This is the story of a task that didn't quite work out as intended, but is still worth sharing.

The original vision: dozens of human-sized stick figures left hanging from ledges, cliffs, and high window sills throughout the city.

We came up with the idea at roughly the exact same time this task was retired. So, we begged the administrators to unretire it for our benefit - which they did in short order, leaving us with no choice but to actually carry the thing out. We also also felt compelled to try to make it big enough to justify their dispensation. (I'm pleased to see the delightful Mr. Bill completion also came along to help justify unretiring the task.)

Unfortunately, it turns out we bit off more than we could chew and had to de-scope the task a bit.

We constructed 20 human scale stick figures using cardboard, staples, brass brads, and spray paint, and drew up some speech bubbles. (Speech bubbles allow the lay audience to distinguish between a stick figure in peril and a stick figure climbing a wall.)

What we didn't anticipate is that they wound up being awkward, hard to transport, and fragile. They can't be folded up and discretely carried along past security guards or into elevators, and setup requires several minutes. They had a tendency to come apart in the wind within minutes and drop limbs - limbs covered with sharp staple points - onto whatever lies below. (Flimsy stick-figures, thats why they deserved to die!!) Putting people in harm's way for a truly grand piece of art is one thing, but endangering pedestrians for a silly in-joke that only SF0 players are likely to enjoy is less appealing.

Finally, there was a psychological obstacle. We exhausted most of our enthusiasm for the task during the building phase and by the time we were actually ready to plant them, had more or less lost interest.

So, we scaled back the task just a bit:

Instead of placing them one at a time in high up places all over town, we placed them several at a time on a couple buildings within blocks of the construction site.

Instead of leaving them hanging, raining sharp objects on pedestrians and vehicles, we took most (but not all) of them down and found more immediate devices to imperil and then destroy them.

Finally, out of ideas, nearly out of daylight, and with waning interest, we decided that to anyone not on SFzero, a stick figure enjoying a day in the park is no less interesting than a stick figure in peril. So, we set up the remaining ledge-peril survivors on benches and comfy architectural nooks around town and headed off for dinner.

It wound up being not nearly as cool as intended. But, if you're going to wimp out and fail to complete a task, at least *START* big. Even in its scaled down state, we still wound up with something fairly interesting, and garnered a few shocked looks from strangers.

Here are the photos. First, a group shot of stick figures unaware of their impending peril. Then, stick figures in peril, and a few stick figure casualties who failed to escape their peril mixed in amongst them. Finally, stick figures enjoying a sunny day. All in all, we had a wonderful time - well "we" meaning us, and not the stick-figures. They pretty much had a horrific time. Enjoy!

*Note* The long, narrow photos originally here have been replaced by images with less extreme aspect ratios, so as not to cause problems in the sf0 image browser.

Update
The figure in the architectural nook and the discussion group both lasted four and a half days. The sprinkler system softened them and caused them to collapse, but they were still recognizable to the end.

The figure on the bench is still there, now just over six days since placement. He sat, apparently untouched, for four days. On day five, someone removed him from the bench and stuck him in a position standing over the back of the bench, propped in place by his arms. (My guess is that two or three people wanted to actually sit on the bench.) To my surprise, by the morning of day six some kind stranger had returned him to roughly his original position, once again seated on the bench.

The figure which collapsed onto a ledge and could not be retrieved eventually fell from the ledge into a maintenance trench along the side of the building. After three days sitting in a heap, some stranger climbed into the passageway and laid him out face up, placing a weathered basketball beside him. (There's a beat up basketball hoop mounted on the wall of the maintenance passage.)

We added a couple cell phone camera snapshots to the photo gallery.

To Loki's surprise, the life expectancy of a life-size cardboard stick figure in Berkeley appears to be at least three times that of a twelve pound cement post-it note.