Meet the SF Artist Who Will Fill Your Enemy’s Room with Balloons

On a walk down Divisadero, we discovered a flyer that ballooned into a creative experience.

The flyer is taped at eye level to a beige utility pole, next to peeled stickers and singles night adverts. It uses first person, boldly stating: “Do you have opps? I will fill up their room with balloons.” There’s a number to text and a brief definition at the bottom: “An opp is someone you’re in competition with or generally against.”

We texted early on a weekday morning, stating we were with BrokeAssStuart.com. Was it a prank? Nope, someone texted back within minutes. 

Keeping Up the Character

“I was a little conflicted between still keeping up the character I’ve been using when I text people back from my number as somebody that is actually running a business where I want to balloon people’s houses.” That’s right: Bansini genuinely wants to find the right person with the right opp story so that she can fill up their room with real-life, squeaky, colorful balloons. 

“Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about things that are fun or whimsical,” Bansini explains. “I like playing around with the idea of an alternate reality or unreality. With posters, I’ve been collecting inspiration of people that make strange and funny posters.” 

What Inspired It

“When I first moved to San Francisco, I noticed that if you pay attention to the poles, there’s other people in SF that do the same thing. It almost felt like a hidden community that’s part of SF culture that I really loved stumbling upon all the time.” She references People on a Mission, Pursuit SF, and other scavenger hunt styles. “I just wanted to be a part of that.”

“I hung them up pretty recently on Divisadero and in Hayes Valley. I still want to go around putting them up in other spots. I did it for fun. There’s no other rationale behind it. I thought it would be funny.” And it is.

“I’ve gotten a bunch of responses,” Bansini says. She also made two other posters, one of a few kids in a trench coat and another pull-away style flyer with fake jobs stating, “Big Business Needs You.”

“It’s been so fun getting a whole bunch of responses, but they take them down pretty frequently.” She’s referring to the DPW street cleaning team, who visits each street on a set rotation. For those wanting to follow Bansini’s lead, it may be worth staking out the schedule. For instance, the Lower Haight flyer removal happens Friday mornings so a well-timed light pole gallery curation might take that into account. 

While we spoke, Bansini sent over screenshots of responses. “I definitely prefer the ones that are more lighthearted, but I got a few folks that were like, ‘Can you balloon my ex? I want to get back at them.’ That was funny, too.”

The humor of it all is the point. “I tried to make it very obvious through the design of the poster that this is not serious. I really want silly opps.” 

Why Balloons?

“It’s a kind of funny story,” Bansini says. “When I moved out of my previous place, I really wanted to do something with the empty space I had in the room. So I filled up the entire thing with balloons and I threw a party. But I made a big miscalculation when deciding how many balloons to buy.” Ah, that explains it. 

Bansini continues, “Now I just have 700 extra balloons and I need to use them up. They’re waiting for a new home, and if I find somebody… I will do it. I’m waiting for that person to find me.” 

What if You Have Opps?

Does Bansini have advice if you have opps? “I don’t really have any current opps or any from my past. I move on pretty easily. I don’t really like to think about any opps that I have. But you should balloon their home.” 

Bansini is also featured in the just-launched Unscene, which features human interest stories and comes out twice a year. “It was really fun to be able to riff off with the other creative minds, and it was pretty integral to the process of making sure these flyers are funny.” Her other projects include a parking ticket puffer vest that was made with parking tickets she collected from all her friends, a dress made out of scrap film from photos taken in San Francisco, and others. 

The only way to see these flyers is to get out of the fucking Waymo and walk the block. You never know what you might find stapled to your local light pole.

If You Want to Flyer, Too

For any artists inspired by this, there are three things to think about. First, make sure you read up on printer tracking dots before you post anything illegal or damning. Second, Bansini is vetting requests so that she doesn’t balloon without consent because it’s supposed to be playful; consider similar precautions. Third, there are also some rules and best practices about where you can flyer in SF:

Certain historic lamp-posts cannot have signs posted to them:

• Any San Francisco park (Park Code Sec 3.08)
• Market Street “Path of Gold” lamp posts between 1 Market and 2490 Market
• Mission St. corridor between 16th and 24th streets
• Dragon lanterns on Grant between Bush and Broadway
• Embarcadero between King and Jefferson
• Fisherman’s Wharf between Hyde and Powell
• Moscone Center – Howard between 3rd and 4th Streets
• Union Square Plaza
• Mason from Market to Sutter
• Sutter from Mason to Kearny
• Kearny from Bush to Market

Now go forth and engage with your neighborhood like Bansini!