On Saturday night, Sean, Ian, and I went out to try to do our first task(s) of the Glasnost Era. We originally wanted to carve "glasnost" into a block of ice and then perhaps go iceblocking on the remains, but we were unable to find a place that sold ice blocks. Left without the necessary supplies to carry out our plan, we had to think of something else. We wound up at the 76 gas station on Market and Buchanan (the last place we looked for ice) and decided we would try to Document a Confusion.

We decided one possible confusion we could create (and then document) would be to alter the price of gas at the station. I climbed on this little lamp post and realized we could indeed change the numbers around. I could only reach the price of premium gas, but after a little monkeying around with the numbers, we made the price of premium gas $8.60. The "0" was painted on to the sign itself (not the slidey numbers), so we took the last, unused number, which turned out to be a fateful 3-and-4 placard.

After our first confusion of the night, we wandered up Market Street to Safeway, looking for a place to put our 3-or-4. At the Starbucks outside Safeway, we noticed the employees had left an ad for some Starbucks food outside the store overnight (it was about 11:00 and the store was very closed), so we took it with the intention of putting it in a confusing place as well.

Sean/Ian (?) mentioned that Starbucks now owns Peet's, so we went up the street to the Peet's and stuck the Starbuck's food ad on their door. We don't know whether this is true. In any case, it was fun to trade the characteristics of one giant coffee chain for another (slightly smaller, possibly swallowed by the first).

We were still left with the Problem of What to Do with the 3-or-4 Placard.

We considered putting it in several potentially confusing places: speed limit signs, addresses, phone numbers, crosswalk countdowns, 24-hour Fitness (to 23-hour Fitness), etc. None of these seemed to work.

As we wandered down Divisadero, lost, cold, Jack Frost nipping at our noses, we stumbled upon an Arco station at Fell. Basically, this Arco station was the Nobel Prize/Mount Everest of "Places to Put a Three That You Took From Another Gas Station." On their huge, lit up, public sign displaying the prices of their various grades of gasoline, they were missing a 3. The prices that day happened to be $3.23, $3.33, and $3.43 - and apparently they only had six threes available! This meant that they were in dire need of our 3. And we knew just what to do.

We walked up to the service booth and explained the situation to the attendant, like this:

"Hi, I couldn't help but notice that you're missing a 3 on your sign. I have an extra one here! Do you want it?"
"Wha- - - - - for Me?"
"You're missing a three! Do you want this one?"