Murals are a long-held tradition in San Francisco, and the city is home to hundreds across the various districts. Leadership High School takes this legacy to heart with their now annual Week Without Walls -- a single week where students are outside of the classroom to work on a project alongside professional artists and learn about mural art culture and history. Last year's inaugural piece was such a success that students have requested in return.

Jonathan Curiel

Born and raised in San Francisco, Apex has been doing street art since 1992, when he was just 14. Now, at age 34, he's one of San Francisco's veteran practitioners -- someone whose spray-paintings are instantly recognizable. Loops, lines, and half-circles converge into a nucleus, which often splits apart at the outer edges. With bold colors, and intricate shading and paint strokes -- like that of an Impressionist painter -- Apex's creations stand out from outdoor walls around San Francisco, and also at 941Geary gallery in an exhibit called "Reflected" that continues until January 5.

See also:

Fall Arts: This Year, S.F. Galleries Are World-Class

Diamanda Galas Calls Street Artist Novy "An Opportunistic Infection"

Marilyn Roxie

Since the Gold Rush brought miners and sailors to our city, the disproportionate amount of men to women and their transient lifestyles fostered a sexually liberal environment that has bloomed for decades. The city's now got one of the highest number of sex workers per capita in both illegal and legal trades, necessitating a rich history of activism in sexual politics. For the city with at least a dozen annual occasions to don leather (or nothing at all) out on the streets, the Center for Sex and Culture is putting it all out there in a new mural celebrating S.F.'s sex-positive community and their achievements.

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This American Whore Podcast Seeks to Demystify Sex Work

Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers Is More than Grief and Death

Bruce Damonte

Pacific Breath by Bryan Tedrick

Cultural institutions in San Francisco continually search for new acquisitions. Alexis Coe brings you the most important, often wondrous, sometimes bizarre, and occasionally downright vexing finds every Friday.

The Sunset can make a lot of big claims. San Francisco's largest district boasts Ocean Beach, 3.5 miles of white sand. There is nary a high-rise building in sight. Artist Richard Serra grew up on the Avenues. What it can't claim, however, is color. Proximity to the frigid Pacific Ocean ensures that the Sunset perpetuates this city's foggy reputation.

Bryan Tedrick's Pacific Breath, a new sculpture in the renovated Sunset Playground, brings much needed color to the area. "I don't typically use color. It was not a part of my original proposal, but I'm really happy that I did," said Tedrick.

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Holiday Gift Guide: 10 Picks from S.F. Booksellers

The Founding of Silicon Valley

Jennifer Jamieson

The holidays are upon us (We're basing this on Safeway breaking out the Christmas decorations five minutes after Halloween), which means we can finally listen to Mariah Carey's holiday album un-ironically and that we once more have an excuse to pour eggnog on everything -- Hello, huevos nog-cheros! Adding to our festive spirits this Friday is the SPCA's Pet Adoption Holiday Windows Unveiling at Macy's, featuring adorable and adoptable puppies and kitties to melt our hearts this winter.

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The Olympic Sport We'd Like to See in 2016: Kitten Wrestling

Cute Dogs in Costume: The Whole Enchihuahua

Cultural institutions in San Francisco continually search for new acquisitions. Alexis Coe brings you the most important, often wondrous, sometimes bizarre, and occasionally downright vexing finds every Friday.

What constitutes a successful art opening? If the elements include a packed house, people carrying political signs, and contending shrieks of revelry, then the unveiling of Aero #8 by Moto Ohtake was a resounding success.

There were also an abundance of time-outs, which is something this arts writer has never seen at an opening, no matter how bad the behavior. To be fair, most of the crowd was under four feet tall.

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Oakland Museum Receives Haunted Dress and Shackles

1936 Scrapbook of a Mickey Mouse Inker

I've always wanted to be a secret agent. The sneaking around, the mysterious assassinations, the beautiful women; it all looks so easy in the movies. The only bummer is how all of those covert operations start at the crack of dawn -- when my alarm goes off at 4 a.m., the only thing I want to assassinate is the clock. I was thinking about all of this on a recent Sunday while sitting in my car outside of Golden Gate Park at 5 a.m. I had dragged myself up with coffee and a Clif bar to meet classically trained actor and all around clown Jon Deline for a renegade art installation at the de Young Museum. When I saw a minivan with a missing headlight pull up, I knew it had to be him. Jon's brother came along to help out, and the three of us looked like friendly ninjas in our all black clothing.

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Local Circus Veterans' New Trick: Come to Shows that Never Happened

A Delicate Balance: Five Questions for S.F.'s Hottest Pole Acrobat

Courtesy Eric Staller

Eric Staller will not have the chicken. He will have the fish.

Welcome to The Spokesman, our bi-monthly bicycle column written by French Clements, a San Francisco resident and distance cyclist who considers it pretty routine to ride his bike to Marin County or San Jose and back. He belongs to a club, the SF Randonneurs, and is active in numerous aspects of the cycling community.

Defining Eric Staller's best-known artwork is like summing up a great city: You can't do it easily. Moving sculpture? Urban interventions? Art you can lock up outside? I still don't know.

But also like a great city, there's some communal vitality that's key to understanding his work.

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Day Tripping Across the Bay by Bike: A Starter Course

Bicycles Don't Have to Be Deadly to Pedestrians

We tried to get through this post without using the word CAN excessively, but we just don't see how you CAN look at something like the San Francisco CANstruction Event and not go a little ape with the puns. Even the organizers are getting in on the act with this year's theme, the CANnes Film Festival. Too cute.

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San Francisco Landmarks Made from Canned Food

Local Food Banks and Shelters Lose $600,000 in Funding

We've heard lore of bamboo forests and sun decks in the otherwise inhospitable downtown San Francisco, but when we endeavor to visit such mythical places, it always ends the same way: we can't find the exact location, or a menacing security guard prompts us to quickly turn away. Surely all the good worker bees should just continue hunching in front of the computer during lunch because that's the only option, right?

Wrong. Since 1985, this fine city has required developers to provide one square foot of public space for every 50 square feet of office space, known as POPOS or privately owned public spaces. How do you find POPOS? Developers aren't keen on making it easy. Bad signage or front desk inquiries are de rigueur, the nonprofit urban think tank SPUR noted in their 2009 report, but they've been on the case ever since,  and this month they've released a new app which promises to radically alter your lunch hour. S.F.'s Secret Spaces and Hidden Oases identifies over 50 POPOS on a map, as well as hours of operations and tricks to getting to where you want to go, whether it is a five-story atrium or a sculpture garden.

We combed the app to bring you the top 10 gems hidden in plain sight in downtown S.F.

See also:

San Francisco's Top 10 Offbeat Museums

The Haas-Lilienthal House Declared a National Treasure