Over the last week we gave away over 10,000 free ice creams while in Austin for South by Southwest. Bessie and I arrived early for the Film and Interactive portions then the rest of the ice cream crew (Gooch, James, Matthias, Pat, Starr, Stella, Kate and Craig) all landed for the music part. For those that aren’t familiar with SXSW, it’s basically the biggest music event in the world with over 1500 bands playing in Austin, Texas over four days. It’s technically a conference for the music industry but it has grown to be much more and bands play anywhere and everywhere they can.
On Tuesday, the day before it all began, James had organized an ice cream social at Dell Children’s Medical Center and Pat, Jean, and I headed over there to gift 500 ice creams to kids, nurses, doctors, and everyone else who happened to be around. The event was great but I was a bit nervous because we needed to get permits for Bessie, Bessita, and two pushcarts and Austin might be the toughest town to get permitted in. It’s just a bit of paperwork and running around but if you don’t have one you risk getting a $600 ticket. Luckily we got everything dialed in by 10:30 the next morning and it was pretty smooth sailing from then on.
Le Sportsac was interested in giving away ice cream from pushcarts to promote their new Stella McCartney line and we convinced them to let us run the whole project. Starr and Stella rocked multiple loads each day and hit up a lot of the parties close to downtown. Gooch manned Bessita which was part of the Free Yr Radio program, which raises funds and awareness for non-commercial radio, and he spent most of the day on their broadcast corner giving away ice cream from the custom cooler in the trunk. Kate, James, and I drove Bessie around most of the time and got to hit prolly two-thirds of the spots we wanted too. With so much going on in town I’ve found it’s best not to over commit to slingin’ cream at parties because there’s only so many hours in a day.
I’ll go into full detail later when we post over a thousand pictures but for now, Matti, Gooch, and I are gonna enjoy our last night in town and get some grub here in a few minutes. Then Bessie and our new truck in the works are going to travel back west to California. Give us a bit to make sense of everything and check back soon to relive some of the madness.
Lastly, check out Off the Wookie #3 here. We’ll be bringing home a few print versions and might have some in the merch section in a few weeks, if you can’t live without a wookie.
