I don’t talk about Camp Tipsy too much in advance because I wanna keep it small. If 2,000 people came, that would kill it. So I wait. Until like now.

Now we talk about Camp Tipsy!

Camp Tipsy basicly starts in 2 weeks. We are all very excited. It’s like our yearly convention of all our closest friends and co-conspirators. Maybe some year Camp Tipsy will have 20,000 people and raise a million dollars for charity, but for now we wanna keep it to less then 500 people. I simply don’t have enough time to organize a giant disaster event.

This year, Camp Tipsy is on the weekend of the 17th of June.

Camp Tipsy is located at East Park Reservoir, near the town of Stonyford and Ladoga.

Friday night our Campfire entertainment includes the fabulous Freddi Price!

Saturday night we are pleased to announce Jason Webly as our featured campfire girl. Tons of other singing and playing as well….

It’s free camping on Bureau of Reclamation land. There is no gate. There are no greeters. There are no rules, save a few guidelines…

Please do not give any alcohol to anyone at anytime. If this is our rule, it can never be said that we knowingly gave booze to someone underage. Like last year.

Please do not build a boat that is gonna leave a buncha garbage in the lake. Like last year (you know who you are!!!!)

Please do not bring (or use) any fireworks what so ever! Camp Tipsy is a dog friendly event. I will personally kick your ass if you light off fireworks. It freaks dogs out, makes them bolt. Makes our camping neighbors dogs bolt then we are at war with our neighbors. Don’t do it. It’s also super dry there. This is FREE camping and everyone there is amazing and loves us. Lets keep it that way. Fireworks makes you a douchebag. Don’t be a douchebag. Like last year Steve Valdez and Doyle.

That’s about it for rules.

Here is where Camp Tipsy is: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

NOW LISTEN CAREFULLY. THERE ARE 2 ENTERANCES TO EAST PARK RESERVIOUR. THESE DIRECTIONS THAT YOU SEE ABOVE ARE WRONG. YOU CAN NOT GET DIRECTIONS FROM GOOGLE TO THE RIGHT ENTERENCE. WHICH IS 30 MINUTES SHORTER AND LESS 20 MILES. SO I’M SHOWING YOU WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE WHEN YOU GOOGLE MAP IT. WHICH IS WRONG. (maybe someone out there who can do grafix design can put an X on the map from last year?)

You enter the park in the town of Ladoga. The entire town is a general store/gas station/bar/restaurant/RV storage facility. The enterance for the park is 200 feet past the town of Ladoga on your right. We camp on the EAST side of the park. There is also camping on the WEST side of the park. Near the town of Stonyford. You are welcome to go there. We will not be there, though. The drive to the enterance on the East Side is 2 1/2 hours.

We put up tons of signs on the roads. You can follow the signs.

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Here are written directions:

Get to Camp Tipsy from SF:

Take the Bay Bridge to 80 East Sacremento. Stay on 80 until Vacaville, where you will NOT MISS the signs for 505 north.

Take 505 north 33 miles, merge with Interstate 5 north.

Take I 5 north 35 miles to the town of Maxwell. Exit I 5 and take Maxwell Road west. WARNING!!! SPEED TRAP IN MAXWELL. 25 MPH!

Take Maxwell road west 8 miles, turn right on Sites Ladoga Road and go 11 miles to the town of Ladoga.

The enterence to East Park Reserviour is 200 feet past the only store you’ve seen since Maxwell.

Enter into the park, you are going to drive a mile or so, and follow Camp Tipsy signs. Easy.

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This is a car camping event. You can drive your car to your campsite.

It’s HOT there. HOT. Muy caliente. Bring an iceburg. You will go in the water. Which is why you should build a boat.

Beleive it or not, this is not a leave no trace event. There are dumpsters provided. We WANT to fill them. We WANT to pay extra for the dumpsters. Please clean up after yourselves, but LEAVE YOUR TRACE (in the dumpster). It looks better for us if we pay for our own garbage, they will never beleive we can pack it all out. And that’s fine, it’s totally cheap.

There is a communal kitchen. Stoves, cooking basics, a BBQ, coolers, tables, kitchen ware, dishwashing station… ect… please feel free to bring scaleable foods to pass around. It works great.

There are tools there. A full shop. And junk. And old boats. You can build a boat. A new one, or re-vamp an old one. Or help someone else realize their nautical musings… it’s reallly fun to see the lake full of bullshit boats…

You build a boat to noodle around on. Sure. But you build to WIN!!!!

