VIVA Las Vegas! 10/30/08

Every city presents its own unique challenge. In Reno, the cops told us that the video projection was illegal even after we turned the sound system off, which is complete BS but it led us to invent tagging (thanks Kai)! And most everywhere else, it is hard to find people out at night downtown simply because of the way the cities are designed to not include living spaces. Denver was great because of the downtown walking mall, and we just plain got lucky in Albuquerque.

But damn, Las Vegas was tough! There were tons of people out, but there was no VERTICAL SPACE to project on. Every square inch was covered in lights and massive TV screens. so it was mostly too bright to see our tag. The other challenge was – no parking. And the sound competition was also intense – so we didn’t even attempt to do our multimedia show. But all of these challenges forced us to innovate our most outrageous form of Obama-rama madness yet – the drive-by tag! This might not sound so crazy to y’all, but we’ve got a $30k projector that is barely bolted down and if the bulb burns out from the vibration while its lit we’re looking at $800 to replace it.

Our first target was the Luxor. As we set up around the corner I asked “do we even have to get out of the car?” Hmmm, mebbe not, let’s give it a try. So J-Love drove and operated the hydraulic lift while I shot video and stills from the sunroof. We pulled up and shot the side of the Luxor pyramid, but it was made of some weird non-reflective material. The light just disappeared inside like it was a pyramidal black hole. We zipped around the corner and pulled up at a bus stop in front to tag the obelisk. Some kids walking by saw the tag and freaked for Obama.

Neo-graffiti on "ancient" graffiti

The Luxor

We made sure to stop at every red light, which gave us enough time to pop the projector through the roof and grab a few images. We ended up behind one of those billboard trucks advertising for “Girls who want to meet you” if you call 696-969-6969. The driver slowed down and hollered through his window – “do it again!” We drove down the strip while having a rolling conversation through the car windows. He told us how much the country needed Obama. He even offered to let us drive around behind him projecting Obama onto the scantily clad girlie on his billboard. We weren’t sure what kind of message that might send to folks, so we opted to not post the images here Here are a few others though…

Caesar's Palace

Drive by tag Las Vegas

By the way – check out our latest press in Pop + Politics!