It was a
dark and
BY ASHLEY SCHWELLENBACH PHOTOS BY STEVE E. MILLER
stormy night Itâs 9:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 25, and Iâm fairly certain that the moving truck Iâm occupying is about to turn onto its side, a byproduct of uninhibited revelry and no small quantity of booze. Nicholas Walter and Jeremy ThomasâNew Timesâ Geek Out columnist and the Santa Maria Sunâs staff writer, respectivelyâappear committed to this potentially dangerous outcome. They dash frenetically from one side of the truck to the other. News Editor Colin Rigley, dressed as a bananaâmore on that laterâlaughs madly as the dancers begin to bounce against the wall like popcorn kernels celebrating their own demise. Just as I convince myself that this is not such a terrible way to dieâand far
less humiliating than making a phone call to Aaron Steed (owner of Meathead Movers) to apologize for overturning one of the five moving trucks he graciously let us borrowâthe feverish pitch begins to subside. The truck continues to bounce into the night to some unidentified techno beatâArt Director Alex Zunigaâs disco ball will be returned less several mirrorsâbut nobody will be escorted to the emergency room.
In the beginning âŠ
Word on the street is that god created the earth in six days; I wasnât truly impressed with this feat until I considered that he, too, was working off the grid. No permits. No Porta-potties. Box City took something like six months to bring to fruition, and I have to
admit that I stole the original idea from a series of guerrilla art events called Lost Horizon Night Market (laughingsquid. com/the-lost-horizon-night-market/) in San Francisco. Artists rented trucks, drove them to an industrial corner of the city, and filled them with beautiful and bizarre experiences. Donât let the word âmarketâ fool you: The entire stunt was free, a surreal gift to the community pre-packaged in Budget Rental Trucks that smelt of udon, paint, and sweat. A seemingly innocuous street filled with vehicles, inside which blossomed restaurants, hot tubs, seedy hotels, bowling alleys, and even a night sky. What the revelers probably didnât realize was that for every hot tub, there was an exhausted artistâor fiveâcharged with locating and carting it to the remote location. Behind each volunteer there were
pAInT BY WhIMSY Julian Small Calvillo operated the paint truck on behalf of Neal Breton, who had another engagement.
Neither rain nor cold can deter the residents of Box City
five businesses or individuals who offered to help but bailed in the days before the event, or arrived late, or not at all. Box City didnât come with a set of blueprints or guidelines. Or a cushy budget that would allow us to throw money at problems that arose along the way. Make no mistake: Dancing in a moving truck is an absolute blast. I highly recommend it. But I spent most of the day trudging through the rain with generators and bamboo, with no guarantee that the effort would amount to anything at all. On Dec. 31, Arts Editor Anna Weltner and I met Meathead Moversâ Aaron, hoping to convince him to part with a few of his trucks for an artistic odyssey that would take participants into the cityâs darkest industrial corners. It was surprisingly easy. The business owner seemed to immediately grasp the scope