Half a million rubber balls down the Spanish steps in Rome

Decio sez, "Some pranksters (caught afterwards by police) threw a half million balls down the Spanish Steps by Holy Trinity in Rome. Like the Bravia commercial, but for real."

Half a million, huh? Who says cheap manufactured goods are bad for society? Link (Thanks, Decio!)

[#1 posted by jwb , January 16, 2008 2:19 PM]

The Bravia commercial _was_ for real.

[#2 posted by Ken Hansen , January 16, 2008 2:30 PM]

Let me get this straight, someone drops a half a million pieces of hard colored plastic pieces of trash on a cultural monument and it's "cool"? I'd call it littering, and I'd demand that they be required to collect and count all the balls as punishment. What, they didn't have a plan for cleaning up the mess they made? Does that make it cooler? I guess I'm a bit "old school" when it comes to things like this, but I have a real problem when people do otherwise stupid things (like pole dance on a subway, beat the snot out of a stranger, etc.) and it's "OK" because they posted it on youtube... It was bad enough when people behaved like jerks, but now they think they'll get their 15 minutes of fame by posting their bad behavior on a web site.

I guess I'm just not "hip" any more (if I ever was)...

[#3 posted by Greatmiddlewest , January 16, 2008 2:31 PM]

Pretty sure those balls aren't rubber. They look more like the hard plastic kind commonly found in 'ball crawl' pits.

[#4 posted by CitrusFreak12 , January 16, 2008 2:34 PM]

Came here to say exactly what #3 said. They aren't rubber, they're plastic.

[#5 posted by Takuan , January 16, 2008 2:37 PM]

please, please tell me they had more than one camera set up

[#6 posted by spazzm , January 16, 2008 2:38 PM]

Littering is now sexy and praise-worthy!

[#7 posted by Marrz , January 16, 2008 2:39 PM]

Yah I was going to comment that the Bravia is real too

[#8 posted by Nick CT , January 16, 2008 2:54 PM]

Ken Hansen

Is Mardi Gras okay in your book? That was a giant mess after the party long before Youtube.

[#9 posted by Antinous , January 16, 2008 2:59 PM]

@#2,

I'm not even into women, but I'd be tickled pink to see a pole dance on a subway. And why is everybody assuming that they weren't planning on cleaning it up? Now, if they had used packing peanuts...

[#10 posted by Joe , January 16, 2008 3:02 PM]

Those balls float. A lot of them will wind up in the Tiber, and flow out to the Mediterranean, where they will join the thousands of tons of floating plastic trash already present. And that pales compared to the vast quantities of trash in the Pacific.

Please don't glorify this kind of thing.

[#11 posted by Cefeida , January 16, 2008 3:19 PM]

I'm with #2. This is cute, but thoughtless.

[#12 posted by padrevic , January 16, 2008 3:35 PM]

It was a protest. See here

[#13 posted by ryandestroys , January 16, 2008 4:17 PM]

What 12 said. I'm surprised it took that long for someone to mention this. The act was protest. Each ball was to represent a lie told by politicians to the Italian people.

[#14 posted by Infinite Decay , January 16, 2008 4:47 PM]

@10 Joe: Although I agree that plastic waste can be a problem, that cleanup crew in the video was hard at work before the balls had even come to rest at the bottom of the steps. I'd would think that they would be able to corral them all before they roll all the way to the Tiber.

@2 Ken Hansen: There's a world of difference between a colorful stunt like this and beating "the snot out of a stranger". Comparing the two is ridiculous.

Anyway, anybody know how much half a million plastic balls would cost? I'd always love to do something like this. (xkcd)

[#15 posted by mokey , January 16, 2008 5:10 PM]

man, you guys are bummers. looked pretty fun to me. yay for public mischief!

[#16 posted by ripplepoppy , January 16, 2008 5:25 PM]

I have wanted to do this since I was a little kid. I even had a bucket o' bouncy balls saved up to let loose on a big hill in my town. But who knew that some bouncy balls get kinda dried out after 20 years?
It made me truly happy that somewhere in the world my dream was realized.
This is !so! cool. ::impish grin::

[#17 posted by Steven , January 16, 2008 7:10 PM]

and by, "like the bravia ad," you surely mean, "like the 1997 piece by canadian artist lucy pullen."

