The Concept
The original concept grew into an elaborate event that later needed to be reduced down because of lack of resources. Below was the dream.
- Late night scramble starting at the beach near LA just before sunset and ending back at the same beach to watch the sunrise over the city.
- We would work with the local scooter shop to host a BBQ and project VHS horror movies on the wall at this beach while having a bonfire.
- Because this was a horror themed event, we thought it would be great to work with Liquid Death to support the BBQ with teas and flavored water. This would allow cross platform marketing and help both scootering and Liquid Death.
- Work with 5 different clothing brands that are very active in the scene. Provide each company with a pleather of designs to work from. They will be in charge of taking the designs and producing their own apparel. It wouldn't be an official collab but we would be empowering them to create something unique for the event and allowing them to sell the apparel at the BBQ.
- Take the train from the beach into downtown to push from spot to spot.
- There would be a loose idea of spots to hit but it would take the community coming together to share their spot knowledge and also help guide the route.
- Stop off at corner stores throughout the city to refill on snacks and drinks.
- After a successful night, we would treat all the remaining survivors to an early morning Denny's breakfast on Tilt's dime.
- The entire night would be filmed and photographed. A recap video would be released on halloween.
Marketing
Instead of just posting something to Instagram or sending out a newsletter, we wanted the event to be first introduced by word of mouth (guerilla marketing style). The original debut was for the Chicago Street Jam, an event where hundreds of scooter riders come from around the world and hit street spots for cash. This event used to be ran by Tilt so we have very close ties to this event. Late at night, just before the event, we went to the spots that were in the jam and wheat pasted flyers. We also found out that the New Balance team was hosting an event at the meet up spot so we also had to throw some flyers up there to get featured in the Thrasher New Balance Video which had over 200K views. A great way to cross promote the event. We also worked with the local scooter shop to film and create a custom build scooter to promote the event. They usually do custom builds but we put a twist on it and sent them a custom 1 of 1 scooter deck hand painted by Michael Spizzirri.
Apparel
Our goal was to be more hands off on the apparel in order to focus on the event itself but we quickly realized we needed to design the apparel and work with Outset to produce the product. Working within the horror theme for the night, Michael Spizzirri designed the apparel in collab with Outset and the rest of the Tilt crew. Taking inspiration from our favorite slasher films and old school VHS tapes we grew up on. The apparel was sold at the BBQ the night of the event and then anything leftover was put up for sale on Outset's website on Halloween. This allowed anyone that was there, first dibs and to be able to rock the apparel 1 month before anyone else. More word of mouth marketing.
The Route
In order to keep the night on track, I worked with local riders and did "virtual walks" on google maps to find spots for the night. Our main goal was to have a pretty organic push from the meetup spot into downtown and back towards the meetup spot. In the midwest we used to bomb parking garages to make up for the lack of hills so we sprinkled some of that in there to go along with some scenic sites and potential corner stores/restaurants to keep people going. The main goal was to keep this a community based event so if anyone knew of a spot or found something along the way, we would sesh it until it was on to the next one. For the most part, the cops stayed away and we only ventured into skid row just briefly.
The Event
Throughout the night, I was taking photos to capture what went down. Starting at the BBQ we hung out, grubbed and drank some beverages, sold some apparel and everyone signed our giant metal print. There wasn't any power so we weren't able to project any VHS movies. There was a skatepark at this location so riders would come and go as we waited for everyone to show. We started the ride out fast with a hill bomb into a dark tunnel where very little light was visible, popping out into a bigger hill bomb and then having to make a quick powerslide for our first spot. Over 100 people showed up and the vibes were high! We quickly got kicked out and continued our way into the city hitting anything and everything along the way. We noticed that everyone wasn't going to last at this rate so we bought pizza for everyone. Some would go on their own side quest and meet back up while others were sticking around the entire time. There was no cash to be handed out and it was all for the love of scootering. This event went slower than any other street scooter event but it somehow flew by. At the end of the night, we were left with just 39 souls. Originally we wanted to hit a Dennys but it just wasn't in the cards so I went over to the local donut shop and bought as many donuts as I could to give out to everyone that was left. We got a group photo to document the night and pushed back to the meet up spot together. From there we loaded up the van and watched the sunrise come up.
Recap Video
Working with Jack Dauth and Richard Harck was a pleasure to capture a unique perspective throughout the night. Richard was focused on fisheye while Jack and myself shot more documentary style shots from further away. The goal of the video was to document the night and have everyone be able to get themselves into a Tilt video that would be posted on our youtube. For some, this is huge! Below is the video and marketing videos to drive traffic to youtube.