Dancers make an optical illusion using the streets of San Francisco

Beautiful San Francisco is as hilly as they come – which is probably something that tourists absolutely adore. For locals, however, the glow had probably washed away the moment that they were expected to hike to their home on a hot Californian day.

In this cheeky video, dancer Karen X. Cheng has a little fun in the topsy turvy city.

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Cheng, accompanied by a crew of dancers, visited San Francisco’s hilliest streets and, with the help of choreography, made an optical illusion at the expense of our brains.

Their choreography makes the streets appear straight, when in reality they’re slanted, dipped and crooked.

The idea for the video came when Ross Ching saw photos by Dan Ng that had the “tilted camera” effect on steep streets, the YouTube description reads.

“Since San Francisco is so hilly, it was the perfect city for this idea,” Cheng wrote. “The week before we filmed this, we ran all around San Francisco looking for the steepest streets we could find.”

The streets featured in this video include Nob Hill (Taylor Street), Dolores Heights (Hill Street), Alamo Square and Potrero Hill (22^nd street).

“The hardest part was coming up with ideas that made the gravity illusion look good,” she admitted. “We tried a lot of stuff we thought would look good, but didn’t for various reasons.”

Among those tried-and-failed attempts was moonwalking, which Cheng said looked weird on an angle; balloons, which got blown away; and pouring water, which ended up not being visible enough for the camera to pick up.

Earlier this year, Cheng entertained the Internet with a video of herself making breakfast as a robot.