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Short version: We got the dancefloors back. They will need a little TLC to get them fully operational again, as the wiring looks stomped-on and one of them has the plexiglass halfway popped off. Oh, and the other one looks like it fell off the back of a truck.
Long version: I tracked the
dancefloors to a warehouse full of Burning Man crap on Treasure Island. My trusty helper-monkey Kristian had sworn up and down he'd help me with the heavy lifting today, but the last time I saw him he had a bottle of whiskey in his hand and he was at a party in the Mission and it was 2am. This morning he failed to respond to texts and phone calls. So I went out there on my own, trusting my luck that the warehouse dude would help me load them into the truck. (Oh, big thanks to Joho for lending us her pickup for the adventure.) I get there, and it turns out the warehouse is shared by Peter Hudson, (
http://www.hudzo.com/), the guy who did "the swimmers" and "the divers" and that awesome thing last year with the swinging monkeys. (I think they're called zoetropes?) So he helped me find the
dancefloors and load them into the truck. There are a bunch of artists sharing the space out there, and none of them even knew what the
dancefloors were. When Peter found out, he began rhapsodizing about the Church of Funk and the stained glass windows of James Brown and how great it was as an alternative to all the "oontz oontz" music out there. So that was all well and good.
Have you ever gotten back onto 80 from Treasure Island? You basically go from a stop sign on an on-ramp, bang, right into traffic. You've kinda gotta jump on it, or risk never getting into your lane. You see where this is going, right? I didn't tie the
dancefloors down, as I figured they were plenty heavy and wouldn't be sliding around. And they were *just* too long to shut the tailgate.
Plexiglass is kinda slippery. That's all I'm saying.
So I go shooting off into traffic and hear "kathump" and look back and the smaller of the dancefloors is sitting in the middle of the lane on the Bay Bridge. Traffic is blazing around me at 60mph, and the thought of backing up to get it briefly crossed my mind. But it's like a 1/4 mile back, and reversing just seems suicidal. So I do the six-mile long u-turn, where you have to drive into downtown SF before you can whip around and come back the other way on the bridge, and by the time I get back to Treasure Island again, somebody has thrown the dancefloor over the side of the on-ramp, out of the way. I can see it, but there is no way I can move it myself, as I would have to park on the on-ramp and then haul it, solo, a couple hundred feet.
So I drive into town and go to Cory's. (Big thanks to Cory for offering to store the
dancefloorsuntil Burn-time. And bigger thanks to him for dropping whatever he was doing to come see if the two of us could save the one that had fallen off the truck.) Cory and I drive
back out to Treasure Island, and go dashing on foot across the on-ramp and along the side of the bridge for a bit, and manage to wrestle the (really quite heavy) dancefloor back onto the highway and back into the truck. (It's got a crack in the plexiglass now, about six inches long. It might have been there before, or it might not. You just can't get good help these days...) I
eased into traffic at a leisurely pace, and we deposited the second dancefloor into Cory's garage without further incident.
This all seemed like a microcosmic version of Burning Man to me. "Hey, I think I'll go run a quick errand" turned into a couple of wasted hours, and a bit of casual self-endangerment, and a lot of "goddamnit, this is a pain in the ass!" But it's done. Cory and I will probably repair the floors this summer, as the event grows closer. (For his part, Cory is doing the sensible thing and going to m*therf*cking Cancun instead of Burning Man.)
Anyway. Just thought you'd enjoy knowing that one of the dancefloors spent a little time in the middle of a lane on the Bay Bridge today.
Steve
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