John Metcalfe
John Metcalfe was CityLab’s Bay Area bureau chief, covering climate change and the science of cities.
Not everybody is a fan of 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, but he’s got the street-art vote, with at least two murals bearing his likeness appearing in the Bay Area.
The first went up early this fall near downtown Oakland on what appears to be “the back of a garbage structure,” reports NBC. Painted by somebody going by “FLC,” it depicts a glowing, almost Christlike version of Kaepernick’s face and the vow, “We got your back.”
.@Kaepernick7 mural. Spotted on 22nd st. &Telegraph ave. in #Oakland.
— Pendarvis H. (@OGpenn) September 23, 2016
... Rightnowish. pic.twitter.com/7QOYtxc9A3
Another mural recently popped up on the side of a building in San Francisco’s Mission District. It shows the quarterback kneeling (presumably during the National Anthem) in his controversial protest against police brutality. The artist who painted it, “Dino,” told ABC 7 that Kaepernick’s “stance on the issue is revolutionary and revealing about our broken, racist, and unjust system in this country."
Spotted! New Colin Kaepernick kneeling mural in #SF at 15th & Mission. Building tenant didn't know but loves it! https://t.co/M4SWaxJNMH pic.twitter.com/BPOaKKYKS4
— Kristen Sze (@abc7kristensze) October 19, 2016
Aside from muralists, Kaepernick has inspired at least one tagger to scrawl the football player’s name over an American flag mural in Brooklyn. The artist who painted that mural is trying to raise money to restore it, complaining on Facebook that the “enemy’s army is growing.”