Day Four on the Job: Treasure Island Music Festival

After three short days at URDB HQ in Brooklyn, NY, I hopped a flight from JFK to San Francisco. I’d never been west of the Mississippi, and there I was flying off to visit family, see Yosemite, and do my first URDB live event – documenting world records with Saucony Originals at the Treasure Island Music Festival.

Team URDB convened at the infamous Phoenix Hotel in San Francisco and, debriefed and breakfasted, we made our way over to the Island. We got to the festival decked out in our official yellow jackets an hour before the gates opened.

Team URDB (from left to right: Brian, Paul, yours truly, Debbie, Dan, Rob). More photos from the event are up at Flickr and on our Facebook page.

Naively, I thought festival-goers would take a while to warm to the idea of setting world records. Rookie mistake. Within the first few minutes of the start of the festival, there was already a line of people ready to break records.

Comfortably set up the Saucony Originals booth, we had 24 World Record Challenges with record holders winning a cool pair of sneakers at the end of the festival. A few highlights:

• Most ‘2 Legit 2 Quit’ Hand Signs In 30 Seconds
  In a ‘2 Legit’-off, Andrew Baker and Justin Henderson simultaneously competed for the most complete ‘2 Legit 2 Quit’ signs. Baker took the record with 22 hand gestures in 30 seconds.

• Fastest Kazoo Rendition Of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”
  Professional kazoo player Jesse Fox performed the entire Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star song on a kazoo in 5.16 seconds.
• Largest Group Rendition Of “Don’t Stop Believin’”
  At 4pm on Saturday, we pulled together a crowd to participate in a group record: most people singing “Don’t Stop Believin’”* by Journey. The record: 122 people.

One of my favorite records wasn’t even on the list: a spontaneous and charming Largest Group Piggy-Back Hug. 11 partners paired up for a double-decker hug with 22 total participants, including some of the record holders for the Largest Group of People Dressed as Food.

Largest Group Piggy-back Hug

Over the weekend we documented over 130 record challenges. For my first URDB event, it was exhilarating - watching so many people really commit to breaking records - and exhausting. In the evenings we wound down with beers and some great music from the very impressive Treasure Island lineup. Monday morning, I flew back to New York to start Week 2 with URDB.

From the frontlines,

Sarah

* We handed out lyrics sheets to “Don’t Stop Believin’”, which prompted the greatest OH of the weekend: “If you need the lyrics, you’re not a real American.”