If I’ve got the story straight, the One Minute Disco traces back to a cassette tape that got stuck in a car stereo. Everywhere the driver went, the first sixty seconds of Billy Idol’s “Hot In The City” accompanied him. Rather than try to pry the tape out, he made it his theme song. When the car finally broke down, he thought it only right to memorialize this peculiar ritual.
For much of the Port Eliot Festival’s storied history, the One Minute Disco happened on the hour, every hour. Festival-goers would drop whatever they were doing, shake their hips and throw their hands in the air for sixty seconds, then go back and pick up where they left off, a kind of espresso shot, or prayer, or simulation of losing one’s virginity.
This year the One Minute Disco made a surprise appearance. On the final day, at exactly 8:00 p.m., a familiar-looking truck rolled through the festival grounds, making sporadic stops and liberating exhausted hips. As word spread, it became a kind of pied piper, a trail of bouncing bodies following behind.
Here’s stop #2: