Fear and Loathing At The Flugtag

This can would probably fly further than a lot of the Flugtag entries.

From time to time it’s comforting to have a reminder that, no matter what happens, you’re still gravity’s bitch. Oh, sure, it’d be plenty handy to just turn gravity off whenever you want to make a slam dunk or seriously mess with the kids down at the skate park, but, for better or worse, that’s not your decision to make. Nope, gravity’s been chugging right along for literally hundreds of years, keeping us pasted to the ground and making car chases considerably less awesome than they could be, and it shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. I learned yesterday that there is no better way to celebrate gravity’s complete stranglehold on our lives than by dressing up like idiots and riding slapshod flying machines into a heavily polluted body of water in front of 40,000 people.

I speak, of course, of the Red Bull Flugtag (German for “airshow”) that took place in Portland yesterday, a yearly event in which contestants build and decorate human powered “flying” machines and attempt to launch them off of a large ramp over water. Now, I put The Quotation Marks of Incredulity around the word “flying” because the Flugtag is not especially concerned with flight, as evidenced by the fact that the first three contestants in yesterday’s matchup were a cardboard faux Lego spaceship, a particle board Winnebago, and a giant beaver on wheels. Oh, sure, there were a few contestants who had spent a great deal of time and money on aerodynamic contraptions that actually did glide for awhile, but the general consensus was that these guys had sort of missed the point of the whole thing. The Flugtag isn’t so much about flight as it is about looking silly while you crash into the water. Besting all of the competition by building an aesthetically unappealing machine that actually does fly is like playing a game of Candyland with a no-holds-barred, cutthroat attitude: You win, but you wind up looking like a glory-obsessed tool in the process. The general atmosphere was one of light hearted fun and games, and even I, the angry liberal who never trusts major corporations, enjoyed myself as a major corporation encouraged its loyal customers to jump into dirty, cold water from a great height.

Overall, the Flugtag was a very entertaining event. It didn’t cost anything, and you got to see things crashing – my only complaint was that nothing exploded, and perhaps that there weren’t free donuts. I wasn’t the only one who thought from the outset that the Flugtag sounded entertaining, though, because as I previously mentioned, 40,000 Portlanders all jostled their way onto the waterfront to watch the proceedings. I feel like this was the event’s greatest failure – the sheer amount of publicity it attracted. When you mash 40,000 people together in one place, an afternoon of simple fun and games and costumed swimming will inevitably become political.

These days it seems that a gathering of more than two people is easy pickins’ for any yokel with a clipboard and a cause. Proponents of all sorts of political agendas floated through the mobs around the waterfront yesterday, searching for petition signatures with the same sort of tenacity that my dog used to show when she’d look for fresh raccoon crap to roll in. The tactics, however, vary depending on the cause being promoted. For a cause that has very little chance of ever gaining momentum, such as an act of Congress that would make it legal to sell marijuana in liquor stores, the signature collectors tend to forego all tact and simply start throwing words at you, hoping that your disgust at their lip ring and your desire for them to go away will motivate you to sign their petition that much faster. On the other hand, more legitimate causes such as voter registration have employed the time-honored tactic of using attractive women to make men jump through hoops. I was approached by several cute girls yesterday, all of them smiling and eager to know how I was enjoying the Flugtag. This is always a wonderful and captivating experience; however, within less than 30 seconds the relationship always takes a turn for the worse when the girl starts asking really serious questions like “Do you agree that President Bush should be impeached?” or “What county are you registered to vote in?” My answer to both questions is yes, but what offends me about it is that the signature collector seems to think that I’m stupid enough to believe that she wants me for anything besides my ability to sign my name. It’s considerably harder to enjoy slapstick flying accidents when you have to keep being polite and pseudo flirtatious to nonstop waves of cute activists feigning interest in your life.

I think that the Flugtag is a pretty interesting promotion, because Red Bull’s slogan is “It gives you wings”, and yet they sponsor a competition based entirely around conspicuously not flying. Perhaps the Flugtag is meant as a cautionary event – “These people didn’t drink Red Bull”, the event organizers are saying, “And if you do you’ll be much better at not falling into the river than they are.” Regardless of what the company’s intentions were, the event was a big hit, and they sold quite a bit of Red Bull from kiosks placed around the park. However, what the event organizers didn’t seem to understand was that selling high octane energy drinks to people packed together so tightly that they could barely move was not a good idea for overall public safety.

When everyone is trying to find The Perfect Spot from which to watch everything go down, emotions tend to run a little high, and when a lot of them are wired on an intense mixture of sugar and caffeine, well, emotions run a little higher. There were plenty of nasty looks exchanged as the throngs attempted to find a suitable space with a commanding view of the event, but by and large everyone handled themselves with a suitable amount of decorum. However, there was one point during the day when things looked a bit ugly, and when I say things looked a bit ugly, I mean that I was very nearly at the epicenter of a race riot. The matter started when a large black lady in her late 50s muscled past a group of skinny white teenaged girls, no doubt well-to-do visitors from Lake Oswego. The black lady shoved the girls aside, grumbling that they needed to hurry up or get right out of the way. In the black lady’s defense, I agree – people really should hurry up or get out of the way; in fact, I may well adopt that as my motto. But on the other hand, the teenaged girls were moving at about the same speed as everyone else, so maybe what the black lady meant was that everyone should hurry up or get out of the way, which, once again, is an opinion I often share while stuck in traffic or waiting in line. In any sense, things escalated quickly.

“You bitch!” One of the girls shouted.

The black lady whirled around, and suddenly her eyes were the size of cue balls and her face was contorted into a leathery mask of rage. Thunder rumbled in the distance and I’m pretty sure one of her arms turned into a laser gatling gun.

“What didyou call me!? WHAT DIDYOU CALL ME!?” She screamed, stalking back toward the girls.

It was at this point that I realized I was standing practically in between the woman and her opponent, and at that moment the space between the angry black lady and those teenagers was officially The Worst Place In The Universe™. I dove into the crowd (I would have dove into a volcano to get out of that situation) and hastened away from the scene of the shouting match, but as I left I was distinctly aware that the teenaged girl had shrunk down to about the size of a quark and that the black lady turned back around with a satisfied “Yeeah.”

Red Bull – it gives you balls.

Truman Capps has used the “Fear and Loathing” title twice in one month – this is a surefire sign that he’s slipping.