It was years in the planning but it only took about 10 seconds for 2,500 little rubber balls to hit the ground, bounce, and…. well… hit the ground again.
Lucy Pullen and Sandy Plotnikoff dropped the multi coloured balls from the roof of the five storey parking lot on the corner of Sackville and granville Streets in downtown Halifax at 7am last Sunday. “It’s nice to do stuf like this in public” says Pullen. “It’s a spectacle. It made a lot of people really happy.” About 60 people witnessed the event which Pullen and Plotnikoff publicized with posters and by word of mouth. Included in the crowd were a group returning from a rave who, Pullen says, “were just blown away.”
Pullen and Plotnikoff started talking about the idea in 1994. They have been collecting the balls since then, buying them mainlu from machines outside grocery stores. To round the numbers up to 2,500 for the big drop they spend 150$ on a bulk shipment from a company in Dartmouth. After they stopped bouncing, the balls were left on the street where they were picked up by passers-by. “We thought of it as a generous thing to do” says Pullen, adding that the balls were all picked up and that they may well try something similar in the future. The ball drop was recorded on video to be shown on cable TV - but only in Sackville New Brunswick.
Graham Long