When it comes time to pay, Schmitt grabs a balloon and twists it into an animal or other figure.
“I’ll go in, order a drink, and then offer a balloon as an extra tip to the bartender,” Schmitt says. “From there, usually other customers see that and they want one. It's tough for the bartender to say no, because they just got one. That’s all the permission you need. As long as the employees are happy with you doing it, that’s a good sign.”
Schmitt is a full-time balloon artist. On a Saturday, he might go from creating balloon lions at a children’s birthday party in the afternoon to a hopping bar that night, where he'll twist balloons into the shape of a strap-on penis for adults.
He frequents about a dozen bars in the Mile High and has regular routes. Finn’s Manor in RiNo is one of his favorite stops; he'll also visit Improper City and Ratio Beerworks nearby. On East Colfax Avenue, he’ll bounce from X Bar to the 1Up to Charlie's. On Broadway, Milk Bar and Bar Standard are popular destinations.
“Some of them," he says, "I’ll just walk into a bar for the first time and try to make balloons there and see how it goes.”
Born and raised in Ohio, Schmitt has been a hustler for most of his 35 years. But what he offers in Denver bars isn't a scam: He delivers a dose of childlike wonder for adults who might have forgotten how much fun they can have with balloons.
Particularly when they're drunk.
“You don't stop loving balloons just because you become an adult,” Schmitt notes. And he’s made a living off that observation.
Schmitt’s foray into professional fun started at the local library, where he checked out books about magic and began mastering tricks. By the time he was eight, he'd scored his first official paid magic show. When he was ten, he bought a balloon kit with his showbiz earnings to add to his act.
He followed the kit's instructions to learn how to twist balloons into figures that could amuse an audience. He hosted lemonade stands for thirsty customers, with add-ons that included balloon animals and magic tricks. His parents would drop him off at local fairs and carnivals, where he would do tricks and make balloon creations, just as he does at bars now.
“When my pockets were too full of money to hold, I would find a pay phone and call them to come pick me up,” Schmitt remembers. “The crazy thing is, even at ten, I was making money with it. … I always knew it could be a job.”
But before his hobby could balloon into a career, he joined the United States Army. After he got out, his uncle suggested he move to Key West and perform for tourists. Balloons were a particular hit.
“They are a little easier to market, and, if I'm honest with myself, I was an okay magician, but I'm a great balloon artist,” he says. “I kind of stuck with my strength.” And improved on it, moving far beyond those early kit instructions and coming up with his own techniques.
For a while, Schmitt traveled around the country, offering balloon entertainment wherever he went. He was working in Las Vegas until the city passed its Pedestrian Mall Ordinance in 2015, which made busking on Fremont Street (second in fame only to the Strip, and known for its street performers) much more difficult, restricting amplified sound, banning performance tools like animals and large hula-hoops, prohibiting entertainment for which a fee is charged, and putting some areas — such as spots around ATMs — off limits while limiting hours in others.
“No street performer may use a particular designated location for a performance within the specified time frame for more than two hours at a time,” the ordinance reads. “The City or the Fremont Street Limited Liability Company shall establish a lottery system by which performers are allotted designated locations within the specified time frame.”
City officials argued that Las Vegas needed the ordinance in order to improve the function and safety of the pedestrian corridor. But it made earning a living much more difficult, since performers had to compete for prime spots — and even then, they could only work for tips.
Schmitt couldn’t make his business function under the new conditions, so he set off to find his next adventure.
“I did a twelve-week trip across America,” he says. “I went back and forth twice, through about ten different cities, and Denver was one of my favorites. I had an Army buddy here, so that helped.” In 2018, he moved to Aurora.
Unlike Las Vegas, Denver doesn't have many regulations that restrict buskers, who don't need a license in this city. The Downtown Denver Partnership does regulate street performers on the 16th Street Mall, though: They must move often, clean up after themselves, and can't impede the pedestrian right-of-way. So Schmitt never focused much on downtown (which came in handy when the mall was torn up for construction); instead, he started exploring bars as performance venues.
Today, he estimates that only about 5 to 10 percent of his work involves scheduled events such as children's birthday parties (clients find him through his social media or word of mouth). Instead, Schmitt leans into the bar scene for his main source of income.
“One of the great things about doing the bars and things like that is, if I don’t have a gig, I just go out and set up,” he says.
Ryan Schmitt can make nearly anything out of balloons, but his penises are special.
Ophidianlens/Courtesy of Ryan Schmitt
Although he's found that children and adults enjoy the same sort of balloon creations — dogs, unicorns and swords are popular with people of all ages — he can stretch his repertoire at bars.
“I also do more adult-themed balloons, and those have gone over quite well,” Schmitt says. “I actually have a pretty good penis balloon that I’ve won some awards for. It’s been one of the mainstays at the bars.”
He won a 2019 Dirty Balloon Competition in Las Vegas with a life-sized male stripper. “But it was mostly the dick that won it for me,” Schmitt admits.
One of his friends came up with a technique that Schmitt employs for his penises. By putting a balloon inside of another balloon, he can create a textured skin around the interior balloon.
