A Noe Valley resident flagged them on Reddit this week — signs zip-tied to meter posts, two per block. They're against city code. The question is which city agency actually enforces that.

In Noe Valley this week, a resident counted two unauthorized advertisements on a single block of parking meters — small signs chained directly to the posts. On r/sanfrancisco, posting as "chevy932," the same resident estimated a citywide scale: "hundreds if not thousands, all dutifully chained to parking meters." A commenter named "RandallMadness" added a sharper concern: "The bigger problem is that the city is directing us to a third party app that ultimately will sell every bit of personal info it can harvest from each person and device."

That second claim — that the city is behind the ads — doesn't hold up. A review of SFMTA advertising contracts and policy found no authorized program for advertising on individual parking meters, no contract with any third-party app for meter-based marketing, and no authorization for any vendor to affix materials to SFMTA-managed meter hardware.

The ads are also illegal under city code — and the question of who removes them falls between two agencies.

SFMTA maintains San Francisco's 28,063 metered parking spaces — 24,830 single-space meters and 3,236 covered by multi-space paystations, per SFMTA records. The San Francisco Transportation Code, Article 1100, prohibits unauthorized commercial use of parking infrastructure. Affixing a physical advertisement to a meter could also constitute "tampering with equipment," a separate violation carrying a $500 fine under the SFMTA Fee and Fine Schedule, Division II, Section 1108(e)(38). SFMTA Parking Control Officers are authorized to issue citations and direct removal under Transportation Code Section 3.1.

The Department of Public Works holds concurrent jurisdiction under Public Works Code Article 27, which prohibits the attachment of signs or advertisements to any public property — parking meters included — without a permit. DPW's postering rules for utility poles fall under a separate article; Article 27 extends the same prohibition to other street furniture.

Which agency takes the call in practice — SFMTA Parking Control Officers, DPW inspectors, or whoever receives the 311 complaint first — isn't spelled out in any publicly available record. Neither agency publishes data on citations issued specifically for meter attachments.

The ads, then, stay up. Someone is paying to produce them and paying someone to chain them on; so far, neither the cost of a permit nor the threat of a $500 fine appears to have entered the calculation.