Googie: Flugtag!!!

In German, Flug = Flight and Tag = Day; so Flugtag means Flightday. And flight day it was on Saturday, the 6th of Sep in Chicago. The Red Bull Flugtag was held amidst much fanfare on North Avenue beach on the shores of Lake Michigan.
The Flugtag is a crazy sport where people build crafts which are "supposed to" fly, with only human strength to power them. They take these crafts over a platform built over a body of water, perform a short stupid skit on top of the platform, and push their "flying machine" over the edge along with themselves. You would think whats the point of such a crazy stunt, but when you hear that over 80,000 people came to watch 29 teams do just that, then you realise just how much people enjoy stupid fun!

Anand and I left early so that we could get good places to watch the show. That was a smart move because it took us almost half an hour just to find a place to park. We made it well in time and settled in right next to the pier where we had an amazing view of the platform. But unluckily, the organisers thought that the place was unsafe, so they fenced off the edge of the pier, thus restricting our splendid view. For the next 3 hours, we just sat there twiddling our thumbs. Finally, after what seemed like ages, there was some activity when 4 sky-divers from the "Red Bull Air Force" jumped off a plane and skilfully maneuvered their parachutes to land on top of the platform. That sure was very very impressive!!

Then the actual show began, when one by one all the 29 teams did what they had spent so much time and money on for the last several months. The winner was a team called "The Crustacean Avengers" who flew a distance of 120 feet.

In the middle of the thing, there was a crazy guy (who was probably stoned or something) who climbed a tree right behind where we were sitting and started throwing twigs and people below. He didn't stop even after repeated warnings from the crowd, and finally 2 cops had to come and get him out of there :)
We also met a nice German chap called Daniel who had come to see the show since he had a lot of time to spare!

Some snaps from the day: