We were walking through the Mission Bay area recently to admire the view from gorgeous new China Basin Park, but wanted to stop for a drink and a quick bite. Most places were closed, so we ended up at the coffee bar in the LUMA hotel.

They have a pretty light installation with running light, so my wife started taking some pictures. And then suddenly she gasped and asked me if I saw it.

Do you see it? Don’t worry, it took me a long time too.

OK, I’ll tell you. There at the bottom right, there seems to be a person in the lights. It’s really hard to see with the naked eye, but got a lot clearer when we watched it through the cameras on our phones. Here an example animation:

See? Same location as before, there’s someone crawling in the lights. In fact, the installation now looks a bit like a water slide with someone crawling through it.

Here’s a video, this time from my wife’s camera:

video link

I love art installations like this, which at first you don’t notice. It turns out that this is called Helical Trace and the LUMA site says:

At night, human figures are visible slowly climbing the waterfall

But we saw them during the dark days too, so whenever you’re around Mission Bay - check it out!