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The Unorganized Township of Bootstuck
The Unorganized Township of Bootstuck is a documentary-style audio descent into a place that shouldn't exist—but very much insists that it does.
Once a forgotten military outpost in the depths of Northern Ontario, Bootstuck has taken on a life of its own. Discovered only through a pile of mislabeled cassette tapes at a Sudbury garage sale, the story of Bootstuck slowly unravels through scattered interviews, cryptic clues, and increasingly bizarre residents. The deeper you listen, the more you realize — this isn't just a town. It's a puzzle. And somewhere in that puzzle?
A plane crash that changed everything.
Somewhere between folklore, found audio, and fever dream, Bootstuck blurs the line between documentary and delusion—offering listeners a place to get lost in, over and over again.
The Unorganized Township of Bootstuck
TAPE 51 - The Personal Walking Association
In this installment, the documenteur’s patience continues to erode as Bootstuck introduces yet another baffling innovation: the Personal Walking Association (or “PWA”). According to the locals, it’s an organized fitness initiative led by a man named Uber who walks people around “places.” Membership numbers stretch into the millions, and no one seems entirely sure what it’s for — except that it involves walking, sometimes sideways, and occasionally into trees.
From there, the topic of physical fitness meanders into Bootstuck’s unique exercise regimen: jumping over ropes that don’t move, kettlebells that don’t ring, and Halloween celebrations that occur the night before the night before Halloween. The documenteur, valiantly trying to keep up, finds himself listening to debates about dinner bells that no longer “ding” and movie productions that exist only in poster form.
By the time the conversation veers into a hopeful plan to film an “action-packed romance mystery” in a town that no one can actually find, silence briefly descends—only for the Bootstuck air itself to begin cracking and popping, blamed alternately on weather, ice, or Dave Braun’s backside. The documenteur ends the tape no closer to understanding anything, except perhaps that silence in Bootstuck is never truly silent.
www.bootstuck.com
I was just trying to tell you about the new formula. Yeah, let me talk a minute. 1447457 144 divided by 14474157 equals a PWA. Mostly. Mostly often. Mostly.
SPEAKER_01:A PWA? That's right. Uh you're gonna have to walk me through what a PWA is.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's a person walking association. What we've done is we started getting people together. We've got a friend, mostly. His name's Uber, and he'll walk you around places. He's a nice guy. If you want to be part of the Personal Walking Association, you could be number 414474577572. That's okay. I mostly don't know what I'm talking about except when it's walking time. Yep, we're all gonna go for a walk together later. We're gonna form a line. Haven't decided if it was single file or single file sideways, but we're gonna make one and we'll probably walk a little bit and see who hits a tree.
SPEAKER_01:Uh is physical fitness a a big thing up there?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, we're physically fit. Except Dave. He doesn't fit in the squirrel hole very good, or the foxhole, or the bear hole.
SPEAKER_01:Uh yeah. Well, those are not normal fitness obstacles.
SPEAKER_00:Sometimes we got monkey bars, but we ain't got no monkeys. So Caleb's gonna dress up in the ape suit that we got for Halloween Eve. We're starting celebrating Halloween Eve the day before, night before, or night before, Halloween. It's in October, but today's not October, so we won't talk about it. Fitness, we do a jumping rope. Yep, we'll put a rope on the ground and everybody jumps over it. Yep, Steven heard about it, dropped it off when he was passing by. It's an old kettle. It weighs about five pounds, and then you put some sand in it, and then you got that kettle that you'll just throw up in the air and you can use your arms with it.
SPEAKER_01:Like a kettlebell.
SPEAKER_00:No, it doesn't ring. No dinner bell. We got a dinner bell and it's broken. Yeah, someone took the dinner bell, went ding ding, and it stopped dinging.
SPEAKER_01:So your ding a ling stopped dinging.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's not a ring-aling-a-ding-aling no more.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that's what happens when you get older.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they're gonna film a movie here, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Is that right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think so. I hope so. I don't know, but we're hoping so. What we did is we put all our movie posters out to show people passing by that sometimes there's films here, uh, at least in poster form.
SPEAKER_01:People passing by. Um, you never know. I was gonna say you you live in a remote outpost with no people walking by.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So, uh, what kind of movie is it you're hoping to shoot?
SPEAKER_00:Um boy. Hopefully an action-packed adventure movie with some comedy, romance, and excitement. Maybe a murder. I'm not sure, but we're open to pretty much anything except something with the mimes.
SPEAKER_01:You don't want to do a silent movie.
SPEAKER_00:No way. We'd be talking all over it. Ain't no silent time around here. No, look at that. Look, I'll pause in silence for a moment, and you can understand, even in silence, it ain't that silent. Hang on a second here, I'll pause myself.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Imagine that. Imagine you were here and you had to decipher, cross it off the board. Didn't think I'd use that one. And you'd have to figure it out from there what's going on and what that crackle ac was.
SPEAKER_01:What is that noise?
SPEAKER_00:Often when it gets real cold outside, and then it gets warm outside, and then it gets cold outside, and then you slip on the slippery ground, and then you hear that kind of crack a lack.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe that's ice thought.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe. Maybe as Dave Braun's bum.
SPEAKER_02:Should give you a change. It should help you learn things, and although I'm not sure about the third. Most. Let me show you a few things. Take a look. Oh.
