Life

How SF Would Look Without All Those Hills

Humans of San Francisco, I have visited your majestic city in my lifetime, and the most recent visit I'm pretty sure I grew an extra pair of quads. The hills in San Francisco are not a joke, son. This is a runner's wet dream, basically, so I thoroughly enjoyed weaving my way in and out of your street mountain ranges, but I imagine it gets a little tiring when you actually live there. Fret not, city dwellers, because these illusionists imagined what San Francisco would look like without hills. Get ready to get your mind-tripped by a bunch of peppy mimes who probably put coffee in their morning cereal.

Karen X. Cheng and Ross Ching are the masterminds behind the tilted camera effect that makes the illusion. They spent a few days looking for the steepest hills in San Francisco, and then recruited a whole cast of hill hoppers to make San Francisco look, if only for a few minutes, as flat as a pancake. If you don't live in the city, you'll appreciate the trippy camera work. If you do live in the city, you might cry a tiny tear for your calves that this isn't real. Hold in there, guys. At least you'll probably survive the zombie apocalypse slightly longer than the rest of us.

Here are a few of the mind bending effects they used:

The lean-and-ditch

#Rude, bro.

The casual telekinesis

People in SF have super powers. Must be all the kale.

The lemmings

This is weirdly precious to me. You go, guys.

Here's the full video:

Images: Getty Images; YouTube(3)