With many employees still working from home, San Francisco’s financial district can seem like a ghost town during the week, making it the perfect setting for a spooky themed prank.
Nearly a dozen pranksters brought more trick than treat to the city earlier this week when they converted an empty Google building into a Halloween store.
The chicanery was led by Danielle Baskin, a designer who’s the CEO of the voice-based social network "Dial Up." According to her website, beyond work, she enjoys exploring abandoned buildings, and creating internet pranks. She combined those two passions on Monday afternoon.
Baskin hatched a plan to turn the Google offices at 345 Spear St. into a fake "Spirit Halloween" store, at least as much as she could on the outside. The popular seasonal retailer is a go-to place for Halloween costumes and decorations every October.
She told KCBS Radio the idea for the spoof store spawned when she noticed the offices were left mostly vacant over the past 18 months during the pandemic. She described much of the financial district as a "ghost town," which added to the allure of engaging in some Halloween-style antics.
Baskin, using a commercial sized printing press she owned from a previous sign making business, created a replica banner of the store and plastered it over the Google sign at the entrance to the offices.
In addition, she, along with a team of 10 other people who helped her execute the prank, dressed up as Spirit staffers and put up realistic construction props around the building, including caution tape, plastic stand up warning signage and orange cones.
They even had official-looking inventory sheets listing all the items they had in stock.
"It was easy to find friends to come help," she explained. "There’s a large prankster spirit here in San Francisco."
The fun lasted for about two hours before Google security guards appeared and shut down the operation. However, that was plenty of time for the prank to be successfully pulled off.
"It was actually up longer than I expected," she said. "The sign disappeared, (the security guards) stashed it somewhere."
She tweeted she's hoping the sign is returned to her at some point.
What does Baskin hope people learned from the hijinks?
"I want people to be more conscientious of how real estate is used," she said. "That is such a beautiful building, beautiful view, there is a the public courtyard. But no one is there."
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