Recommendations are a dime a dozen, but in Pro Tips, we go directly to the source, asking experts for their professional opinions on the city’s best cultural offerings.

There’s never a shortage of art in San Francisco. Whether it’s a massive statue of a nude woman, laser projections shooting across Market Street, or graffiti-laden alleys, SF is a hub for eye-catching, stop-you-in-your-tracks public art. But what is actually worth schlepping out of your way to see? 

Anyone can slap paint on a wall, but truly world-class murals take time, effort, and incredible skill to pull off. “Being a muralist and painting a mural [are] two fucking totally different things,” SF-based artist Sirron Norris said.

To narrow down exactly which public artworks you should make a point of seeing — or bring out-of-towners to ogle — we asked nine Bay Area street artists to name their favorite murals. Here are their picks.

Pick: Pierpoint Lane between Third Street and Bridgeview Way
Best known for his Emmy-winning illustrations for the animated TV show “Bob’s Burgers,” Norris paints murals and has trained many of the city’s younger muralists. Though he loves the ones in the Mission, his favorite public art is in up-and-coming Mission Bay. Specifically, it’s in an alley tucked between the buildings housing Uber, OpenAI, and UCSF. Pierpoint Lane is a small greenspace sprinkled with immersive sculptures. “It is, like, one of my favorite spots,” Norris said. “It is some of the most whimsical sculptures I have ever seen.”

Pick: The Box Shop, 951 Hudson Ave.
Street artist Fnnch, best known for his polarizing larger-than-life honey-bear murals, recommends scoping the murals covering The Box Shop, an art space in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood. Sculptor Charlie Gadeken hired artists to cover almost every inch of the venue, which hosts indoor and outdoor collaborative studio spaces. “There are murals from so many great Bay Area artists, like Matley Hurd, Cameron Moberg, GATS, Jeremy Novy, and Tracy Piper,” Fnnch said. “Definitely one of the highlight spots in the city.” Plus, this may be your last chance to catch the murals before they’re gone for good; The Box Shop’s lease will end this year, with no option to renew.

Pick: Illuminaries’ mural at 750 Golden Gate Ave.
Ehrman moved to San Francisco 18 years ago from Florida and has been painting graphic, nature-inspired murals ever since. He is a die-hard fan of local muralist collective Illuminaries and is particularly obsessed with their most recent installation in the Western Addition, near Civic Center. This freestyle production transformed a drab construction wall into an epic piece of art. The popout-style mural, with an alien-like character and graffiti lettering, looks like it’s floating off the wall. “It turned out really beautiful,” Ehrman said. “It’s a unique concept, with the dimensionality of extending the top of the surface. It’s something graffiti artists in Europe have done for years.”

Pick: BiP’s “Baby With a Handgun” mural on Franklin Street
Kim, a science illustrator whose 50-foot-tall monarch butterfly graces the wall of a building on Hyde and O’Farrell Streets, recommends the towering “Baby With a Handgun.” The arresting image was painted in 2019 by an anonymous muralist who goes by the moniker BiP (short for “Believe in People”) as an act of protest against police brutality. “It’s just an iconic one,” said Kim. “I love stories, and I love commentary, and I love people making statements.”

Pick: JFK Promenade at Golden Gate Park
Tova, whose colorful heart mural adds to the whimsy of Umbrella Alley near Fisherman’s Wharf, adores the murals along JFK Promenade. “I love how art and nature coexist there so beautifully, complementing each other and thankfully replacing the busy car road it used to be,” Tova said. The promenade, which used to be one of the most dangerous roads for bikers and pedestrians, according to the Golden Mile Project, is now a walkway adorned with 12 murals by Ehrman, Hurd, and Strider Patton, among others. “Every time I walk my dog there, I see people interacting with the installations, which just brings the whole area to life,” Tova added.

Pick: Emily Fromm’s mural along the Great Highway
Young’s work is inspired by SF’s “organic yet urban” landscape, so it comes as no surprise that her favorite is a 60-foot-tall mural at Ocean Beach. “I love that it’s giving color to the seawall,” Young said. “Emily’s bold colors and illustrative technique are becoming instantly recognizable.” The mural was vandalized with white spray paint in March, amid opposition to the closing of the Great Highway, but more than 100 people showed up to restore it. “It was great to see folks come together like that for the sake of art,” Young said.

Pick: A new mural of Kobe Bryant on 830 Sacramento Street
Hon, who has worked on murals for the Warriors, Oakland A’s, and 49ers, recommends a new work honoring the basketball legend, right in the heart of Chinatown. In February, a group of artists known as the Twin Walls Mural Company painted a brick wall at Willy “Woo Woo” Wong Playground with a mural of Bryant, commissioned by Nike as a celebration of the Lunar New Year and NBA All-Star Week. The mural features local youth and Chinatown landmarks. The artists took inspiration from Bruce Lee, whose “philosophy and practice were inspirational for Kobe Bryant,” they wrote. “I love the composition against the snake, and how the water moves across the figure,” Hon said.

Pick: BiP’s “No Ceiling” mural at Jessie and Mission Street
Piper, whose murals have dotted buildings in the Mission and at the Ferry Building, recommends BiP’s “No Ceiling” near Union Square. It spans five stories and took the anonymous artist a month to complete in 2017. The image of a girl with abnormally large muscles tattooed with Oakland’s area codes (510 and 415) is an homage to the strength and resilience of Bay Area women. “It’s so iconic and so fun,” Piper said. “Definitely gives the feeling of the Bay Area — we are tough and childlike all at the same time.”

Pick: Juan Manuel Carmona and Simón Malvaes’ “LatinX” at 3157 Mission St.
Novy, whose signature stenciled koi fish dot the city, most notably the intersection at Sanchez and 30th in Noe Valley, points to the facade of historic queer bar El Rio as his favorite piece of public art. The mural takes up all three stories of the Victorian building on Mission Street. Difficult to decipher at first glance, the mural shows eight faces in profile, nested into one another in a trippy and intimate design. Novy praises it for its beautiful representation of the “changing forms of a human face.” The artists say it pays homage to the diverse “traditions and ethnic backgrounds within the Latino community in the U.S.”