San Francisco street poles covered in 1,000 mysterious flyers

When you call a phone number on a flyer attached to a street pole, you never quite know what to expect. Sometimes you’ll end up having an enlightening conversation on race, other times a spotty $79-per-room paint job. I’ve had both.

I won’t likely be responding to house painter ads anytime soon, but when I saw a flyer at the corner of Haight and Pierce with a design reminiscent of streetwear brand Supreme (plus a dash of Guerilla Girls), I couldn’t help but follow its instructions and “call this # now.”

A computerized female voice greeted me with a recorded message. A robotic boogie beat played in the background.

“Hello, welcome to the New Earth Truth Foundation. We are currently collecting fragments of suggested human belief…”

The voice then asked me to share one thing I know to be true in this world. After the beep, I shared an undeniable fact (that my Shih Tzu Peanut is a good dog), but also left my number — just in case the New Earther felt like sharing some truths of their own. 

Fifteen minutes later, I got a call from Cole Ryder. He revealed himself to be a 31-year-old MFA design student who grew up in Ojai and moved to San Francisco weeks before the pandemic. He’s worked as a carpenter doing architectural fabrication work, as well as done freelance graphic design, and is currently attending California College of the Arts. For this project, he pasted up an estimated 1,000 flyers around San Francisco created using a digital risograph printer in a process that creates results similar to a traditional screenprint. He’s received hundreds of responses.

“There’s some really funny ones, some sincere ones that have come through, and some scary ones, too,” Ryder said.

A few highlights include:

-“I know that I love this man standing next to me.”

-“I believe that plaid is always in fashion.”

-“I’m definitely gay.”

-“There’s really no difference in value between a redwood tree and a human and an insect and a humpback whale, and humans have led us to believe that we are somehow inherently more valuable, but that’s not true.”

-“We believe, we believe, please call us back. We need to know more. We are wanting. We have been left wanting.”

From an academic perspective, Ryder envisions the New Earth Hotline as a reaction to post-pandemic polarization of facts. He hopes to compile the “truths” into a book at some point, or possibly make individual prints of some of the standouts (I’m personally waiting patiently for a poster of Peanut). But beyond the conceptual questions of alternative facts and malleable truths, the hotline evokes a playfulness reminiscent of classic SF counterculture mysteries like the Jejune Institute. Ryder sees it as an attempt to bring a little fantasy to day-to-day life in San Francisco, adding that element of spontaneity and creativity he always associated with the city while growing up in Ojai.

“SF has this legacy for kids who grew up in California, a weird bohemian paradise somewhere in the north that’s just going to be a much more interesting urban sphere than what I was used to. … That’s the legacy of this place,” Ryder told SFGATE.

To call the foundation and leave your own truth, dial 415-952-7324.