The Bernal Hill Rock is SF’s cultural chameleon in a coal mine of sorts — always changing and influenced by the world around it.
The Bernal Hill Rock in San Francisco — made up of three boulders, one tall, center boulder flanked by two horizontal rocks — is constantly changing. It can boast seasonal paint jobs that celebrate yuletide cheer, the right to bodily autonomy, pay homage to puppets with an insatiable sweet tooth … and much more. (Denouncing genocide and unjust wars are also in the topical palette of this famous piece of public art.)
But the iconoclastic rock formation’s most recent painting effectively serves as a geological call to action: Put down the plastic straw!
Made to cosplay as a sea turtle, Bernal Hill Rock’s center formation is painted in vibrant greens and yellows, matched by contrasting blacks and browns. The rocks to the left and right reassemble the front flippers of a sea turtle; the three separate pieces come together to make it appear that said sea turtle is peaking up from the ground beneath.
And fun fact: As far as we can tell, this is the first-ever animal painted onto the Bernal Hill Rock.
With only about 85,000 green sea turtles left in the wild — a figure that’s decreasing year after year, largely due to the climate crisis and ocean plastics — now’s as good a time as any to embrace the stainless steel or glass straw lifestyle … though paper straws remain an abomination.
