Chicago sidewalk bears

While taking walks around the Chicago neighborhoods Edison Park and Norwood Park, a few years ago I started noticing cartoon bears spray-painted on street corners here and there. As I took different routes, I spotted more and more of these sidewalk bears. Started taking photos in November 2023, and started mapping them in June 2025.

Four sample sidewalk bears

Have found 99 total sidewalk bears so far (mouse over a marker to see the intersection):

Street map showing locations of 99 sidewalk bears

There are five colors of stenciled sidewalk bear in the area. Dark red bears — lower right quarter of the map — were apparently the original set^[1], all getting quite faded:

Example faded old red sidewalk bear

Green bears, the first ones I noticed, were already there late 2023:

Example green bear

Blue bears appeared early 2025:

Example blue bear

(A Google Street View scene from August 2024 shows a green bear but not a blue bear across the street from it.)

Brighter red bears appeared first half of January 2026:

Example new red bear

First spotted faded yellow (dirty white?) bears in March 2026 — bottom left of map — but they look like they’ve been there a while:

Example faded yellow bear

(Apple Maps “Look Around” shows the yellow ones in scenes labeled May 2025, and Google Street View shows them August 2024.)

No idea who’s painting these or how they pick the boundaries of where to place them. (Apart from the green bears, the different colors seem to be in distinct areas.) They all seem to be in Chicago: none jump out after crossing Canfield into Park Ridge or Milwaukee into Niles. The Reddit thread mentions some in the South Loop, but I haven’t made it over there.

1. See this Reddit r/chicago thread from August 2023 that mentions both red and blue bears. Many of the red ones mentioned in the thread comments are gone — along with a few on the map above — apparently from sidewalk/curb construction. The blue ones mentioned in the thread must be from a different neighborhood, since the blue ones here weren’t around until late 2024 or early 2025.↩

Geo data sources
Wolfram Knowledgebase (https://www.wolfram.com/)
OpenStreetMap contributors (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright)

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