A new flag for San Francisco

Why a new flag for San Francisco?

First of all, I should say that I unironically love the current San Francisco flag, despite the fact that it flaunts the commonly accepted rules of flag design. I’ve always been proud, maybe sometimes over-the-top proud, to be a San Franciscan. I loved that we had a flag, and I loved the symbolism behind the phoenix and its connection to San Francisco history (San Francisco burned down 5 times in an 18 month span between 1849 and 1851). I loved seeing it flying over City Hall. There was one house that flew the flag that I would pass on my way to school every day, and I always got just the tiniest boost of civic pride when I would see it. During my sophomore year of college, when I was extremely homesick for SF, I asked for a San Francisco flag for Christmas, and hung it in my dorm room every year until I moved back to the city. When I moved to Reno to work on the Obama campaign in 2012, I hung it in my apartment there as well.

I knew not everybody liked it, and some people commented on how bizarre the phoenix looked. In 2011, Roman Mars did an entire podcast episode about how “bad” the flag was, which I won’t link to because I think he’s kind of an asshole in it, literally using the flag as a punchline. Following that, there were a few posts on different sites calling for new designs for the flag, with varying degrees of seriousness. None of these designs looked or felt right to me. Shorty Fats’ Hyphy flag is absolutely iconic, despite breaking every design principle that the current SF flag violates and many, many more. The Bold Italic, which commissioned this version of the flag, even sold t-shirts of it, though the page where they were sold no longer exists and I haven’t been able to get my hands on one.

But I still loved the original San Francisco flag, the one that had reminded me of home wherever else I lived. Then I found out it wasn’t even the original version of the flag, not by a long shot. If you’ve got 15 or 20 minutes, check out this incredibly well-researched article by John Lumea on the history of San Francisco’s flag. That article came out in September 2018. By December 2019, in addition to the Hyphy flag, Vigilante was selling shirts with a recreated version of the original flag, and Brian Stokle had come up with an entirely different design and was selling actual flags. In April 2020, the Chronicle ran a piece about the controversy over San Francisco’s flag and Stokle’s redesign specifically. This article stated that the COVID crisis might be reigniting interest in a new flag given that people need something to be proud of right now and that San Francisco will likely have a lot of rebuilding to do once the pandemic has passed. And I've seen yet another SF flag redesign, by Jeremy Fish, on stickers around the city during the COVID pandemic.

Additionally, as John Lumea’s article pointed out, the phoenix on the current version of the city flag was changed some time in the 1930’s, probably to match the phoenix of the San Francisco Police Department’s seal – the phoenix still seen on the SFPD’s shoulder patches. At this time in history when San Franciscans, and the nation as a whole, are questioning the moral authority of law enforcement institutions, I think it would be appropriate for the city to have a symbol that is separate from that of its police force.

So this summer, I finally decided to pick back up the design idea I had been toying with for about 4 years.

The design

The idea for this design first came to me when I was looking for inspiration for a more stylized phoenix designs from other flags that feature a simple, one-color design of an animal. The first such design that came to mind was the eagle on the United Farm Workers flag, which is so iconic yet so simple. I even thought of designing a phoenix with similarly geometrical wings inspired by the UFW eagle. But in reading about the history of that design, I learned that the shape was a reference to the Aztec and Mayan pyramids built by the indigenous ancestors of the immigrant farmworkers, and I felt it would be inappropriate to use such a design for the SF city flag.

Nevertheless, I was inspired by the use of an iconic structure to provide the shape for a stylized animal design. I brainstormed different San Francisco landmarks with unique shapes. It took me a moment to think of the bridge because I don’t often see it from my neighborhood and because it’s only partly in San Francisco. But when I did think of it, it struck me as perfect.

San Francisco is a crossroads connecting the United States to the Pacific Ocean and beyond, a takeoff point for voyages across the globe, and the point of arrival for immigrants and visitors from around the world. At our best, we try to build connections between people and communities, creating a city that is welcoming to all and connected to the rest of the world. The Golden Gate Bridge is a San Francisco icon recognized around the world, and symbolizes that spirit of interconnectedness and unity as well as the innovation and collective effort that it took to build.

I imagined the wings of a phoenix in the shape of the two spans of the Golden Gate Bridge, rising towards the sky to take flight. The bottom of the flag was inspired by the black-and-gold twist that appeared under the phoenix on the original San Francisco flag design. I changed the black to international orange, added a seventh twist to represent San Francisco’s “seven hills” and seven mile dimensions, and enlarged it to cover the entire base of the flag so that it resembles seven overlapping hills of equal height. The flames beneath the phoenix also take their shape from the original flag’s design.

Finally, the phoenix is looking upward, rising towards greater heights, and has its mouth open as if calling out, which I felt was the only appropriate way to represent a vocal city known for its history of protests and pride.

The colors

The Golden Gate Bridge also has a unique color, International Orange, that works well for a phoenix rising from flames. San Francisco’s traditional colors are gold and black, due to its motto, “oro en paz, fierro en guerra” (Spanish for “gold in peace, iron in war”). The motto is not well known, and the colors are even less well known. The color black doesn’t even appear on San Francisco’s current flag. When I began sketching initial designs for a bright red-orange phoenix emerging from flames, I noticed that the color looks like red-hot molten iron. Iron, after all, is only back when it’s cold and hard, but when it’s being forged and reshaped into something new, it glows red-orange. I find this to be a perfect metaphor for a city that is constantly reinventing itself and creating new things, never stagnating. I also find it symbolic of melting down iron of weapons of war, the namesakes of “fierro en guerra,” to reforge them into something new in peacetime -- something new like a bridge that will connect people from different places rather than weapons to kill each other. We are a much more peaceful city than we were 100+ years ago when the motto was chosen. San Francisco was central to the anti-war movements of the 1960’s and those that continue to the present day, and we have a strong bent towards nonviolence. Accordingly, I think it would be fitting to change our city color from the color of weapons to the color of those weapons being melted down, reforged, and reborn into something new – just as a phoenix is reborn.

I chose a deep ocean blue for the background because of San Francisco’s blue ocean and bay. The phoenix is surrounded by blue on three sides, just as the city is surrounded on three sides by water (unfortunately, the blue color appears differently on different screens, so you may see a different shade).

Additionally, International Orange is about halfway between the red of the 49ers and the deep orange of the Giants. Gold is featured on the 49ers and Warriors uniforms, and blue on the Warriors uniforms as well.

(Note: the colors appear different on different devices & screens. They should be bright gold, bright red just on the verge of orange, and deep ocean blue.)

A few other ideas I considered but rejected:

- Rainbows. They are a symbol specific to the LGBTQ community that I don’t think should be co-opted for the city’s flag.

- The white background. It’s plain, boring, and supposed to represent “purity” which just isn’t San Francisco.

- As much as I love the aesthetic of the gold border in San Francisco’s current flag, I felt it didn't make sense symbolically for San Francisco's flag to have borders. I opted instead for gold trim around the phoenix, which made the shape stand out against the blue background.

- Gray, the color of fog. As much as I love San Francisco’s fog, I find that gray is too dull a color to stand out on a flag.

So here it is, my proposal for a new San Francisco flag!

...and here it is painted on the back of one of my denim jackets: