Photos by Jake Bullington | Digital Editor
BY JAKE SEPKA AND ANDY ORTON
Students celebrate the undertaking of Drake Relays festivities with Street Painting. The last Thursday of April marks the beginning of a mayhem-fueled weekend to be shared with your best friends.
While Street Painting may signify the beginning to a great weekend, minor inconveniences may make it more trouble than it’s worth.
After you use half a tank of gas driving to every hardware store in Polk County, you finally find paint that won’t poison you or your friends. Your hopes are high as you carry the last cans of brown and gray paint back to your dorm. The good colors were sold out days ago.
There is finally a buzz of excitement as you and your squad prepare to go. But that’s when you notice industrial equipment is required to pry open the can. Unless Bob the Builder lives on the floor below you, finding a screwdriver is next to impossible.
An hour later, your roommate’s friend’s classmate’s roommate’s RA’s pocket knife does the trick. Before you spill half of your paint in the stairwell, be sure to put on the dirtiest, ugliest pair of clothes that you can find.
Now you are ready to go and only 25 minutes late.
You’ve finally made it and feast your eyes on the mayhem that is Street Painting. Good luck finding the people you know when everyone looks like a walking Jackson Pollock painting.
Being too self-conscious to pour paint on strangers, you passively walk around for the first five minutes. Seeing no one, you pull out your paint-soaked iPhone 7. You try calling but no one picks up amidst the chaos.
Eventually, you find someone you know. It’s the kid that talks too much in your history class. You go up to say hi, and he responds by pouring his vomit green paint into every orifice in your face. Suffocation is imminent.
At last, you find your friends, but everyone is heading towards the washing station. That was a fun five minutes. You make your way to the mile-long line for the world’s weakest garden hose.
While waiting in line, hypothermia sets in as the temperature drops from a balmy 50 degrees to a bone-chilling 35. On top of freezing from the two-inch layer of paint caked onto your skin, you realize that you’ve never had to pee more in your entire existence.
Of course, there are no facilities nearby.
Just as you slip into panic mode, you spot the bushes next to Herriott. You call on your most trusted friend to keep lookout. This is truly a low point in your life.
After another 30 minutes in line, it’s your turn to use the hose. Your body goes into shock as you spray the North Atlantic Ocean all over your shivering body. Now you know how the Titanic survivors felt.
That was a rough ordeal but you make your way back to the dorms, seeking refuge. Sike! Too bad they have Ranger Rick posted outside who denies you access unless you’re Mr. Clean himself. He cold-heartedly directs you back to the hose for round two.
Exhausted and defeated, you make it back to your room and just want to take a nice, hot shower. Too bad the showers are covered in a multi-colored slime of paint and dirt.
After your shower, you lay in your bed and pass out for the night, missing a night’s worth of fun activities completely. For the next six weeks, have fun finding paint all over your body.
Despite the hardships you will endure, Street Painting is a rite of passage that every Drake student should experience at least once. After all, college is about making bad decisions.
