Are you a member of the media and want to contact Anaheim Ducks Towel Invasions? Shoot us an e-mail to buckyhermit[at]hotmail.com.
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From Matt Coker of the OC Weekly (Costa Mesa, CA)
October 13 2010
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If the sky has indeed fallen before the Ducks even take the ice tonight, perhaps we should just write this season off and reflect upon where the team has taken us.
Better yet, think about where the Orange County Register-supplied "Let's Go Ducks" towel has gone.
As shown on the Anaheim Ducks Towel Invasion site ("When Hockey Fandom Goes Against a Quaked Up World" [sic]), the orange towel has traveled from sports stadiums in Canada to the Great Wall of China.
Just like Newport Beach/Costa Mesa Daily Pilot readers who get themselves photographed holding the front page of the paper at various travel destinations, towel owners take snapshots of the orange terry cloth on their vacations--only the owners stay out of the pictures.
And those pictures are posted on ADTI, not the inside pages of the Pilot.
The site reveals the most recent "Let's Go Ducks" towel shot was snapped in front of the BC Place stadium in Vancouver.
Maybe that'll inspire our boys tonight. (We'll take what we can get at this point.)
From Patrick Odell of Devil's Advocate magazine (Anaheim, CA)
December 23 2011 (Issue #2)
Throwing in the towel:
Orange Ducks towels have made the journey from Finland to Japan, Mexico to Turkey and farther still. All the invasions are chronicled online.
Thanks to the mighty efforts of one Ducks fan, Orange County colors have been visiting landmarks across the world for the past four years. Known only by his screen name “Bucky”, the mastermind behind one of the most unique homages in hockey shares his story. Has your town been invaded yet?
Q: How did this project come to be? It’s quite an unusual endeavor.
A: The towel invasions started from an idea the official Ducks blog had during the 2007 Stanley Cup Finals – they posted pics of the towels all around Ottawa.
I thought it was neat but they didn’t continue it. I did a few just for fun but it was soon forgotten. Then I found a job teaching English in South Korea. Around the same time, I received a new towel from Vicky (@PrincessDuck) and thought it’d be neat if I took that towel, along with some others, around Korea with me.
As a proud Anaheim Ducks fan from Vancouver, I’m constantly looking for ways to show Ducks pride in enemy or foreign territory.
Q: And it just grew from there?
A: It started very slowly, but around Christmas I started to get bored and as a result I started doing more and more towel invasions.
At first, it was all around Seoul and Incheon (the city adjacent to Seoul), but then I started to branch out all over South Korea. My trip to visit family in Hong Kong yielded even more invasions, as did a visit to my brother in Beijing and my short vacation to Japan.
The towel ended up visiting six different countries/territories within a year. Another Ducks fan friend of mine (who is from Rowland Heights) was also studying in Beijing and Shanghai and contributed a lot as well.
Q: What are some of highlights from your towel invading adventures?
A: I have a lot of favorites – two from the Korean border, two from the worst dust storm in Korea’s history and two from China.
The two invasions from the North Korea and South Korea border were memorable. One was from Odusan Observatory, which was literally across the river from North Korean soil – the closest you can get before a military checkpoint.
Another was Dorasan Station, the northernmost train station in South Korea, which required a checkpoint and was patrolled by soldiers. It was pure luck and skill that I got away with the invasions.
The Seoul World Cup Stadium and the Seoul Olympic Stadium invasions were interesting because they occurred during the worst dust storm in Korea’s history, and I didn’t even realize it until I was crossing the bridge on my way home and noticed how the sun and sky looked like Mordor from Lord of the Rings. That’s why those two pictures look all yellowed.
Q: Is there ever an element of danger involved?
A: One that I will never try again is Tiananmen Square. Since the towel is written in English and looks like a sign, I had to be careful to be very discreet because the plainclothed police might not know English and assume it was a political sign.
I saw a few people get hauled away for breaking certain laws there; the police can be posing as anything (such as vendors or regular citizens). That is why that invasion didn’t look that good – I only had one shot at it.
Q: Are there any other locations that were difficult to invade for a particular reason?
A: The Russia-China border invasion, because it was the most remote invasion. It was in a place called Hegang in Heilongjiang province in China, with Russia right across the river. Being in Manchuria looking at Siberia, it’d be a while before we see an invasion this remote again.
Q: What kind of scope do you envision for this project? Are there any other teams "invading" yet?
A: I originally made it for fun. I wanted more locations, but I knew that my travels would be restricted to Asia (and the Pacific Northwest, once I got back home), so I started encouraging others to do invasions while on vacation.
As a Ducks fan, I found that doing this while on a trip abroad is actually really fun and seeing the results at the end, you can’t help but say to yourself, "Cool, the towel posed with this famous landmark."
It got a little more serious when the O.C. Weekly blog picked it up in October 2010, and that was when I realized that this could potentially turn into something more.
Other teams are Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Vancouver. I coordinate them, but it’s more low-key. I originally wanted others to run them under the NHL Invasions umbrella, but nobody has the time.
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