I remember the first time I came by one of fnnch’s honey bear pieces. It was in 2018, the painted ursid — a mesmeric mix of sun-yellow Pantone colores juxtaposed against an otherwise utilitarian gray backdrop — was an innocent visual delight.
Its recent presence was welcomed by a passerby; I was far from the only person who filled their iPhone with pictures of the Haight-Ashbury bears. I eventually left after a few minutes, ambivalent; I was not pulled nor pushed in any single way; the bag of cellular waste and protein enzymes that I call my own carried on existing, unaffected.
The same level of indecision when I would find myself eyeing one of fnnch’s human-sized murals lingered for some time. But by the very nature of my job — someone who makes a living by publishing timely syntax and diction and SEO-friendly articles — my equivocation and familiarity with his work began shifting, albeit slowly.
(Much like KQED’s Rae Alexandra — who wrote what can only be described as an absolute mic drop on the controversy swirling around fnnch’s artwork — I, too, called his pieces the “most Instagram-able” murals in San Francisco… more times than I’d care to publicly admit.)
I plugged fnnch’s honey bears in listicles. I waxed on the cis-heterosexual white man’s occasional philanthropic niceties. I explained how denizens of the city could purchase print copies of the former tech employee’s honey bear murals. I glowed about his Covid-19-theme honey bears that doubled as PSAs for mask-wearing.
I, rather embarrassingly, became a passive consumer of his artwork.
But my unbothered opinion on fnnch however quickly evolved into a repressed rage as his murals began morphing into fixtures of gentrification. Like suffocating canaries in a coal mine, the appearance of fnnch’s sunset-orange honey bears had grown into symbols of displacement.
The past twelve months have seen finch’s once benevolent honey bears oversaturate the city with their monotony. In that explosion of cookie-cutter public art, one could say that queer people like myself began feeling their teeth ache.
This month, in particular, the disdain for his work came to a head.
Public outcry against fnnch’s work turned into critical Instagram accounts, celebrating defacements of his honey bears. Twitter became a conduit for constant hot takes on his now-loathed pieces. Facebook filled with comment sections debating the merits of his work — which, if printed, could be bound and made into individual coffee table books.
In an almost unbelievably congruent happenstance: Manny’s, which presently exists as a microcosm of San Francisco’s very conflict around gentrification, hosted fnnch as part of its Painting the Pandemic & Future of Public forum at The Chapel’s outdoor stage on April 22.
One of the SF’s most vociferous proponents against fnnch’s monopoly of local public art is Ricky Rat, who TBI profiled this past summer. Like myself, Ricky’s criticism of fnnch’s art isn’t singular in nature but rather sits inside a larger account of public artwork — one that’s fraught with inequities and unfairness afforded by white cis-male heterosexual artists.
“I’m not saying I’m more talented or deserving than fnnch is, because I’m not,” Ricky says, the artist’s Instagram having consistently offered introductions to local painters in San Francisco. “But there are hella other artists from here, like Lucia Ippolito, who I think are just better. She’s dope, and she’s actually from the Mission. Someone like her deserves way more of that recognition than he does.”
“I don’t care where you’re from, but if you’re not doing something directly positive that reflects the real community, then I won’t support it,” Ricky added to The Bold Italic last August. “[fnnch] didn’t invent gentrification, but he most publicly represents what it’s about.”
Ricky’s then-remarks around the Missouri native also included a bout of clairvoyance to fnnch’s future viral proclamation, calling himself an “immigrant of San Francisco.”
“I don’t care where you’re from, but if you’re not doing something directly positive that reflects the real community, then I won’t support it,” Ricky continued. “San Francisco has always had a transient population, and the people who come here don’t always have any real investment in our communities, because they can just come and go to build their own shit.”
My smoldering frustration with fnnch grew into a four-alarm fire when the “Sister Honey Bear” was smattered on Powerhouse — an iconic, kink-positive space in San Francisco, which has existed as a safe space away from heteronormativity since 1981. When I met up with an ex-turned-friend at the “PigPen” earlier this month for a drink, there was no shaking lose the unsettling notion that I was nursing a cocktail underneath a massive piece of art made by a straight man.
A straight man whose work had proliferated The Castro; a straight man that saw no harm in painting a trio of his now-removed honey bears outside the SF LGBT Center; a straight man who removed himself from discussions around accountability under the guise of charity. A straight man that defended his committee-approved work — harming and hurting the city’s LGBTQI+ community, all the while.
Identifying as queer is to find yourself in an evergreen tug-of-war with a world organized around heterosexuality. It’s having a daily inner dialogue with yourself to both honor and celebrate your idiosyncrasies, but remind yourself to remain acutely aware of the spaces you occupy.
Being queer is to walk fast. Sometimes out of fear. Other times led by anxiety.
To holster your hands inside a crowded Lubbock, Texas gas station, remembering not to gesticulate in a fashion that might elicit unwanted gazes. To realize that the idea of a “chosen family” is an almost entirely foreign concept to people from your shared suburban childhood.
Being queer, too, is an exercise in finding comfortable nooks that make up your reality — the bars, beaches, bodegas, bookstores — which mirror your most authentic self.
These spaces allow you to relax your hands. Drop the baritone of your voice. Find love, then lose it; make friends, construct your chosen family. Celebrate your humanity by simply being.
Fnnch’s art displayed on queer spaces is more than just hinting at the straight world that surrounds LGBTQI+ people. It doubles as a reminder of the well-documented predation and erasure of queer spaces by heterosexual culture — even here in the “gay capital of the world.”
Polk Street, which was formerly San Francisco’s vibrant gayborhood, is now lined with vacant storefronts and home to the only surviving gay bar, The Cinch, from that bygone LGBTQI+ era. After becoming another casualty of the pandemic, The Stud last year was sold to new landlords who tripled the rent and saw it fit to, quite literally, whitewash the watering hole’s beloved outdoor artwork with fresh coats of weather-resistant paint. (Though, an ongoing lawsuit drawn up against the new owner by a coalition of artists hopes to somewhat rectify this careless botching.)
When spokesperson Jessica Berg from development company Group i asserted that the Tenderloin’s secret LGBTQI+ tunnels at the block of 950 Market Street were “complete fiction,” she attempted to delegitimize queer history — never mind that historians and activists have confidently proved this network of secret tunnels previously allowed LGBTQI+ people to escape police raids. Myth or not, Berg’s remarks exemplify a perpetuated dialogue that makes queer people appear (and feel) less-than.
Fnnch has continued to show his complacency in understanding his own participation in San Francisco’s storied gentrification and queer erasure.
We can paint over his honey bear murals; we should. But the damage has been done. The pain from these queer toothaches people, like myself, have been feeling at the sight of his honey bears is ingrained in our hippocampus. And his homogenized art still threatens to rot the very creative soul of this city.
While we go about metaphorically lacquering our incisors with Orajel, let’s take a page from Ricky: If you’re not doing something directly positive that reflects the real community, then [we] won’t support it.
