UFO in San Francisco Bay

69-year-old Eric Staller hopes to wow the San Francisco Bay crowd by dazzling onlookers with his wacky Bubbleboat: a converted farm bunker on aluminum platoons decorated with 600 twinkling lights.

"I always like to flash around Pier 39 and the Embarcadero," Stoller said in a recent interview. "I just like to look at people's faces."

Stoller, an architect-artist, has been riding in his Bubbleboat in San Francisco, mostly near McCovey Bay, since 2013, when he moved to the Bay Area from Amsterdam via his native Long Island. It was there that he was first commissioned to design a boat in 1986 by the Sylvania Lighting Company for Liberty Weekend in New York Harbor.

Stoller said he was paid $ 60,000 to create the funny piece, which he attributes to one of his many projects, "Urban UFOs." Under the terms of the deal, he left Bubbleboat for the rest of his life.

Although he has created many works of art for projects around the world, it is Bubbleboat that probably attracts the most attention.

"I saw him with that thing four or five times," said 41-year-old Jason Steinkeller, an artist from Vacaville. "And I usually can't get my phone out fast enough. This time I managed to capture it on video. 

I wanted this because no one would believe you if you said you saw something like this in the bay. I usually ask: "What the hell is this?"

This is exactly the reaction that Staller, who has a degree in architecture from the University of Michigan, expects when he creates his art.