Burnsy and Danger Guerrero have been holding down the fort while I've been wandering around Austin looking for Mark Henry covering the sights and sounds for UPROXX and Gamma Squad, but I finally stumbled onto something sports related: the impromptu Nike Fuel Lot in the middle of downtown, wherein you can play sports, watch people take pictures of people playing sports and get a free t-shirt.
The lot has been a meeting point for Livestrong running groups all week, but I managed to get down there on Wednesday to earn my girlfriend's shirt with 100 Fuel points of activity. See, Nike's new Fuel Band doesn't just measure running, like the old Nike Plus ... it measures EVERYTHING, from basketball, push-ups and jumping jacks to skateboarding and dancing around like an idiot. Anything athletic, except for swimming, and as I've learned the hard way, doing your dishes.
I earned something like 4,000 Fuel points trying to get from one concert to the other (and not wanting to pay the bike rickshaws twenty bucks to take me 10 blocks), but my favorite 100 earned were here. Check out a few of the pictures, and stay for the technicolor freakout at the end.
Note: I am the only person here taking normal photos. Everyone else is either using huge, wedding-photo-quality art school cameras or just Instagramming everything.
Austin's Frost Bank Tower. It looks like an owl, if you look at it right. This becomes important later.
Skateboarding with "Nike Skateboard Pros", which I guess means "people who work for us and can skateboard".
Not every attempt was successful. I'm not sure who my favorite disinterested bystander is ... the guy with his shirt over his nose, the smiling guy in cheap Wayfarers or the bored girl between the skateboarder's legs?
I'm sure this would look cooler with a few Instagram filters thrown over it. Look, he's skateboarding in my polaroid from 1982!
Yes, that place is literally a warehouse that is full of spaghetti.
If you look in the background you can see the bin of free t-shirts. You earned a shirt by getting 100 Fuel points on your band, and the volunteers would keep track of it on a clipboard. A wonderful juxtaposition of technology, and also you can fart or throw your band down the steps and get 100 Fuel points.
Also happening here for some reason: HACKEY-SACK. Other than the guy on Red River who chucked a half-full beer into a tree, these are my least favorite people in Austin right now.
Thankfully the Nike volunteer/employees went "oh god no, not hackeysack" and started tossing basketballs at people.
The most important thing to happen at the Nike Fuel lot: DODGEBALL.
GO GO GO GO GO
If you hit them hard enough with the ball, they turn into angels and ascend to Heaven.
Photo credit: Lightwave International
And the very coolest part -- at night, Nike lights up the Frost Bank Tower to look like the meter on the Fuel band. That's so cool. Jogging to the top of it should make your band explode.
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Wouldn’t it be awesome if you found Mark Henry and he agreed to take a picture where he is World’s Strongestly Slamming you!? I think it would.
How many fuel points does the World’s Strongest Slam give you?
Nike messed up by not hiring Big Johnny to do their skate demos.
i just wanna know how many points to fap.
ive contacted nike to no avail and ive brought it up at the espn and nike websites and my question gets deleted.
i feel its a valid question.
The caption about ‘Nike skateboard pros’ is really stupid. This just in, some people can ride a skateboard better than others, therefore some people are “sponsored.” If you are sponsored by Nike, then sure, you ‘work’ for them. Just like Jeff Gordon “works” for Dupont. Based on that caption I would put the writer’s age at 40+, or a fat mid-20-year-old.
Also just in: this is not a serious news website