There is no barrel bottom to scrape Friday open thread

by liberal japonicus

I'm not trying to get a rise out of anyone, but in the thread that turned into a copyright discussion, one person (and I'm not going to go back and check who it is, cause it's not really important) posited a situation where iirc a plumber breaks into your house and fixes your pipes. What should pop up but this article, with a story that about some horologists breaking into a place and fixing a clock. The story awaits below the fold

The article is about a French group called UX and it had this story:

UX’s most sensational caper (to be revealed so far, at least) was completed in 2006. A cadre spent months infiltrating the Pantheon, the grand structure in Paris that houses the remains of France’s most cherished citizens. Eight restorers built their own secret workshop in a storeroom, which they wired for electricity and Internet access and outfitted with armchairs, tools, a fridge, and a hot plate. During the course of a year, they painstakingly restored the Pantheon’s 19th- century clock, which had not chimed since the 1960s. Those in the neighborhood must have been shocked to hear the clock sound for the first time in decades: the hour, the half hour, the quarter hour.

snip

The restoration of the Pantheon clock was carried out by a UX subgroup called Untergunther, whose members are devoted specifically to restoration. The Pantheon was a particularly resonant choice of site, since it’s where UX began, and the group had surreptitiously screened films, exhibited art, and mounted plays there. During one such event in 2005, UX cofounder Jean-Baptiste Viot (one of the few members who uses his real name) took a close look at the building’s defunct Wagner clock—an engineering marvel from the 19th century that replaced an earlier timepiece. (Records indicate the building had a clock as far back as 1790.)

Viot had admired the Wagner ever since he first visited the building. He had meanwhile become a professional horologist working for the elite firm Breguet. That September, Viot persuaded seven other UX members to join him in repairing the clock. They’d been contemplating the project for years, but now it seemed urgent: Oxidation had so crippled the works that they would soon become impossible to fix without re-creating, rather than restoring, almost every part. “That wouldn’t be a restored clock, but a facsimile,” Kunstmann says. As the project began, it took on an almost mystical significance for the team. Paris, as they saw it, was the center of France and was once the center of Western civilization; the Latin Quarter was Paris’ historic intellectual center; the Pantheon stands in the Latin Quarter and is dedicated to the great men of French history, many of whose remains are housed within; and in its interior lay a clock, beating like a heart, until it suddenly was silenced. Untergunther wanted to restart the heart of the world. The eight shifted all their free time to the project.

They first established a workshop high up in the building, just below its dome, on a floor where no one (including guards) ever went anymore—”a sort of floating space,” as Kunstmann describes the room, punctuated by narrow slits for windows. “It looked down on all of Paris from a height of 15 stories. From the outside it resembled a kind of flying saucer; from the inside, a bunker.” The workshop was outfitted with eight overstuffed armchairs, a table, bookshelves, a minibar, and red velvet drapes to moderate the ambient temperature. “Every element had been conceived to fold up into wooden crates, like the ones visible throughout the monument,” Kunstmann says. In the dead of night, they climbed endless stairs, hauling up the lumber, drills, saws, clock repair equipment, and everything else required. They updated the workshop’s outdated electrical wiring. They spent 4,000 euros on materials, in all, out of their own pockets. On the terrace outside they set up a vegetable garden.

snip

Once the workshop was complete and thoroughly cleaned, the eight got to work. The first step was to understand how the clock had gotten so degraded—”a sort of autopsy,” Kunstmann says. What they discovered looked like sabotage. It appeared that someone, presumably a Pantheon employee tired of winding the clock once a week, had bludgeoned the escape wheel with an iron bar.

They brought the clock’s mechanism up to the workshop. Viot trained the group in clock repair. First, they cleaned it with what’s called the clockmaker’s bath. This started with 3 liters of water carried up from the public bathrooms on the ground floor. To that was added 500 grams of soft, highly soluble soap, 25 centiliters of ammonia, and 1 tablespoon of oxalic acid—all mixed at a temperature of more than 280 degrees Fahrenheit. With this solution, the group scrubbed and polished every surface. Then they repaired the mechanism’s glass cabinet, replaced broken pulleys and cables, and re-created from scratch the sabotaged escape wheel (a toothed wheel that manages the clock’s rotation) and missing parts like the pendulum bob.

