4^th of July from John Carl on Vimeo. Music: The Guest Room “When Might Makes Right”

Back in early July, @bentmatches and I were stand­ing at the Sky­bar a lit­tle after a beau­ti­ful sun­set when our friend @AVLSkylie intro­duced us to three peo­ple look­ing for an adven­ture to film. Being expert adven­tur­ers, we shared a know­ing glance and smile and set to work. Here is what they said about that night:

We went on a road trip for 30 days to 30 cities film­ing one story each day of peo­ple around Amer­ica. This day we were in down­town Asheville, NC for the 4^th of July cel­e­bra­tion. We didn’t know a soul but by the end of the night we found our­selves in a park­ing lot with new-found friends set­ting off fire­works ille­gally. And we got there in a con­vert­ible dri­ven by a friend who looked like he fronted a 50’s rock­a­billy band. All in all, an amaz­ing night and one of the more mean­ing­ful videos we made.

This night was one of the best of my life. To be young, in love, and feel like the king of town in a hot red con­vert­ible sur­rounded by the tal­ented and beau­ti­ful — I know of lit­tle bet­ter. It doesn’t mat­ter how old I get, I’ll always want to go back to that day. I’d like to go back right now.

The folks we met were an artist col­lec­tive (The Duck Duck Col­lec­tive) and were film­ing a series of short spots all over the East­ern US for a really hip Levi-Strauss ad cam­paign. They had awe­some equip­ment and great per­son­al­i­ties and threw them­selves into the fun of the evening. We went to the Admi­ral first and danced, then went to that aban­doned park­ing lot off Mer­ri­mon where we lit all the fire­works. You can see me dri­ving the con­vert­ible and vault­ing through the fire­works at the end. I’m so glad there is footage of this day of my life.