If you live in San Francisco, chances are you dutifully sort your trash into three bins, pat yourself on the back and call it a day, knowing Recology takes care of the rest. But outside the comfort of your home, are you just as careful with your litter?
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) and the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) want to bring that sense of personal responsibility to the streets through a visual art project that merges environmental awareness with artistic intervention.
The pilot phase of the city’s Storm Drain Mural Project features six murals by local artist Jenifer Wofford depicting Bay-dwelling animal species. On the sidewalks next to storm drain grates around San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood, the creatures look up at passersby with pleading, doleful eyes.

Titled SF Bay Guardians in an homage to the city’s late, great alt weekly, the murals include crabs, seagulls, rockfish, a sea lion, a striped shark and — perhaps most adorably — a pair of baby bat rays. “It’s a little bit of a guilt trip,” Wofford says of the animals’ baleful looks. “But I was trying to create more of an emotional connection between the animal and the human, to reinforce the idea that there’s some responsibility here.”

Around the animals are life-sized illustrations of the type of trash the guardians seek to protect the Bay against: condiment packages, MUNI passes, soda cups, plastic rings, cigarette butts and the scratched CD you might recklessly throw out your car window. “I spent an awful lot of time researching what kinds of things typically end up in the drains,” Wofford says.