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 52 - A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall (and Build a Lake)
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A torrential downpour hits Bootstuck, and the townsfolk treat it like an Olympic event. Our narrator excitedly describes his tactical methods for “dodging raindrops” and “putting out buckets,” before proudly announcing the formation of a brand-new body of water—Bootstuck Lake—created (apparently) by the rain itself. In between weather reports, Hat Guy makes a slippery return after tumbling down the stairs on a pile of sports magazines no one can read. These glossy imports inspire a new community initiative: recreating cricket and other foreign sports using cut-out pictures and Bristol board enthusiasm.
By the time a conversation about picnics (“Pick Nick!”) devolves into existential confusion about lakes, Savannah, and the proper number of sticks one man can hold, Bootstuck feels less like a town and more like a surreal weather report broadcast from the edge of reason.
www.bootstuck.com
Raining outside pretty hard. Like di- Hard like staff. But what you want to do is you're walking outside, go quick, quick, quick, quick, whip side staff. Fast, whip, fast, flip, dip, flip, quit. Like bad. Try and dodge the raindrops a little bit. Raining hard. Yeah. Gonna put out the buckets now, because I already missed some of it.
Speaker 1Oh god. Okay, well, listen, um, as much as I'd love to hear more about the rain.
Speaker 2Um is okay, I'll tell you more about it. Well, some people say you don't want to step in a puddle, but I say keep jumping. Jump in those puddles. Enjoy life.
Speaker 1Uh, by chance, is Hack Guy there?
Speaker 2Yeah, I'll get him for you. Don't need to beat him up anymore. He listens to me quite good. Hat guy.
unknownHat guy.
Speaker 2Hold on, he's not listening.
SpeakerWhat's happening?
Speaker 2Oh, hang on, I'll go get him. It's gonna go downstairs.
Speaker 3How you doing? Yeah, yeah, he's fine. He slipped on the stair. You ever leave magazines on the stair? Don't do it. They're slippery. Yeah, we got new magazines boots up now. Woo! Dropbox game.
Speaker 1Oh, is that right? Uh what did you get this time around?
Speaker 3Yeah, we got sportsy magazines. They got guys playing the cricket game. Yep. Woo. Can't read it, different languages. Funny looking writing. Woo! But that's okay. Pictures are real nice. Don't make us a sports scene. Yeah. We're gonna put it on the Bristol board because we got that too. And then what we're gonna do is have Caleb run around in the field with all these pictures on them. Woo! And then it'll be kind of like there's playing the game for us.
Speaker 1So you got a shipment of magazines that you can't read, so you've decided that you're gonna recreate the sports that you're seeing depicted in the magazine because you don't play those sports here.
Speaker 3That's right. I'm glad you understand. We also got other magazines too. We got one called Time, Stretching Time. I told you about that with the subwatch. Easy. Whoo! Think about it. No, we got ourselves a boat now, right? Yep. Think about that. We took all sorts of spare parts of different things that we didn't want no more, like a tea kettle and all sorts of things, and put them together, and now we got ourselves a little floaty boatie. Yep, whoop.
Speaker 1I well, that's incredible. I didn't know you had a lake.
Speaker 3No, neither did we. But we kept looking and then we found what happens is when it rains real hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, like today. You know that song Hard Rain Gonna Fall? It did. It did it here. Yep.
Speaker 1Oh, please don't.
Speaker 3Yep, whoop. Now we got a lake.
Speaker 1Well, that's uh that that's great. So um are you gonna do it?
Speaker 3I don't think the lake was formed just from one rain because it's 48 feet deep and 16 feet across and 38 feet across also. Maybe it was a couple of rainstorms ago. That that sounds like a punt. Probably, yep. Probably is a great time to take take a picnic there. You ever have a picnic?
Speaker 1Uh many times, yes, yes.
Speaker 3What we do is we run around town, we go, Jared, Stephen, Don, Dave, Nick. There it is, picnic! Woo! Let's go for lunch!
Speaker 1You you pick Nick.
Speaker 3Yeah. Who do you go to lunch with? It's always a good time with a picnic.
Speaker 1Well, I don't have a Nick to pick, so I just choose one of my other friends.
Speaker 3That's a good idea. Yeah, we don't really have a Nick either, but we just call someone when we want to go for lunch next.
Speaker 1Um, boot's got a question for you.
Speaker 3Yeah, does it have anything to do with Savannah?
Speaker 1Savannah?
Speaker 3Yeah, that's a dangerous place. Yep. Down south.
Speaker 1No.
Speaker 3Alright.
Speaker 1I've completely forgotten what I was gonna ask you.
Speaker 3That's alright, I'll give you some time. Oh my god. Anyway, you want to see how many sticks I can hold in one hand? Uh well. Hang on a second. Wait.
unknownOh, please don't.