There is a BOAT CONTEST (noon, Sunday) with FABULESS PRIZES. You can win in any of these catagories:

****Top dog!
 Worst implementation of worst design


****Sloppy seconds!
 Worst implementation


****Third rail!
 Worst design


****Fourth dimension!
 Boat most likely to kill pilot


****Fifth Avenue!
 Boat most likely to get pilot laid


****Sixth sense!
 Boat most likely to sink, but doesn’t


****Seventh heaven!
 Boat least like a boat


****Last place!
 Least effort put forth

Of course, our last place prize is the coveted one. Last year our winner stole someone else’s boat. Sneaky, but effective.

It’s easy to build a boat. YES IT IS. Cardboard will float. Sure it will. Ducktape the seams, and pain the entire outer cardboard with latex paint. It’ll last a few days. Maybe. Build a cardboard boat in an hour. Recycle it. 2 liter Pepsi bottles float. They displace however much 2 liters of water weighs. So 4 liters is about a gallon, and a gallon is about 8 pounds. So if you weighed 160 pounds, you’d need 40 soda bottles to displace your weight. Plus the weight of your ‘boat’. You could ducktape 50 two liter bottles to the bottom of a chaise lounge and float to freedom. Inflatable matress’ are absolutly cheating.

Any and all boat entries must be submitted 7 1/2 minutes before the boat contest witch happens on Sunday at high noon. All boat entries must have a name and a sponsor. A sponsor is whoever or whatever you’d like.Your boat must have a name, and a “special feature”. Surprise us.

THERE IS A BUILDING WEEKEND THIS WEEKEND, IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BUILD A BOAT. EMAIL ME, AND LET ME KNOW.

Camp Tipsy is a donation based event. What is a good donation, you might ask? $100. It costs thousands to throw. Starting with $2,000 a year in storage for all the stuff. We make a few trips up there, time and fuel. Usually rent a truck. We give extra money to the port-a-potty company and the dumpster company. We are the biggest group they host up there. There are a million little expenses. Including some “convienice fees”, if you know what I mean. Building materials, generator rentals, consumables, food, propane, tools, junk, paint, shade, rugs, life preservers, outboard motors, fasterners, lumber, blades for saws, wire for the welder, bits for the drills, glitter, beer, water, ice, food for the crew that sets up and tears down (last year a dozen of us), traveling money for the featured musicians and all this done without putting a price tag on it. $100 is a good donation for someone with a job who can afford it. Do what you can. Its an olympic effort that will obliterate our month. We do nothing but Camp Tipsy in June, setting up and tearing down.

Camp Tipsy is the funnest thing I’ve ever done. We go up early. Your welcome to come help. Let me know.

East Park Reserviour. We like to call it Lake Ladoga. The native Americans called it that.

Camp Tipsy is a donation event. It’s Burea Of Reclamation land. Free camping. You give us money to pay for the infastructure like the storage of the boats and trailers, the materials, the motors, the tools, the kitchen stuff and the weeks spent in preperation. It’s quite a massive undertaking!!! A suggested donation would be about $100. If that sounds like give less. If your loaded give more.

Directions are simple, as there is only one way there…
Take I 5 to the town of Maxwell. It’s about 15 miles north of Williams. About 50 miles north of Sacramento. It’s 95 miles north of SF.

Take the only road in Maxwell west, towards the Pacific Ocean. The road will ‘T’, to your left will be a dead end dirt road. Take the right. Go over the windy mountain road. You will come to the ‘town’ of Ladoga. There is a little store there and a gas station. Ice. Beer. Tampons. 200 feet past this miracle of modern convinience, you will find a giant sign that says Welcome To East Park Reserviour, but they spell it right. At this point you will see your first Camp Tipsy sign. It will have an arrow on it. There are hand made signs guiding you through the park. From the turn off to the park, your like 2 miles away.

The park is free camping, first come, first served.

There is no glass bottles allowed. No amplified music. Dogs are welcome.

Find us, camp somewhere and marvel at the idiocy provided for and by you in the form of the worst nautical engineering you have ever seen.

Bring food to share, we bring a kitchen. Bring water for yourself and for cleaning and cooking and bathing.

There are port-a-poties on site. Unless we get drunk and makes boats out of them…

People are generally friendly who are locals, but remember they all spank it to Sarah Palin porn and think global warming is a hoax purpetrated by liberal media. OK, so it probably is but my point is keep the conversations light and if anyone says or does anything lame just remember they are looking for a reaction. Give them nothing.

As far as the boats are concerned, there is a TON of material up there to build with. I bring all my tools. Your competing for several different awards:

****Top dog!
 Worst implementation of worst design


****Sloppy seconds!
 Worst implementation


****Third rail!
 Worst design


****Fourth dimension!
 Boat most likely to kill pilot


****Fifth Avenue!
 Boat most likely to get pilot laid


****Sixth sense!
 Boat most likely to sink, but doesn’t


****Seventh heaven!
 Boat least like a boat


****Last place!
 Least effort put forth

Don’t even try to get our coveted last place award by bringing anything to the lake…

The idea here is not what can you do it’s what can you do with nothing. Or very, very little. In order to compete, you need a sponsor. Your sponsor could be any organization or any business or any person. But you need one. We are re-defining sponsorship. Prizes are plaques for your to display on your mantle next to your rocketship trinkets.

