It's a sight familiar to folks who frequent the Outer Sunset — car painted to resemble a New York taxicab, but covered with flowers.

I always figured it was some sort of art car, or is maybe just owned by someone who decided to have fun with a traditional-looking sedan? (You guys, we have a lot of funky looking cars out in the OS, especially parked on La Playa.)

However, when Augusto Matias Jr sent these photos taken yesterday of the floral cab to both SFist and our pals at Gothamist, the Goth folks pointed out to us that this is likely a real New York City (get a rope) Cab that was part of a 2007 effort to meld art and taxis.

Per a Gothamist post from July, 2006:

The City of New York is working on the temporary, mobile public art project, Garden in Transit, which will "celebrate the 100th anniversary of New York’s first motorized taxi." Starting this fall, children will paint flowers onto decals that will then be placed on thousands of yellow cabs. Cab owners will not be required to put the decals on, but they can certainly volunteer their cabs for the project - and we suspect many will, as they will probably be attractive to that all important taxi fare - the tourist...The cabs will flower for 16 weeks, from September through December 2007.

It appears at least one cab continued to flower past that date, and at some point headed to San Francisco.

A helpful Java Beach staffer I spoke with on the phone this morning says that the cab is still parked in that same spot, on La Playa on the northernmost end of the Judah mini-park. So if you're headed down to Ocean Beach today (which you should, it's gorgeous out here), check it out.

And of course, we'd love to know more of the story behind this particular cab and how it ended up in SF. If you know anything, drop us a line.

Photo: Augusto Matias Jr