High times & hijinks on the High Plains circa 1969

Jackie Flaten says

Backstory: A North Dakota State University student newspaper editor thought it would be funny to promote Zap, N.D., a teeny tiny town smack dab in the middle of nowhere, as an ideal alternative to the customary spring break site of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. When the AP picked up his article, things got out of hand - high school and college students descended en masse, beer flowed freely and things pretty much went downhill from there.

The "Zap-in" happened a couple months before Woodstock -- one of the originators mused, 15 years later, perhaps something was "in the air, calling the tribes..."

North Dakota native Chris Breitling produced a documentary while he was a film student -- the film, Zap Revisited, is now available for the first time on DVD in commemoration of the 40th anniversary.

The YouTube link shows a two-minute clip of the student documentary, Zap Revisited, which looks at this event, originators and small-town quirky ND.

From the Zap Revisited Web site:

In the spring of 1969 an estimated 3,000 young people descended on the tiny prairie town of Zap, N.D., for a spring break blow-out. What started as an off-beat idea for a party ended with National Guard troops expelling the revelers from Zap and the nearby towns of Beulah and Hazen, creating a national media sensation.

Zap Revisited, a documentary by West Fargo, N.D., native Chris Breitling recalls the strange-but-true story of the "Zip to Zap", aka the "Zap-In" through the memories of people who took part in this uniquely infamous episode of North Dakota history. Breitling produced Zap Revisited as a graduate film student while at Columbia College in the early 1990s.

In conjunction with the 40th anniversary, Outcast Studios is making this DVD available to anyone interested in this unlikely High Plains tale set in the tumultuous spring of 1969.

High times & hijinks on the High Plains circa 1969

[#1 posted by Takuan, May 16, 2009 11:30 PM]

ya think?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a1/Zapcomix1.jpg

[#2 posted by Anonymous, May 17, 2009 12:48 AM]

My mom went to this-she was from a nearby (and even tinier) town, and the mayor at the time is a relative. She says it wasn't as riotous as it sounded-most people had passed out by the time the fuzz arrived, but hey, at least ND got its 15 minutes.

[#3 posted by Anonymous, May 17, 2009 12:53 AM]

so good to see north dakota on the map. not everyone is disconnected up here.

[#4 posted by PaulR, May 17, 2009 5:19 AM]

Hmmm, hannahpowell52, methinks your Happy Mutant profile is about to be zotted!

And hopefully on Engadget, the Huffingtom Post, and ArsTechnica, too.

Do you think that the CAPTCHA on the signup page attracts the bots? Do they have spiders combing Google looking for CAPTCHAs - which flag websites of interest?

[#5 posted by Anonymous, May 17, 2009 6:36 AM]

First flash mob?

[#6 posted by oasisob1, May 17, 2009 7:01 AM]

Spring Break 2010: Return to Zap! (you know you want to)

[#7 posted by SkullHyphy, May 17, 2009 1:41 PM]

In my day we didn't complain about 50¢ beer, hell, we were glad to get beer that cheap! But then, my day is now.

[#8 posted by Fred H, May 17, 2009 5:51 PM]

"Weekend rampage," ah, I pine for the time when newscasters were still journalists with word power.

[#9 posted by westbrjr, May 17, 2009 9:30 PM]

I must have one of those t-shirts. Anyone?

[#10 posted by Halloween Jack, May 18, 2009 7:29 AM]

I think that the next time some greybeard baby boomer starts going off on the "entitlement" that the Yoof o' Today show, I'll pull this out as an example of his generation expecting that there would be an instant Woodstock, literally in the middle of nowhere, simply because some student paper bonehead declared it to be so.