What Is It Like To Navigate Market Street as a Pigeon?

San Francisco may not be the Gotham of Batman comic book lore, but it is getting its own comic strip of sorts—thanks to the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Today, the commission announced the installation of Market Street Crossroads, the latest edition of poster art pieces to be displayed on Muni bus shelters along Market Street.

This year’s series, created by award-winning sibling illustrator COIN-OP team Peter and Maria Hoey, continues the “Comics 2.0” theme from 2022 and takes a page from comic books. Six illustrated vignettes show commuters moving through the city by bike, bus, scooter, streetcar and more. We see these commuters’ thought bubbles as they make their way to work or home. The artists even got into the head of a pigeon while trying to navigate Muni.

“I find the escalator very confusing. It never stops moving,” the pigeon remarks in one frame of a poster cheekily named “Flock on Market.”

“When we saw the call for artists for this project, we knew right away that we wanted to make our comic about Market Street,” co-creator Maria Hoey said in an artist statement. “I used to walk down Market Street to catch the bus, waited and daydreamed at these kiosks. My brother and I both agreed that we should make a series of stories that would speak to and entertain the people waiting there today.”

Other vignettes dive into the heads of more Market Street passersby, including a solo commuter missing her stop, a grandchild traveling to visit his grandmother and a man daydreaming in rainy weather on his streetcar commute. Scroll through the gallery or take a stroll down Market Street to see more of this series.