72 Hours: Columbus
I’m Alive is a series about traveling to 14 cities to film a two-and-a-half minute YouTube video. We spent 72 hours in each city. In Columbus, we encountered local phenomenon “Buck I Guy” and went to a waterpark.
Columbus is an interesting place. For those who don’t have hope, check out The Short North. That is the neighborhood my long time friend and local took us to start the trip and talk all things Columbus. The area is full of trendy restaurants, bars, and tap houses. It’s decorated well and has a lively energy that made our welcome quite fun. It’s hard to say if there are other areas like this, but it appears to be growing. There weren’t a ton of plans to make in Columbus, so we checked back on our list. Waterpark was on it. So, we searched for “waterparks near Columbus” and Zoombezi Bay turned up.
I’ll say it. We got the shot. You can see it in the video as Columbus appears on the screen. One glorious moment of waterslide action for the video. Sometimes, you have to go through a lot to get the shot. This held true for that waterslide. We had spent $80 before we even officially made it inside the gate. It took an hour+ to make it down that slide for the shot, even with the Premium Plus express wristband. There were so many people; it was a viable location for a terrorist threat. The plethora of heavily-armed police vehicles and bomb squad that cruised around the area (as seen from atop the waterslide) made that theory even more plausible. At least we made it out alive.
Things did get better, however. We decided to explore some cornfields outside of Columbus to get some b-roll and wide shots of the car in the middle of nowhere. The message here is that you really can take these things anywhere! In the process, we found The Circleville Dairy Shed and a haunted house:
That was exciting.
On our way out of Columbus, we encountered the local phenomenon, BUCK I GUY. I’m not sure how to explain our encounter with him, but I will say he danced with us and made it into the mashup.