lives Matter themes — and dozens now lie at the foot of the larger stone.
The man who caught Spraypaint Sally in the act at 5 a.m. one morning made T-shirts with an image of the rock and Black Lives Matter and gave them for free to anybody who provided a receipt with a donation to City of Dreams, a local nonprofit that provides mentors for low-income kids. So far, the effort has raised more than $4,000, and several neighbors said they plan to volunteer with City of Dreams. T-shirts and hoodies with the design can be ordered at bernalrock.com with buyers encouraged to donate to the same organization.
Makarova held a Zoom meeting with Alaric Degranfinried, acting director of Public Works, who reiterated his apology for his crew painting over her fifth rock artwork and ensured it wouldn’t happen again. He also offered to reimburse her for paint, but she declined, saying the cash-strapped city has far more urgent concerns.
Perhaps most inspiring, windows in homes and businesses all over Bernal Heights sport signs reading “Black Lives Matter” — many of them featuring an image of the rock.
“It almost feels like Bernal Heights found its activist heart again,” Makarova said. “I’m really grateful that a lot of neighbors got to do a lot of thinking and a lot of talking. I think there were a lot of people who were able to get from step zero to step one of realizing that white supremacy and racism is all around us, and we have to fight it in ourselves and in our communities.”
Plus, there’s a little bit of schadenfreude knowing Spraypaint Sally now has to see the message she tried to cover up all over her neighborhood.
“I like to imagine the people who were defacing the rock walking around seeing all those signs in support and realizing, ‘Oh, wow, I was on the wrong side of this,’” said Rocky Smith, a Bernal Heights resident and a software engineer at Facebook.
He’s the one who created the rock T-shirts after standing guard near the rock late one night to see who kept covering it in paint. He found the culprit: a white woman in a hoodie. He didn’t ask for the woman’s name, but recounted their conversation on social media and in the press. He said the woman told him, “Put something fun on there. If it’s not fun, I’ll paint it again.”
Anybody whose biggest problem this year is that their neighborhood rock isn’t fun enough should count themselves very, very lucky.
For the uninitiated, the large rock atop Bernal Heights Park looks over the city skyline and has for years been painted and repainted, almost always anonymously. It’s had serious messages about voting and wearing a mask during the COVID-19 pandemic. And it’s had a lot of silly motifs, too, like a slice of watermelon, an avocado, a ghost, a poop emoji and a black thong with a tattoo reading “Mom” on the butt cheek.
Makarova, who lives in Bernal Heights, painted her message after the police killing of George Floyd sparked national protests demanding reform in police departments and an end to systemic racism. The fact it kept getting covered up demonstrated San Francisco and even uber-progressive Bernal Heights don’t live up to their liberal reputations.
Makarova said she has no idea who painted the latest message, but after some sleuthing, I do. It was a handful of trans and nonbinary artists who don’t want to be named because they want the rock to return to its status as a community message board in which it’s the pictures and words that matter, not the identity of the artists.
They visited the rock before midnight Thursday and, using no flashlights so as to not be spotted, painted the message in the dark. The idea was to have it in place when the neighborhood woke up Friday morning. Traditionally, the Friday of Pride Weekend features the Trans March, but, like just about everything, that was wrecked by COVID-19.
The same group joined scores of other people to paint colorful messages Sunday night on the Stud — reading, among other things, “Queer Love,” “Black Trans Liberation” and “Out of the Bars, Into the Streets.”
After the owners of the iconic queer bar in the South of Market district had to close it and seek a new space due to the pandemic and rising rents, the landlord almost immediately had the colorful, one-of-a-kind building painted a boring off-white. Here’s guessing that if the landlord goes the beige route again, the artists will respond in even bolder fashion.
As for what happens next for the rock, Makarova said she thinks that these serious times call for the boulder to continue to sport messages of social justice, but one day it may be appropriate to revert to sillier artwork.
“I’m excited to see what the rock has to say,” she said. “It’s this weird, weird public object that lives a life of its own. As much as I don’t think right now is the time for avocados, hopefully in time we’ll get to a place where that’s all right again.”
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf
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‘Bernal found its activist heart again’: Artist happy with new message on painted rock - San Francisco Chronicle
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