As soon as it was done, in late summer 2006, UX told the Pantheon about the successful operation. They figured the administration would happily take credit for the restoration itself and that the staff would take over the job of maintaining the clock. They notified the director, Bernard Jeannot, by phone, then offered to elaborate in person. Four of them came—two men and two women, including Kunstmann and the restoration group’s leader, a woman in her forties who works as a photographer—and were startled when Jeannot refused to believe their story. They were even more shocked when, after they showed him their workshop (“I think I need to sit down,” he murmured), the administration later decided to sue UX, at one point seeking up to a year of jail time and 48,300 euros in damages. Jeannot’s then-deputy, Pascal Monnet, is now the Pantheon’s director, and he has gone so far as to hire a clockmaker to restore the clock to its previous condition by resabotaging it. But the clockmaker refused to do more than disengage a part—the escape wheel, the very part that had been sabotaged the first time. UX slipped in shortly thereafter to take the wheel into its own possession, for safekeeping, in the hope that someday a more enlightened administration will welcome its return.

Meanwhile, the government lost its lawsuit. It filed another, which it also lost. There is no law in France, it turns out, against the improvement of clocks. In court, one prosecutor characterized her own government’s charges against Untergunther as “stupid.” But the clock is still immobile today, its hands frozen at 10:51.

Beyond being an example of someone breaking in somewhere and fixing something, it brought back some interesting memories. When you are a music major, you spend an inordinate amount of time in the practice facilities, and there were ways to get in, even though the building was locked down at 11:00. Playing your ax at 2 in the morning on the stage of the hall fun, as were exploring all the nooks and crannies of the building (it was a more innocent time and now at my school, I imagine that they have sensors, and campus security would arrest you for any charge they could make stick rather than give you a warning and tell you to go to the ihop across the street) 

So an open thread for your analogies and your trespassing stories. Or anything else you want, take it away.

Comments

[Miwome]

This is a beautiful story. Such a bummer that the Pantheon didn't accept what had been done, though I can't say I was surprised.

[Model62]

That's ... amazing. And the denouement typical and banal.

Here's a trespassing story. I have others, but this one fits here...

Back in college (when else?), I roomed with an art major. We also worked together at a coffee house that was popular with a certain set of college students and local artist and writer types (this was the pre-Starbucks era when southern California coffee houses strove for North Beach Bohemianism).

Just prior to the Christmas break, we both conceived artsy gifts for our girlfriends, him a bust, me an etching of a stick figure comic (I wasn't an art major), from which I would make a print to wrap the rest of the gift (a book: I was an English major). All the tools and materials we would need were within reach at the school's art department.

Unfortunately the semester had ended, the various spaces had been cleaned, the materials stored away, and the doors and windows locked.

My friend the art major, however, had secured a key to the sculpture studio from a teacher. My friend had taken an "incomplete" during the previous semester (the bust would be both gift and final grade) and explained that he intended to get a head start on next semester's projects. This key let us into the building and nearly every other room within it, including, especially, the printmaking studio.

And so for several long nights and mornings my friend and I camped in the sculpture studio, him working on the bust, me scratching my design onto a square of copper plate. Throughout we encountered nobody else; no students, no teachers, no campus policemen. It was only us, and our projects, and the Pixies blaring from the boombox.

Eventually, early Christmas Eve morning, we crept into the printmaking studio to create my giftwrap. "Crept" because while we had a ready excuse for our presence in the sculpture studio, we had none for our use of the printing press, which had been cleaned and made ready for the semester to come. We had made several test prints and had just inked the plate for another run when we heard footsteps. We'd left the door open a notch and the light fixtures above buzzed and flickered; discovery was inevitable. I hoped it was someone other than a campus policeman, but at that hour, it was unlikely to be anyone else.

The stakes weren't high -- at worst we'd be cited for trespassing. And the key my friend held would certainly be confiscated, barring us from further use of the school's resources. Christmas would be spoiled. Our girlfriends would receive unlikely stories rather than handmade gifts. For a moment we debated, in whispers, whether to escape through an adjoining room or stay where we were, our ink covered hands resting on an ink covered press.

