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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 63 - If Pluto Were Your Girlfriend
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Tape 63 begins with an earnest attempt to advocate for dark matter, quickly pivoting into a passionate defense of Pluto, now rebranded as “Dwarfy,” a misunderstood ice dwarf traveling the wrong way and apparently deserving emotional support. A surprise interruption by Neil deGrasse Tyson does little to clarify matters, as Pluto’s size, temperature, and relationship to the sun are debated with mixed metaphors and diminishing patience.
Back on Earth, attention turns to Bootstuck’s latest infrastructure project: a public bus that doesn’t move. Inspired by Into the Wild, the town has placed a lightly painted blue bus deep in the woods to attract tourists, photos, and eventually souvenirs, population growth, better education, and—if all goes well—a Walmart. The plan hinges on recirculated social media flyers, a possible air show, and the assumption that people will simply find the bus. The episode concludes with preparations to “gather around,” a boot-lace prank, and a final word of wisdom delivered under extreme urgency.
www.bootstuck.com
You know there's a thing in outer space called uh dark matter. We're gonna start a petition for them.
SPEAKER_02:A petition?
Hat Guy:Yep.
SPEAKER_02:How do you petition dark matter? This should be interesting.
Hat Guy:Well, we want to help them out. We want to get them a voice.
SPEAKER_02:I don't know where you're.
Hat Guy:So in outer space, there's things called planetary systems. You ever see of one of them things there? Planets. Know that?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, I do.
Hat Guy:Yeah. And now there's a tiny one I want to talk about. Yeah. And the tiny one is at the very back. You know his name? Like a dog.
SPEAKER_02:So Pluto.
Hat Guy:That one. Yeah. That one's still a planet. Only it travels in a different direction than the rest of our planets. So we're gonna call him Dwarfy. He's one of the dwarfs. If you look up the Cinderella story with all those dwarfs, you'll find out that one of them is named Pluto. Hello?
SPEAKER_00:Pluto had it coming.
Hat Guy:Hang on, I'm speaking.
SPEAKER_00:I don't think so.
Hat Guy:Who are you?
SPEAKER_00:Hi, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Hat Guy:So he's there and he's mostly ice. He's really cold. If he was your girlfriend, you wouldn't want to sleep in the same bed.
SPEAKER_00:Which means if you brought to where Earth is right now, heat from the sun would sublimate the ice and it would grow a tail.
SPEAKER_02:Frozen water.
SPEAKER_00:What's that called?
SPEAKER_02:Ice.
SPEAKER_00:If Neptune were a champion power, Pluto would be a matchbox car. Now you understand how tiny it is. Yep. Anywho, uh. Pluto's cold. You should be too.
Hat Guy:Well, we're all very informed here.
SPEAKER_00:Pluto is happier now. It's one of the largest of the dwarf planets.
Hat Guy:So he would probably melt because he would be closer to the hot star.
SPEAKER_00:Just get over it.
Hat Guy:Anywho, uh, we have a hot star near us. It comes and shows ourselves every day. Do you ever see that where you are?
SPEAKER_02:Uh, oddly enough, yes, we do.
Hat Guy:It's a small world, you know. That's what they say. I was on a bus one time, long time ago, not a long time ago, not too far, a long time ago, with a little bit of waste. On the bus, there was a man who sat beside me and he said, I've seen you before. It's a small world. A long time ago. Yeah. We have a bus in Bootstuck. Did I tell you about it?
SPEAKER_02:A bus? Well, that's interesting. So you have public transit in in Bootstock. That's well, that's great. Uh how how does it work?
Hat Guy:Well, it sits there on a lock in the woods near a hill, near a river. There was a story about a man in Alaska. You ever hear about the man in Alaska? He found a bus and liked it and then died in the bus? So it got a lot of attention and brought a lot of tourists to Alaska. So what we figured we won done did is got ourselves an old bus and painted it lightly blue, and stuck it there in the woods and waiting for people to come and see it and take pictures and want to be there for a little bit. And then we're gonna sell souvenirs.
SPEAKER_02:So you're anticipator. Hang on a second. What's the name of that? Um Into the Wild. Is that it?
Hat Guy:Yep, that's it. We put the bus into the wild. So it's there.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so so you're referring to the movie Into the Wild. So you set up a bus in hopes that tourists will find it and start treating it the same. How do you figure?
Hat Guy:It's the way of social media. So we're gonna put it in the flyer and we're gonna recirculate the flyer. Woo! Air show. We should have an air show next week to get it going, and then from there, more people will come to boot stuff, and then we can get a Walmart.
SPEAKER_02:You can get a Walmart. Okay, so you're hoping to build tourism off of a bus buried in the woods that nobody knows about.
Hat Guy:In case somebody wants to build a house, and then they can live here too, and then we'll have more people in bootstuck, and then we'll have more education systems.
SPEAKER_02:Well, you're not wrong.
Hat Guy:No, not at all. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_02:I don't even know how to do it.
Hat Guy:Well, I thought I'd tell you something before I go though. Usually. It's gonna be Yeah, because we got lots to do in Bootstuck today, you see. Everybody's gathered around. I think I told you about that. So I gotta go and gather around myself, so I'm just gonna put on my boots over here and uh oh, I ain't got no laces in my boots. Did you know why?
SPEAKER_02:Please indulge me.
Hat Guy:Because they're galosh, so I couldn't possibly have any of them inside of my boots. Oh, wait, there's laces in my boots. Oh, somebody played a joke on me. All right, I gotta go now. I'll see you later. Wait, words of wisdom. Uh I gotta pee. All right, gotta go.
