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 56 - Bowling for Stars and Purple Kush
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
This tape opens with what sounds like a cheap local radio ad for World of Bowling — a chaotic pitch about “hard or soft balls” that fades into a conversation so derailed it feels like a hallucination in real time. The interviewer tries to talk about bowling, but in Bootstuck, “bowling” apparently involves rolling people down a hill and occasionally throwing Caleb at the problem.
From there, the discussion drifts through roosters in boxes, gardens full of “purple kush lilacs,” and the revelation that Bootstuck’s solution to its drug problem was to simply give everyone the drugs. The town is reportedly “under wraps,” which seems to mean “hallucinating together.” Soon, people are catching stars, walking on their hands, and opening metaphorical — and literal — “polka dot doors.”
By the time the tape winds down, reality itself begins to blur. A looping fragment of the conversation dissolves into a strange, hypnotic song — a patchwork of sampled voices, laughter, and background noise that feels like it’s being transmitted from inside a mushroom cloud. It’s impossible to tell where the music starts or the talking ends, but it evokes the unsettling, kaleidoscopic drift of Pink Floyd’s “Brain Damage.”
The result is one of Bootstuck’s most disorienting and strangely beautiful recordings — a descent into the township’s collective, psychedelic mind.
www.bootstuck.com
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Speaker 2I'm sorry, you were saying something about bowling?
Speaker 1I was just talking about bowling. You ever do it? Woo! Stop bowling. Yep, yep. But don't wear bowler hats to bowling on a Thursday. No, ain't propriate. It's kind of like a rubber chicken on any other day but a Tuesday. Yeah. Think about that. Now back to bowling. You ever do it? Throw a ball down a hill, knocking people down? Woo! It's a good game.
Speaker 2Wait, you you roll the bowling pole down a hill and knock people down? That's not what bowling is.
Speaker 1What's bowling to you?
Speaker 2Bowling is a wooden laneway with a little gutter on each side, and there's pins at the end. Roll the ball down.
Speaker 1And sometimes the ball gets stuck in there, kind of like that. And then you gotta get a ladder or throw Caleb and he'll get it. You ever do that? Kind of the same, right? Throw the ball, knock the people down. Bowling, we do it uh with five people and ten people. You do the same thing?
Speaker 2I don't even know why I try.
Speaker 1Well, you gotta try, otherwise the people just stand there. Yeah. Anyway, sometimes we get them to move around and complicate things a bit for us.
Speaker 2What's all that noise?
Speaker 1Well, that's just the rooster going on about the silliness over here. We'll shut him up for you. Hang on, I'll put him back in his box.
Speaker 2It never ceases to amaze me what happens in the background here.
Speaker 1We should see what happens in the foreground. Wow. Look at that. Yeah, we got a garden growing now. It's got full of flowers. Pink ones, purple ones, blue ones, green ones, yellow ones, blue ones, pink ones, purple ones. Yep. Did I say purple? We got lots of purple. That's purple power, JoJo. We got lots of purple. Take the lilacs. I think it's cushion. Ooh, purple kush is nice. Woo! Yep, that's a good time. We all like to do that around a campfire. We have magical plants, you see? And what we can do is we can roll them up into little little things and have them as like a fire treat, caveman style. Or we also have another type that grow in the backwoods near shed six. It's moldy back there. Nobody goes there. But once in a while there's a couple mushrooms that pop up. Like that. Big shiny cow. Oh, like a hood. Protecting them from rain, I would suspect. Anywho, those are fun. I'm gonna have one this afternoon.
Speaker 2This answers so many questions now. Um so do you know. Oh, that's good.
Speaker 1I like when I can answer a bunch of questions we're just talking one time.
Speaker 2We've been speaking for several weeks now, and I don't really believe he's answered.
Speaker 1Not at the same time, though. We've had our conversations for about four minutes, not much longer. So I don't know what you're going on about week.
Speaker 2I don't think I've ever actually ever finished a question while interviewing you.
Speaker 1Well, that's okay. I don't mind you asking a few more.
Speaker 2I have to. The drug problem in Bootstuck?
Speaker 1No problem at all. We got bad under wraps. Yeah, we're all doing it now.
Speaker 2Uh I'm sorry, what?
Speaker 1Well, there ain't no problem. We had a problem because a couple people felt left out, you know? Yeah, whoop, whoop, because we didn't give them none? Nope, nope. We just gave them some of the magic mushroom caps, and they're all right. Well, they're running around right now. Oh, what is that? Catching stars. Yeah, catching stars, putting them in jars, whoop, have fun.
Speaker 2Those people sound like they're hallucinating.
Speaker 1Yeah, they're having a great time. They're hilarious. That's how you say it. Drop it off the bar. Yeah, think about wait, hold on. They're coming over. Oh, oh, oh! Oh my. Oh, he's walking on his hands with his shoes on his hands. That's me. How'd he get to do that? Oh, Jerry's got his legs. Who's yours? I guess that's Jerry.
Speaker 2I have to say, so if we're for Bootstock to solve its drug problem, you just gave some to everybody.
Speaker 1Well, we put it in a communal bowl, you see, and everybody can put their hand in and have a letter. That's nice. Otherwise, you can go in the back and just roll up them leaves to think they're birch.
Speaker 2Okay, so clearly marijuana grows near wherever you are. Do you harvest enough to last you through the winter?
Speaker 1Harvest?
Speaker 2Well, yes. Collect.
Speaker 1Yeah. Acquire. Grab. Whoa, hang on now. Yeah, we have all sorts of recreational activity device. So we get along pretty good. Not much gets done, but we have a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. They can you can you can you can share it with the fans. You can they can share with a friend. They can you can you can they can purple? We got our purple.
Speaker 2Well, this opens up new doors into how I It opens up all sorts of doors and creativity.
Speaker 1Yeah, you should have seen the polka dot door that got open yesterday. Woo!
Speaker 2Every time I try and steer the conversation in a documentary style manner, you manage to foil me by creating the largest interview style rabbit holes that I've ever encountered. How do you do it? Is it the drugs?
Speaker 1How do you style documentary? I'll put that one up on the board for later. Documentary! Documentary! Never mind, cross it off the board. Did you get it up? Oh, Caleb got his finger stuck in the hole again. Cam stop running. Alright, gotta go, that's right.