Only in SF: Someone built a graveyard for defunct startups in Dolores Park

San Francisco resident Evan Hynes built a graveyard to defunct startups in Mission Dolores Park on Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2017. San Francisco resident Evan Hynes built a graveyard to defunct startups in Mission Dolores Park on Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2017. Photo: Evan Hynes Photo: Evan Hynes Image 1 of / 14 Caption Close Only in SF: Someone built a graveyard for defunct startups in Dolores Park 1 / 14 Back to Gallery

Trick-or-treaters passing through San Francisco's Mission Dolores Park met a sorrowful sight Wednesday night: stark gravestones, nearly a dozen of them, in memoriam of existences taken too soon. It was a memorial to short-lived Bay Area startups.

Farewell, Juicero, we hardly knew ye.

A Halloween prankster with a San Francisco sensibility devised the stunt, which greeted costumed park-goers and their pups just as candy-seeking kids set out for the night.

The headstones paid homage to a diversity of Bay Area companies, all of which fizzled in the past year or so (the exception being troubled health-tech company Theranos, which is still open for business).

Evan Hynes, a former startup employee, devised the hoax.

"I asked myself, what's the scariest thing that can happen to an employee at a startup?" the 26-year-old told SFGATE. His answer: "Finding out that your two percent stake in a blockchain-based smart juice company is actually worthless."

Hynes made the gravestones with styrofoam and spray paint.

The homage to startups past followed a similar fate to the companies it lampooned; after a few hours, park rangers asked Hynes to take the gravestones down.

Michelle Robertson is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @mrobertsonsf.