16th Avenue Tiled Steps

This guide to the 16th Avenue Tiled Steps in San Francisco starts with two artists, Aileen Barr and Colette Crutcher, who arrived at a neighborhood meeting each expecting to compete for the same mosaic commission around 2003. It follows how neighbors Jessie Audette and Alice Yee Xavier proposed covering a plain 1920s concrete stairway after seeing Rio de Janeiro's tiled Escadaria Selarón, and the two and a half years hundreds of residents spent cutting tile and hiding their names inside painted fish and birds. A listening tip: look for a stranger's name still hidden somewhere in the tile beneath your feet.