Two huge graffiti pieces now stretch down the side of an Art Deco co-op tower on Vallejo Street in Pacific Heights, each letter roughly three stories tall, after a pair of Taiwan-based artists rappelled down the building's exterior to spray-paint them. The stunt has left residents of the tony 1927 building somewhere between impressed and furious.
According to The San Francisco Standard, the writers responsible go by Josh and Neme, members of the Taiwan-based EO4 graffiti crew who are not local to San Francisco. The two painted side-by-side pieces reading “Joshua” and “Neme,” with Josh's letters twisted and barbed at the corners while Neme's appear to melt toward the sidewalk. The pair also wrote “San Fran” next to their pieces, and the graffiti includes smaller tags scattered around the larger work. Pacific Heights co-op residents first learned about the graffiti through a building-wide email, per the Standard's reporting.
A police report was filed regarding the graffiti on August 6, according to The New Fillmore, which identified the building as 1940 Vallejo Street and reported that the spray-painted piece on the east-facing wall also included the signature “Taipei to the Bay” alongside the phrases “We own your city now” surrounding the tag names.
Neighbors Split Between Violation and Admiration
Reactions inside the building have been anything but unanimous. One anonymous resident described the graffiti as a sense of violation and questioned how the artists managed to scale the building undetected and whether the property's security was sufficient, the Standard reported. That same resident, however, also called the feat impressive.
Other residents were more charmed than alarmed. Carol Passmore said whether the graffiti remains is ultimately up to the building's residents, and added that the tags made her appreciate the building's beauty. Natalie Price said the graffiti's stylized letters were preferable to people putting tags everywhere, noting that the style echoes the building's own architectural flourishes — a nod to the ornamental arches above the tower's top-floor windows. Even a neighborhood delivery driver named Steve weighed in, telling the Standard he had never seen anything like it in 20 years of delivering packages to the neighborhood, and that he thinks the graffiti looks cool.
A Rare Sight for One of San Francisco's Wealthiest Blocks
Pacific Heights rarely sees graffiti at all, let alone at the scale of these tower-length pieces, according to the Standard's report. The building itself is no ordinary backdrop: built in 1927, the 11-story Art Deco co-op has seen individual full-floor apartments sell for more than $5 million, according to Zillow. That contrast between high-end real estate and a brazen act of street art is central to why the tags have drawn so much attention.
Rappel graffiti of this kind has grown more popular in recent years as artists seek increasingly brazen ways to outdo one another, per the Standard. EO4 has previously painted in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines. In an October 2024 interview, Josh said he learned rappelling techniques in early 2024 from veteran artists RAMS and ORAKLE during a trip to Bangkok, according to Bombing Science. The technique has also surfaced closer to home: Hoodline reported that taggers covered more than 25 floors of the vacant Oceanwide Plaza high-rises in Downtown Los Angeles back in February 2024, part of a broader West Coast trend of high-altitude rappel tagging.
Cleanup Bill Falls on the Co-op, Not the City
Whatever admiration the piece has generated among some neighbors, the financial and legal burden for removing it falls squarely on the building's residents. Pacific Heights co-op residents need to have the graffiti painted over to avoid city fines, and the cost of that removal will come out of residents' own pockets, the Standard reported.
That's because private residential buildings outside designated commercial corridors are excluded from San Francisco's courtesy graffiti removal program, a $2 million annual pilot the San Francisco Office of the Mayor launched in November 2022 for small businesses. Under Article 23, Section 1300 of the San Francisco Public Works Code, property owners who receive an official graffiti notice have 30 days to abate the tags or face a $362 administrative fine, according to San Francisco Public Works. If the co-op fails to clear the graffiti in that window, the city is authorized to step in, abate the damage itself, and charge the owner a minimum fee of $500 plus additional legal and administrative costs.
The city's graffiti problem extends well beyond one Pacific Heights tower. San Francisco spends more than $20 million annually on public graffiti cleanup, and reported complaints hit a 10-year high in July 2022 with more than 1,300 cases logged in a single month, per Public Works. Given the height and specialized equipment needed to repaint an 11-story facade, the cost of professional abatement at 1940 Vallejo Street will almost certainly clear the $400 threshold that, under California Penal Code Section 594, can turn vandalism into a felony charge punishable by up to three years in prison and fines as high as $10,000, according to the Shouse Law Group.