[#18 posted by Ken Hansen , January 16, 2008 7:55 PM]

RE: #5 - If you watch the video carefully, you see the "spectacle" from several angles, so yes, I think there were several cameras.

RE: #8 - Mardi Gras is not a "prank", (as I understand) it is a celebration organized/supported/encouraged by the city of New Orleans - that is different from a couple of fellows throwing a (reported) half-million balls down a staircase.

RE: #12 - This was tagged as "Art, Video" not "Political" or "Protest", and the accused are referred to as "pranksters". In the revised context of this as an act of political protest, I still don't like it, but it is a *bit* more reasonable in that context.

RE: #14 - that isn't the clean-up crew, that is the ball dispensing group. They are brushing them down the stairs. If you look closely you'll see there is nothing in the area to actually clean the balls up with (like several really large trash cans).

RE: #14 (another point) - You just compared them to point out how different they are - I think you mean equate, not compare. I equate the two because both were apparently done "for the cameras".

[#19 posted by Carl Rigney , January 16, 2008 8:08 PM]

The link says it was a quarter-million, which is still enough to fill 2200 square feet 2 feet deep according to this handy ball fill calculator.

Now for "The Running of the Balls", in which people start out running ahead of them, in a fun hybrid of xkcd and Pamplona. That might be even more fun with superballs than playpit balls.

As someone once scribbled on a whiteboard at the MIT Media Lab, "Art is not a mirror. Art is a hammer."

[#20 posted by obdan , January 16, 2008 10:00 PM]

Art is a ball?

[#21 posted by g.park , January 17, 2008 5:38 AM]

@ Ken Hansen-

Agreed, citizen! All dissent should be neatly typed and delivered in triplicate to the appropriate authorities! And all art must be contained in private residences and museums- we can't have it out in public where it might encourage thinking or feeling!

[#22 posted by jennee , January 17, 2008 6:19 AM]

I do think they should clean up after themselves (or hire someone to do that, or pay for it), but come on, it's FUN!

[#23 posted by Bevatron Repairman , January 17, 2008 8:14 AM]

Sort of what I imagine the jelly bean scene was like in H. Ellison's "Repent, Harlequin, Said the Tick-Tock Man"

[#24 posted by insomma , January 17, 2008 8:26 AM]

I'm surprised with all of this talk of litter.

It's Italy- Is Naples not in the headlines back in the States?

[#25 posted by Nick CT , January 17, 2008 8:54 AM]

Re: Ken Hansen #18

Mardi Gras is a massive mess every year with beads and beer bottles and etc everywhere, but it is okay because it is a celebration? And this is not okay because it is done in protest?

[#26 posted by stubar , January 17, 2008 9:42 AM]

@10

That'd be quite a voyage for them to make it all the way to the Tiber. Topography aside, the distance alone is significant, not to mention making it over the retaining walls that line most of the river's banks. As for the act itself, I say bravo to anything that makes the Spanish Steps as interesting as tourists seem to think they are, especially considering that the Trinita dei Monti is apparently STILL covered in scaffolding.

[#27 posted by Misciel , January 18, 2008 1:11 PM]

What the post and the comments miss is really the *true* irony of this so-called prank.

Apparently, the "artistic activist" Graziano Cecchini - who's been called an "extreme-right sympathiser" - launched them as a protest against the appalling garbage collection crisis that's been going on full-blown in Naples for at least six months, if not longer. The irony is of course that I'm supposing the balls then had to be cleaned up by municipal sanitation engineers. Nice... How's that for advocating better allocation of sanitation resources?!

But fear not... it seems that not all of the balls have hit the wastestream. At least some are actually available for sale on Italian eBay. (Just like you can buy a bottle of Cecchini's earlier "prank," the Trevi Fountain dyed red, in the U.S. for a mere 99 cents with $35 for shipping!) For the more budget-minded, however, "replica" Spanish-Step balls are already available on American eBay starting at just 99 cents! So, I guess it's not just "art" or "protest" or even "litter"... it's also a "bargain"! *GAK!*

[#28 posted by dainel , January 22, 2008 8:57 PM]

To all those who complain about "cleaning up after", please look at the video. Did you notice the people walking by who pick up a few balls and put it in the bags they were carrying?

Those balls are new. I'd go clean up myself, for free, if Rome weren't so far away. After I "clean up", I'll sell those balls. Those balls will probably get picked up within a day or two.