You can arrive anytime, day or night. You can arrive any day. There is no gate, no dumb greeters with pom poms and there is no lifegaurd. You have to gaurd your own life.

You can read through the rest of this blog, there is more info and stuff or you can just show up and do whatever you want. You’ll have the time of your life either way.

Oh yea, it’s really hot there. Bring a hat.

see ya there… chicken

OK. So I floated a camping trailer to the middle of Lake Ladoga.

It was pretty funny. Camp Tipsy was super fun. The lovely and talented Anja took photos.

http://anja-ulfeldt-photography.smugmug.com/gallery/9342935_9uTNm#P-1-30

There was 140 people all told. The contest was awesome. The idiocy abounded.

A little sad without the small dog… but a fair amount of work. If you went and have no AS YET made a donation, please allow your generosity to be your guide. It cost real money to throw that event and life has been expensive of late…

Here is a video:

I’m gonna build this next:http://ephemerisle.org/

You can just use a dumpster as a pool too…. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111624469

Anybody live or know anyone in the Delta? By Paradise Point? I need some space out there to build. Anyone got any connections in or around Stockton? Gimme a shout…

Behold the trailer that I am going to float to the middle of Lake Lodoga using barrels from the maraschino cherry company.

It’s a swim up cafe. And the coffee is free….

Can a guy try any harder?

chicken

Camp Tipsy has some Olympic contestants. Special Olympics, that is…

Here are a few of the boats you will see floating around….

Kezia and her catfish boat (notice the floatation she uses) with the top off. Yes, there are a few bike helmets in there:

Here is Team Fandango:

Their entry blurb:

Our UFO-themed “boat” is made from a bathtub and some incredibly flimsy bits of found-lumber that we used for an outriggger/sun-deck. If this deck holds up through the weekend without somebody snapping it in half trying to “come aboard”, I’ll eat my tricorn pirate hat. We still need to affix our “floatation” sacks, as I’m betting our duct-tape latticework won’t stand up to three weeks in the sun of the NIMBY parking lot, much less immersion in water. (We have alternate plans involving the plastic mesh from hay-bales.) We are aiming roundly at a Third Place prize (worst design) since we just made it out of whatever was handy, and then painted it silver. We’re not even sure if we’ll be able to reach the water with a paddle. But it’s totally gonna work.

The amazing Scott built a Hovercraft out of leafblowers. Yes, he did…

And yes, that is a model airplane prop and a weed wacker engine….

Here are the barells for the Ritual location nearest to Camp Tipsy:

Directions to Camp Tipsy:

Take I-5 North to the Maxwell exit. Take Maxwell Sites road west. Take it for like 12 miles or so, over the big hill. The ONLY thing you will see is the Lodoga Store which is also Lodoga Storage. 300 feet after the store is a brown sign for East Park Reserviur, but they probably spelled it more better. There will be Camp Tipsy signs everywhere. It is impossible to get lost. If you do a Google search for Lodoga, California, you will see the lake. The store is at the crossroads. The store is actually the entire town of Lodoga. And it’s for sale.

It’s free camping. If you wanna give me some money to defer costs that’s great. It’s expensive to get all that shit up there and takes tons of time. But it’s a donation thing. There is no gate, no ranger ect…

chicken

So. A bad thing happend on July 20th. My own beloved Dammit Dog died after 19 1/2 years of faithful service. It was very very sad. I postponed the event. I posted it here, but somehow, the blog post didn’t show up. I was very upset. So sorry if you looked here and didn’t get information. I don’t think anyone went up looking for the event. Lemme know if you did, so I can feel even shittier.

The event is now August 11th, which is a Tuesday through the 16th. The competition day is on the 15th.

Many people have said that this works even better for them, and it appears that we will have maybe 18 boats total.

We are doing a build weekend August 8th and 9th at NIMBY. Call me for more info 415-215-1632

chicken

I just don’t wanna hear one more person say they can’t build a boat.

Nonsence.

