Is it legal to put up
posters in San Francisco?

Short answer: yes — on some city-owned poles, under specific rules. Posting on public property in San Francisco is prohibited by default. Article 5.6 of the Public Works Code (§184.56–184.68) carves out one narrow exception: signs on qualifying city-owned lamp posts and utility poles, if the sign meets the code’s requirements on size, attachment, dating, and removal. Almost everything else people staple flyers to — trees, benches, hydrants, traffic poles, buildings — is illegal.

We’re building a poster business on these rules — our own posters hang under them — so we live inside the code. Here it is in plain English, with the section numbers so you can check us.

Qualifying city-owned lamp posts and utility poles (§184.57). Three catches. First, “city-owned” is doing real work: thousands of SF streetlights belong to PG&E, and ownership isn’t visible from the sidewalk. Second, any pole carrying a traffic signal or a traffic/directional sign is excluded entirely — a streetlight that also holds a parking sign is off-limits (§184.56). Third, the code’s main exception is written for non-commercial streets; on commercial streets the same rules apply only to signs 11 inches or under (§184.57(d)), and the registration program that once allowed bigger signs is closed to new applicants.

Bulletin boards designed for neighborhood postings are exempt from all of this, and café windows are a private-permission conversation — different game, often a good one.

§184.58 names eight groups of historic street lights where posting is flatly prohibited:

• Market Street’s “Path of Gold” — 1 Market St to 2490 Market St
• The Mission Street corridor between 16th and 24th Streets
• The “Dragon Street Lanterns” on Grant Avenue, Bush to Broadway
• The Embarcadero between King and Jefferson Streets
• Fisherman’s Wharf between Hyde and Powell Streets
• Howard Street at Moscone Center, between 3rd and 4th Streets
• Union Square Plaza (Geary, Stockton, Post, and Powell)
• Mason St from Market to Sutter, Sutter St from Mason to Kearny, and Kearny St from Bush to Market

Public Works keeps the authoritative list and map, and individual historic poles exist outside these corridors too — one of several reasons “it looks like a normal streetlight” is not a compliance strategy. Beyond the corridors: no trees, ever (§184.60), no benches, hydrants, railings, or transit shelters, and nothing on Port or park property, which Article 5.6 doesn’t cover.

Signs and their attachment material must come down within 70 calendar days of the posting date (§184.57(e)). Signs promoting an event or election must come down no more than 10 calendar days after the event — whichever deadline hits first. This is the rule everyone forgets, and it’s why every campaign we run ends with a scheduled, documented removal pass.

Administrative fines escalate per violation: $100 for the first, $200 for a second within a year, $500 for each one after that (§184.63(b)). Separately, a violation is an infraction carrying $100–$500 (§184.62), and the city can bill you for removal costs with a 50% civil-penalty surcharge if you don’t pay (§184.63–184.64). Anyone can report an illegal posting through 311, and one more detail worth knowing: for a purely commercial sign, the business named on the poster can be used as evidence of who caused the posting (§184.65). A sloppy 100-poster run isn’t a gray area — it’s a stack of citations with your logo on them.