CURRENT 2023 TOUR DATES

Polk Street Ghost Sign Tour

  • 3/25 - 1:30PM

  • 3/26 - 1:30 PM

  • 4/1 - 1:30 PM

  • 4/2 - 1:30 PM

Ticket available on Eventbrite https://www.eventbrite.com/e/polk-street-ghost-sign-walking-tour-tickets-586090772277

“Walkers are ‘practitioners of the city,’ for the city is made to be walked. A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities.
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking”

The San Francisco Ghost Sign Mapping Project is designed to be walked. In 2011, during a period of low mental health, the act of walking & of being alone in the crowd was a source of comfort and stability to me. As I walked the city, taking photos as I went, the subjects of my photography narrowed until the I settled on a single subject - old advertising signs. And the San Francisco Ghost Sign Mapping Project was born.

Walking continues to be an important part of the project and I try to lead as many tours as possible every spring/summer. While the arc of development trends is best viewed via the map, seeing them in situ is important to fully absorbing the weight of this historio-geographic lens. Tours are generally on Saturday mornings, start and end at the Powell Street cable car turnaround, winding their weigh through the Tenderloin over the course of two hours.