“I use that to make the veins in my penises,” Schmitt says. “It came with the territory of working with adults. You get asked for it a lot just because of the shape of the balloons when you first start blowing one up. In an adult scenario, everybody always says, ‘Oh, look, it’s a dick,’ just because they're long and skinny to start with.”
He cheekily offers “chocolate or vanilla” and “hat, bracelet or strap-on” options to drunken revelers. The balloon penises even include a small white balloon dangling off the tip, into which Schmitt inserts a flashing LED light that's either white or rainbow, to signify “the cum part," he says.
“It's actually a pretty technical balloon,” Schmitt adds. “It's probably one of the hardest ones that I make on a regular basis, but I make it so often it’s become easy.”
He’s made it so often because he spends nearly every Friday and Saturday night making penises and other balloon figures at the bars. Most places he's tested out are open to his presence, though a few have asked him to leave, and others have allowed him to stay the night but then asked him not to return. Sometimes it's because the penises were offensive; sometimes it's because management just sees him as disruptive.
“It’s happened, but it’s rare,” Schmitt says. “Most of the time the bars see that I'm providing a service to them, helping people stay longer, drink more, things like that. ... Some places don’t want dicks there, and that's understandable. I can do things other than dicks, but it's one of those things where if somebody asked for one, I don't want to say, ‘Yeah, go meet me at this other bar in ten minutes.’”
At X Bar, Schmitt is very welcome.
“Our patrons love when ‘the balloon guy’ is here,” says the bar's general manager, drag queen Kelela C. Staxxx. “He is always very engaging and kind to our patrons. He knows how to play toward the crowd here at X Bar and make fun and exciting balloon pieces for our patrons. Everyone is always happy to see him.”
Schmitt doesn’t charge the bars an appearance fee, since he usually shows up unannounced — though some have hired him to work specific events. He likes the flexibility that comes with having no set engagements. If a night is slow at a bar or he's already made a balloon creation for every patron who wants one, he can move on instead of being locked in for what could be unprofitable hours.
He never names a particular price for his work; he's always paid in tips.
“There's the people that tip less, but the average definitely works out in my favor, leaving it up to the customer versus putting a price on it,” Schmitt says. “You'll occasionally get those extravagant tippers that will give you $50 or something like that. You're never going to get that if you put a price on it.”
Despite his experience, twisting balloon creations can sometimes still prove tricky for Schmitt.
“For the most part, any requests that I get I can make, but the one that I'm not super happy with is the cowboy hat,” he says. “I don't have a great design for that. Part of it is just, I can make one that looks good, but it would take too long. Or I can make one that's quick but doesn't look that great.”
He tries to spend no more than fifteen minutes on a specific request at a party or in a bar. There are exceptions, though. He's spent hours making clothing with lots of little balloons to create a wearable piece that won’t expose the model even if a few balloons pop.
And last year, he spent a weekend participating in a Big Balloon Build, put on by a national organization of the same name that partners with local nonprofits to create balloon experiences for children. Schmitt and a team of seventy other balloon artist volunteers used 250,000 balloons to build a winter wonderland for kids in Kansas City in November 2022.
The artists worked by breaking off into smaller groups and focusing on their sections to make the full tableau. “There was a box of crayons and some elves pulling them out and coloring with them,” Schmitt recalls. “We had a hot chocolate fountain with elves playing in it. We had a huge train that was maybe fifteen feet long by about ten feet tall, and a thirty-foot tall Christmas tree.”
Next year, Schmitt plans to participate in an even larger build with Big Balloon Build in his home state of Ohio that will use 500,000 balloons.
“Balloon artists get to see this stuff, but so much of the public doesn’t know it exists,” Schmitt says. “The basics are easy to learn, but I think most people don't realize how much work goes into being a good balloon artist. I've been doing this for 25 years now, and I'm still learning every year.”
Schmitt is developing a new product to enhance events with balloons.
Ophidianlens/Courtesy of Ryan Schmitt
The prototype calls for attaching 400 white balloons to an eight-by-eight-foot piece of plywood. Inside each balloon is an LED light controlled by an app that includes around 150 pre-programmed effects that Schmitt created while documenting the entire process on his social media accounts.
“One of the challenges after the pandemic has been finding the right size and color of balloons that you need for your client,” Schmitt says. “You'll get these clients that want these super-specific colors that match their color scheme, and they don't always make a balloon in that color. So you're forced to get two colors of balloons and put one color inside of the other to try to blend them a little bit. It's a nightmare. This wall, you just need one size, one color of balloon, and you can make it whatever color you want.”
Schmitt debuted the display at Finn’s Manor on December 16, to great acclaim. He’s now taking pre-orders for the wall and expects to ship the first out by the end of January. He hopes to eventually connect his prototype with software that could time the balloon wall to music, as is done for Christmas light displays.
But in the meantime, he plans to keep using his balloon-twisting talents in Denver, particularly its bars.
“The grass doesn't seem that much greener anywhere else,” Schmitt says.
