I was eating lunch alone at Naviya’s Thai Kitchen in Linden Hills, AirPods in, on a call, when a curious fellow walked past the storefront window. He had an exaggerated, oldtimey Western mustache. In a thin frame, he was dressed the way Gen Z does, mixing vintage pieces in new and imaginative ways. And he was carrying a stack of paper.
I had been thinking a lot about a character I’d been reading about and wanted to connect with. I couldn’t remember his name, so in my head he was simply “the flyer guy.” This fellow looked a lot like him.
Then he came back past the window, and I was convinced. I abruptly ended my call and ran out. By the time I reached the door, he was already halfway down the block.
“Sir! Sir! Are you the flyer guy?”
“Why, yes…yes I am.”
I invited him to do a spontaneous interview, and he obliged. His name is Sammy Lett. He’s 27, and for about a year he has been taping absurd, deadpan flyers to street corners. One of them, offering stolen artifacts for barter, had already been forwarded to me by a reader who wanted to know if it was serious.
This is what he shared. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
So what exactly do you do?
I’m an artist. I would sort of classify it broadly as performance art, and it encompasses three different areas of work.
One is niche event organizing. There’s still a poster on the street corner for Nest Fest, which was a little community picnic I did in celebration of the giant wasp nest down at the Rose Garden.
Then some of it is weird performance art stuff. The big one that got a lot of attention was where I sat on a bench in a park, people would come and tie my shoe, and I’d give them $10.
And then there’s stuff like this. I’ve classified it in the past as IRL s***posting, but you can’t really print that. So I just say it’s a weird genre called fever dream.
About that offer of $10 for strangers who tie your shoe. How did they find you?
That one was only flyering. Other people took pictures and put it on the internet, but it was important to me that I be a little incognito, so people couldn’t just know what I looked like and then show up.
What are the flyers for?
They’re just silly little jokes. I put it up and people get a kick out of it. If all I can get out of somebody is a smile for five seconds, that’s great. People see it and they might not know if it’s serious or not. And I think that’s fun.
You don’t post them online right away. Why not?
I like to let them simmer in person first. I wanted to encourage people to go outside and look for them. Not that people are going out and hunting for posters, but versus seeing it on their phone, I would prefer for people to get outside and engage with their city and see what mysteries are out there.
People see all the weird posters and they’re like, “What in the world is going on?”
About those stolen artifacts. Our reader was worried. Should they be?
That one was funny because those were artifacts from various cultures around the world that are now in the British Museum. They’re already stolen artifacts. So there’s sort of a meta commentary going on. Some people texted me and pointed out the joke, and I’m like, “Yep, you got it.”
Honestly, that wasn’t intentional. I was just like, it’d be kind of funny if somebody would try to barter a priceless artifact. People would message me and they’d be like, “Could I just do cash?” And I’m like, “Sure, it’s approximately a hundred million dollars if you’re willing to Venmo.”
Paper posters seem like a lot of work.
It’s so much more work to put up a poster versus putting something on Instagram or Facebook. You have to design it, go print it somewhere and then physically walk around and tape it up. Since I started doing it, I’m constantly looking at street corners and seeing what people are putting up.
Who inspired you?
Danielle Egan. She shares a lot of her stuff on Substack, and she’s out in San Francisco doing similar silly poster stuff, event organizing, weird things that are just looking to introduce a little bit of randomness into people’s lives.
And Alan Wagner, who uses the moniker True Wagner online, does a lot of absurdist poster art. He influenced me in terms of the totally bizarre style, where you look at it and you’re like, “Is this person okay?”
Were you a practical joker in school?
I probably fell pretty firmly into the category of class clown. I did a yearlong senior prank where I hid copies of this weird DVD all around school.
Where are you from, and what brought you here?
I’m originally from the Green Bay area. I moved here in 2017 to study political science at the University of Minnesota and stuck around ever since.
I was sort of the poli-sci kid who was convinced he was going to be the president someday. I’m not on that track anymore. I didn’t do a lot with art in college. It took getting through the pandemic and gradually growing into adult life before I found that I had all of this creative energy that needed somewhere to go.
The Hill & Lake Press runs an April Fools’ story every year. One announced that Kenwood Park would become a water park, with Wisconsin Dells slides photoshopped in where the park’s old, towering oak trees used to stand. I didn’t tell my partner it was a joke. He read it, threw down the paper and said, “This city’s insane.” The council member and Park Board commissioner got a bunch of calls.You approve?
April Fools is one of my favorite traditions. What I’ve noticed is that in recent years it’s been waning in popularity, because I think the world is just a much scarier place. And I’m sad about that.
Any pushback? From the city, or anyone?
Nothing from the city. Online it’s overwhelmingly positive. Somebody commented on the reel the Strib posted and said something like, “This guy needs to go back to California.” It’s not for everybody, and that’s all right with me.
The main way I would notice pushback is when I walk around and see a poster’s been torn down. To me, it’s a great mystery, because I have no idea who rips them down or why.
What do you hope people get out of it?
Putting this stuff out there kind of incentivizes people to pay more attention to their world as they’re walking around, versus being buried in their phone. Look up. See what’s going on.
Craig Wilson is the editor of Hill & Lake Press. He lives in Lowry Hill.
