We all know about the poop maps, sidewalk syringes, and the questionable puddles that nobody dares step in. But there’s another category of street detritus that rarely gets talked about — the truly bizarre, oddly specific, “how did this even get here?” kind of junk.
We’re talking about full-on coffins, storm drains oozing raw chicken, and spy drones left abandoned in the road like the start of a sci-fi horror movie. Every day, something weird gets dumped on San Francisco streets, and while no one ever seems to have an explanation, the city just keeps moving around the debris like it’s normal. Maybe it is. Here are my picks:
#1. A fallen drone
One night last decade, a Bold Italic writer found a $1,200 quadcopter drone blinking in the middle of Fulton Street. She and her housemates brought it inside — because obviously, that’s how sci-fi horror movies start.
The mood in the kitchen shifted from amused to mildly paranoid. They half-joked about it waking up in the middle of the night and hovering over them in their sleep. Just to be safe, they pulled the battery and Wi-Fi, cutting off any chance of it “phoning home.”
No one ever came looking for it. A Craigslist post to return it got no responses. And so, for a while, the drone just sat there on their mantel, watching them instead.
📌 Source: Amber Schadewald for The Bold Italic. (Wayback Machine link.) This actually felt common for the time, and getting injured by one carried no penalty.
#2. The Six Feet Under Club
So this one showed up on purpose — but then people stumbled on it.
In 2010, an Austrian art collective brought San Francisco the “Six Feet Under Club,” an experimental performance where couples could volunteer to be buried together in a casket underground. A night vision webcam projected the scene onto an outside wall.
I remember actually walking up to this with my boyfriend during my first job as a reporter, but I was too demure to get in; It was a Dumpster on the street with a buried coffin inside. A couple did walk past on their way to dinner, however, and then ran home and returned dressed as a nurse and a priest. Only in SF.
📌 Source: Huck Magazine. Also read this entry from Bay Area resident Kitty Stryker on the experience.
#3. A coffin on the sidewalk
Maybe San Francisco just has a thing for coffins. In February 2022, a large beige casket was left casually abandoned on the sidewalk at California and Funston. Unlike the Six Feet Under Club, this was no art installation — just a coffin hanging out.
Some residents were shocked, while others just shrugged and walked past like it was any other day. Journalist Maria Cid Medina posted on Instagram about it amid a flurry of other attention. Eventually, a Recology garbage truck hauled it away, taking its mystery with it.
I mean, from the image it says “The Vampire Funeral” in a cheap printout, and this all was spotted a smidge after the holiday season, near pandemic times. Maybe someone just took “six feet apart” to a really morbid place.
📌 Source: Maria Cid Medina
#4. A toilet in the middle of the street
San Franciscans once stumbled upon an abandoned busted toilet lying on its side, right in the middle of the street. It was the pandemic and the day after Christmas — maybe someone had one too many honey ham servings? Gives new meaning to the term dump-and-run.
The porcelain throne sat on the double yellow lines, creating an unusual urban hazard. Was it a prank? We’ll never know. The location is unclear and we assume SF, because it’s posted on an SF Instagram — but I’m not discarding the chance it was in a spot that borders San Francisco.
📌 Source: Weird Litter SF
#5. A gutter full of raw chicken
One of our writers nearly stepped into a pile of raw chicken spilling out of a street gutter, while walking in San Francisco on a casual summer six years ago. The sight was so weird that Lindsay Pugh assumed she imagined it — until she found the photo still on her phone.
The origins of the chicken dump remain unknown. Was it a botched restaurant disposal? A failed black-market meat deal? No one knows, and despite searching Twitter at the time, Pugh found no explanation. The image remains a testament to SF’s ongoing ability to surprise.
Honestly this feels sorta common in SF — albeit random — and would have grossed out a lot of people. Pugh took it in good spirit: “My favorite thing about visiting a new city is walking around and observing shit,” she wrote. “This is how I get a feel for the people, the pace of life, and maybe even some of the problems.”
📌 Source: Lindsay Pugh for The Bold Italic
#6. The Iron Throne
I have to be honest that San Franciscans weren’t just leaving town during the pandemic — they were also leaving so many belongings behind. Apartments were emptied overnight, with personal stuff tossed onto the sidewalk like they meant nothing.
Among those items, I found a 7-inch replica of the Iron Throne, just sitting there in a sad, empty cardboard box, as if its former owner had abdicated their rule and fled the city in fear of Cersei Lannister. I’ve found many things this way, including a solid three flatscreens in my apartment that local Sunset neighbors all decided were no longer up to snuff.
Maybe the weirdest though was this barber shop pole? I don’t know what it is, but it would have been cute around Pride season.
📌 Source: Saul Sugarman for The Bold Italic.
#7. A robot left for dead
San Francisco has seen plenty of tech casualties, but usually they’re not actual robots. Yet, here sat a chrome-plated Robosapien, slumped against a wooden utility pole like it had just barely escaped a robot uprising gone wrong.
Was this a discarded toy? A companion abandoned by a kid who outgrew it? Or perhaps something darker — a failed AI experiment, left on the curb to contemplate its obsolescence? Either way, the one raised arm makes it look like it’s either waving for help or hailing a passing Waymo for one last ride out of town.
📌 Source: Weird Litter SF has quite a few great finds and often tags us to share them (we think). I don’t want to flood this list with all its finds, but you should definitely check it out for yourself.
#8. Brick circles in SF streets
Maybe you never noticed brick circles embedded in SF’s streets — and you’re not alone. But there are more than 170 of them in San Francisco, and they mark locations of underground cisterns. These massive water reservoirs were built as part of San Francisco’s Auxiliary Water Supply System after the 1906 earthquake, designed to help firefighters battle future blazes.
I wouldn’t have known unless my boyfriend pointed them out. Some locals barely notice them, while others assume they’re leftover remnants from trolley tracks or some bygone street design. This one’s less mysterious for our well-informed readers, but it came up and felt worthy of inclusion.
📌 Source: 99% Invisible
There’s a whole world of deeply weird, oddly specific, and strangely poetic debris in San Francisco. Each item so often raises more questions than answers, and yet, the city keeps moving. Maybe that’s part of what makes SF SF — a place where even the trash tells a story. For all its absurdity, San Francisco still has an unmatched ability to surprise.
// Did you find something weird on San Francisco streets? Let us know at info@thebolditalic.com
Saul Sugarman is editor in chief of The Bold Italic.
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