These boats are made outta cardboard, some caulk, some ducktape and glue. In this coffee powered city of over-acheiver, I refuse to belive my ears when I hear people say: “I don’t know how to build a boat.” Duh. Did you think I knew how to build a boat when I built this?:

Camp Tipsy is now less than a month away. The prizes for competition are as follows:

****Top dog!
 Worst implementation of worst design


****Sloppy seconds!
 Worst implementation


****Third rail!
 Worst design


****Fourth dimention!
 Boat most likely to kill pilot


****Fifth Avenue!
 Boat most likely to get pilot laid


****Sixth sense!
 Boat most likely to sink, but doesn’t


****Seventh heaven!
 Boat least like a boat


****Last place!
 Least effort put forth

This event is the one that finally gives people an opportunity to fail to win. Aren’t you tired of the know it all genius’ that surround us getting all the attention? In SF, we’ve got the best and the brightest artists and engineers and they run ramshot over our events and provide for us giant Tesla coils and steam powered pancake makers, giant robots that jerk off and fire spewing yoni art cars that run on puppies. You can’t compete!

Now you can. You seal up a few old guitars and paddle to glory. The genius’ can’t think like idiots. This is OUR turn, to take it all back. Let them come with their fancy pantz boat that runs on granulated McDonalds napkins. Someone is gonna figger out that all ya need is a few milk crates and some dodge balls and you’ve got a boat. Packing peanuts. You can fill up garbage bags with air and throw some foamcore on it and it’s a boat. Paddle away with a loaf of Italian bread. And win.

You don’t have to build to come to Camp Tipsy. You can just go and watch. That’s fine. But I don’t wanna hear anyone else say “I can’t build a boat.”.

“To dream, the impossible dream”
(this is a dramataztion montage of your boat sinking in slow motion…)
“To fight, the unbeatable foe”…..

Camp Tipsy competition date is Saturday August 1st. We’ll be there the weekend before and all week. Don’t miss it.

How do we put in an entry?

There are a few of you that are saying you have boat ideas and stuff, but you need to just take 10 minutes and give me a description of the idea. I need a team name and a sponsor as well. It’s easy. I’ll write 3 right now, and you can copy them for structure….

team name

THE ALMALGAMATED DOUCHEBAGS OF OAKLAND

sponsor

CAFE VAN CLEIFS BAR

boat name

KENNEL KLUB

description

Boat is made from 6 dog kennels. We got them at yard sales for cheap. We sealed up screw top wated bottles and foam and put them in the kennels and closed the doors. We put picknik benches between the 2 rows of 3 kennels. We sit on the benches and operated the reins on our dogs that pull our craft. By using the reins is how we steer. Dog paddle propulsion. PETA should be kept out of this. We are going for the 4th place prize “Boat most likely to get pilot killed”. We are expecting to be beaten up by K-9 lovers for making a dog-sled boat.

team name

Team NIMBY

sponsor

Google

boat name

Dumpy

description

Dumpy the Dumpster is a 20 yard all steel dumpster full of rotting trash. We, the artists of NIMBY, will sit in the dumpster and paddle it using whatever we find in the dumpster. We expect it will float, as it’s full of air. We are going for the coveted last place prize “Boat that least effort was put into”. With a 60,000 square foot metal shop and all teh tools we would need to build whatever we want our entry is thus as we have no time to build anything because we have this 60,000 sqare foot shop to keep up. And if it flips over at least we don’t have to pay for Dumpy to get serviced.

team name

The Steven Raspa Experience

sponsor

Anon Salon

boat name

Bunny Bunny Boat Boat

description

The Bunny Bunny Boat Boat is HARE-raising giant easter egg cracked in half. Painted in all the Easter Egg colors, it can hold up to 4 large Bunny Buddies. It is made out of paper mache’ with a wooden frame and then fiberglassed. It has a small electric trolling motor for steering and propulsion. If we don’t win 5th place: “Boat most likely to get piliot laid”, we will be Hopping Mad!!!

This is from Tipsy last year…

So. It’s a swing set boat with maybe flame effects and a flippy dippy dealy. Here is what Team Leader Dav has to report:

 

We had a great time even though we didn’t build a boat, but I started idly thinking about what I wanted to build for this year soon after. My first thought was a floating human canon, so you could do canonballs into the lake with style. I have no idea how those things actually work though, and I suspect I shouldn’t actually try to build one. Then I thought how about a floating catapult? That seemed doable, but too complicated. In the end I scaled it back to a swingset mounted on pontoons, so you can jump into the water. So that’s the plan.

Abstract:

A backyard-style swing set (with a slide and maybe two swings) mounted on two long pontoons with an additional beam or two across the middle for lateral support (also serves as a platform to help get into the swing seats). The pontoons will be wooden enclosures filled with empty containers or foam or whatever can be found.

Concept rendition:

 

 

 

 

On Wednesday night I went to a class on Flame Effects at Langton Labs (billed as Learn 100% of the technical skills you need to make 80% of the fire art you see at Burning Man) so now I’m thinking it should have propane flame effects as well, but that might have to wait for the next event. Besides, we’re totally going to win without going that far.

 

OK, that from Team Yaginuma. Stay tured as the other 15 entires get their shit together and tell me all about it.