Fans Are Leaving Balloons at Storm Drains To Honor Tim Curry, Even if They Don’t Have the Right Address

Grief has a way of turning fictional imagery into something deeply personal, and few horror performances have embedded themselves into pop culture quite like a single scene involving a boy, a paper boat, and a storm drain. That moment has taken on a whole new meaning this week for fans processing a genuine loss.

Social media has been flooded with tributes since news broke of a beloved actor’s passing, with fans finding creative, sometimes imperfect, ways to pay their respects to a character that terrified an entire generation.

A viral tweet showing red balloons tied to a storm drain, captioned “So this is where Tim Curry filmed the original IT scene,” has been circulating widely as fans mourn Curry’s death, even though a community note attached to the post clarifies the photo isn’t actually from the 1990 miniseries’ real filming location. The genuine spot where Curry, as Pennywise, first met young Georgie Denbrough sits at the intersection of Third Street and Liverpool Street in New Westminster, British Columbia, part of the sprawling Vancouver-area production that doubled for the fictional town of Derry, Maine.

According to ScreenRant’s breakdown of the miniseries’ filming locations, the production spent roughly three months transforming Metro Vancouver into 1960s and 1990s Derry, with Bill Denbrough’s house also located nearby on Third Street. The Barrens and its surrounding creek scenes were filmed at Beaver Lake Trail inside Stanley Park, while the exterior sewer plant was shot at the Buntzen Powerhouse near Buntzen Lake in Anmore.

The storm drain scene itself remains one of horror television’s most enduring images, with Curry’s Pennywise luring Georgie toward the grate using promises of cotton candy, balloons, and rides before revealing his true nature. A retrospective piece from iHorror captured just how deeply that image resonated following news of Curry’s death, describing the tributes that immediately followed as filled with familiar imagery, including “Pennywise leaning out of a storm drain with an armful of balloons.”

This isn’t the first time fans have decorated storm drains with red balloons in Curry’s honor, either. The tradition dates back nearly a decade, with similar balloon displays appearing across cities like Charlotte, Nashville, and Lititz, Pennsylvania, around the release of the 2017 feature film adaptation starring Bill Skarsgård as the character’s newest incarnation.

Curry died at his Los Angeles-area home following years of serious health issues, with police responding to the residence after a medical emergency was called in. His performance as Pennywise remains widely regarded as one of the most influential horror portrayals in television history, helping cement the character’s legacy well before the modern film franchise arrived decades later.

Even with the wrong storm drain circulating online, the sentiment behind these tributes speaks volumes about how much Curry’s performance meant to viewers who grew up terrified of exactly this kind of scene. Whether fans are gathering at the real New Westminster location or simply tying balloons to whatever grate feels appropriately eerie, the gesture itself has become its own form of collective mourning for an actor whose work continues to define horror television more than three decades later.

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