We decided instead to exit into the hallway and face the footsteps directly. Maybe we could deflect attention from our use of the press? The chance was slim, but it was better than waiting to be caught.

So we stepped out of the studio into the dark hallway. To the left, from the direction of the footsteps, flashlight echoes roamed the wall opposite a corner to another hallway. When the policeman finally turned the corner, he stopped, and shined the light in our faces. There was only the glare and his silhouette behind.

"What are you doing here?"

"Well," my friend began.

"No. 'What are YOU doing here?'."

He lowered his flashlight and stepped closer. My friend laughed and said, "Hey, man!", and after my eyes adjusted and caught up a moment later I recognized him, too, from my shifts at the coffee house. The campus policeman was a regular. He was only a couple of years older than we were, mid twenties rather than early. He was also a musician or something; nobody really knew because he didn't say much and seemed generally square. And he was a cop.

"You're not supposed to be here. I saw the light on from outside. They close this down for a reason, you know."

We explained what we were doing and why and showed him the prints we had made and the plate we had inked and the press we had dirtied.

"You'll have to clean this up. You're not supposed to be here. Finish what you're doing and clean it all up, just like you found it. And lock the door. I'll be back in an hour to check."

Christmas was saved.

He didn't come any closer to joining the coffee house community*. But he never paid for coffee during any of our shifts, either.

------------------
*Curiously, a couple of years ago, he stood behind the counter at one of the local Starbucks while I ordered a "large brewed." I didn't recognize him immediately (wrong uniform). But I know he didn't recognize me; he charged me for my coffee.

[Slartibartfast]

Great story, Model62!

[Slartibartfast]

Jeannot’s then-deputy, Pascal Monnet, is now the Pantheon’s director, and he has gone so far as to hire a clockmaker to restore the clock to its previous condition by resabotaging it.

This is where the story enters the serious you-gotta-be-kiddin-me territory.

[Hartmut]

Reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-Iron>this wonderful movie.

[Model62]

3-Iron?

Wow. I've gotta add that to the netflix queue.

[Hartmut]

I think in most of the world you'll rather find it under either the original title 'Bin-Jip' or as 'Empty Houses'.

[John M. Burt]

Wha-a-a-t, Hartmut, it doesn't remind you of this movie? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970179/

[liberal japonicus]

Thanks for that story, model62. Any others? Slart, did you participate in any hacks at MIT?

[bobbyp]

Maybe not the same, but here you go anyway:

As a kid I lived across the street from a municipal golf course. Naturally, it became our extended playground...selling found balls back to golfers, the 5 cent kool-aid stand we ran (mom was the venture captalist). Getting our business shut down by the local pro....(enforcing his 19th hole monopoly).

There was this short, but steeply uphill par 3. From the tee, the players could only see the very top of an overly tall flag pin. Every once and a while we'd sit by the green waiting for somebody to knock it close...then sneak up and put the ball in the hole. Hole-in-one!

Juvenile mischief? Unconscionable crime? A false flag operation? Every golfer should meet his Maker with one of those (or believing he did).

[Linkmeister]

I blogged about this at the time. Unfortunately the CBC As It Happens interview to which I linked doesn't seem to be retrievable any longer, at least not directly from my blog post.

[Hartmut]

Wha-a-a-t, Hartmut, it doesn't remind you of this movie? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970179/

I had not yet a chance to see that. Remember that Europe gets US movies usually with some delay unless it is a super duper blockbuster. I also want to watch The Artist but that also started her only 2 days ago.

[Slartibartfast]

I'm a Purdue grad, lj; would have been a long commute. But no; the pranks I did were pretty much all computer-related and not very elaborate.

[John M. Burt]

Harftmut, I would also recommend the book, an almost-graphic novel: http://www.theinventionofhugocabret.com/index.htm

[liberal japonicus]

Sorry about that slart, I misremembered, or I thought you did your undergrad there and graduate work at MIT.

[Slartibartfast]

No, there's no MIT anywhere in my resume. Not offended; rather, feeling unduly honored.

[byomtov]

bobbyp,

No imagination. You should have put the ball right on the lip. Preferably behind the hole.

[McKinneyTexas]

then sneak up and put the ball in the hole. Hole-in-one! . . . Every golfer should meet his Maker with one of those (or believing he did).

Your reward will be great.