Blindfolded and a little nervous, with Maya from Surprise Industries and Sam.
Recently I came across a rad New York startup called Surprise Industries. They deal in “surprise experiences” — you pay a flat fee of $25, receive a time and location, and show up having absolutely no idea what might happen.
Naturally, this killer combo of mischief and whimsy piqued my interest. So a few weeks ago I signed up for my own surprise. On a Wednesday, Maya, one of the trio of kick-ass women who founded Surprise Industries, briefed me with the instructions: I was to meet her at a subway stop in downtown Brooklyn at 6pm that Friday. The surprise would last approximately three hours. Oh, and she kept using words like “courage” and “bravery”. As in, I would need them.
Being a compulsive overanalyser, my mind went into overdrive. What if I turned up and she forced me to be the naked model for a life-drawing class? What if I was handcuffed and pushed into a pit of boa constrictors? Or bundled into a drum and thrown off the Brooklyn Bridge? Why do you want to subject me to humiliation and death, Surprise Industries?!
I sent a text to Maya with a hint that I was…you know, afraid.
Her reply was oddly reassuring in its brevity: “Trust us”.
Friday rolled around and my friend Sam — cameraman and genuine redhead — and I traipsed out to Brooklyn on a prematurely wintry evening. Maya greeted me, then blindfolded me and bundled me into a cab. I had a dream like this once. It did not end well.
After a five-minute drive through serpentine streets, the cab stopped and I was guided out of the car, across a sidewalk and through a door. The faint smell of chlorine rose to my nostrils. A Crowded House song was playing in the background. What was this, a pool party hosted by Neil Finn?
Finally I was instructed to remove my blindfold, and it was revealed that I was at Galapogos Art Space for Matt Wasowski’s Nerd Nite, an evening of drinks and presentations on topics as diverse as zombie physiology, Jewish gangsters and the evolution of swinging. Well jeez, what a relief! Sitting back with a lychee martini and listening to a talk on the undead sounded pretty sweet to me.
“Oh, one more thing,” said Matt. “You’ll also be giving a presentation. In about an hour. To a few hundred people.” Surprise!
Now, while I nerd around onstage and in front of cameras for a living, it’s usually in the guise of a character or persona. So the notion of jumping up to give a dissertation at a moment’s notice was a smidge terrifying. But at the same time, I was excited and energised and ready to give it a red-hot go.
Matt loaned me his laptop — onscreen was a Powerpoint presentation about the Scoville scale, which measures the hotness of chili peppers. I had around 45 minutes to become an expert on this stuff. You’d better believe there was a martini or three involved in the education process.
The resulting talk is embedded below. It’s nine minutes long, so if you’d rather be writing emails or washing dishes, here are the cheat notes: I was a pretty rough speaker, but the audience was wonderfully supportive, and seemed to be laughing with me, not at me. All up, it was a great night of nervousness and nerdiness — and I was thankful to Maya and her crew for getting me to do something I never would have done on my own.
If you’re in New York, I absolutely recommend that you sign up for a mystery experience courtesy of Surprise Industries. And don’t fret if you have a deathly fear of public speaking or a gluten intolerance — they will take any phobias or allergies into account when choosing your surprise. (I blacklisted nakedness, snakes and zucchini. A combination that Freud would find intriguing, to say the least.)
If you’re not in New York, how about crafting a surprise experience for a friend? It builds trust, shifts you both away from the same old routines, and will make for a fascinating story to bust out at your next dinner party.
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