Ever hear of an indoor throwing star range and sake bar? Neither had I, until this one day a few months back when this crazy idea for an ‘indoor throwing star range’ popped into my head. To my inner 12 year old self the concept was a dream come true. Alcohol and throwing stars. Throwing stars and alcohol. Everyone loves throwing stars and everyone loves alcohol. Everyone loves ninjas. I love ninjas. Why the hell didn’t something like this exist? Seeing a need for an establishment that allows people to pound sake and chuck throwing stars, I set out to bring this business to life.....on the Interwebs of course. I enlisted a group of trained ninja assassins at Cornett to make this happen: Kris Kross Ange on the design, Golden Nick Child on the video, and Shammy Shamick Gaworski on the web development.
We purchased a very long and awesome url www.ninjasindoorthrowingstarrange.com. We created a hipsterish logo. We then created a simple one page website packed full of ninja goodness. Stuff like WuTang Clan lyrics, ninja warriors and Japanese curse words. We put together a simple little video based on Youtube’s ‘best death scene ever’. We even made a fake gmail account under the alias Satou Watanabe. Everything came together like ancient oriental magic and ‘Ninjas Indoor Throwing Star Range’ was birthed and thrown like a throwing star onto the world wide web. Of course the Internet loved it.
No one knew what to believe, but they all believed it to be awesome. Everyone wanted to believe it was real. Everyone was talking, tweeting, and Facebooking about this crazy throwing star range coming to Lexington, Kentucky in the spring of 2014. No one could believe that Lexington, KY (not Brooklyn, NY) was going to be the first city in the US to have an indoor throwing star range. People were sending us emails asking if this was real. People were sending us emails asking how they could become a franchisee (we received seven of those emails). The media was emailing us and asking if they could interview the ninjas behind this. People even emailed trying to sell us throwing stars. Everyone was excited about pounding sake and chucking throwing stars.
The media jumped in a started writing about this indoor throwing star range. It got big in Japan. Ninjas have always been big in Japan. It was written about on Guns.com. America loves guns. I faked an interview with Yahoo. I felt bad about that. i don't feel bad about using the alias 'Timothy San Bernardino', I love that name. We came really close to dressing up like ninjas and going live with a local news station. I really wished that had happened but unfortunately it didn't. Check out some of the stuff the media had to say about ‘Ninjas Indoor Throwing Star Range’ below:
“If this website is to be believed, come 2014, Lexington, Kentucky could easily replace Orlando, Florida as the most popular vacation spot in the country. Because next spring the city will be host to the nation's first indoor throwing star range and sake bar.” - Gizmodo
“Ninjas' website links out to a Lexington-based marketing agency called Cornett, so there's unfortunately good reason to think this might be nothing more than a publicity stunt.” - Gizmodo
"Why the word “f*ck” is displayed in large katakana characters on the website, though, we’re not sure.” - Rocket News 24 (Nice little easter egg on the site)
“"Ninjas" and "Kentucky" are two nouns that very rarely manage to show up in the same sentence. But all that's about to change when the first indoor throwing star range opens in the Bluegrass State this coming spring.” - io9
“Ninjas is an upcoming indoor throwing star range and will be the first of its kind in Kentucky.” - Laughing Squid
“When we asked about owner Watanabe’s background, San Bernardino stated simply, “he is a ninja.” He adds that Watanabe owns several dojos (martial arts schools) across the state of Kentucky and, many years ago, operated a now-defunct water park.” -Yahoo
So why the hell would we want to make a website and video for a fake business? Why does Tom Cruise do what he does? We'll never know. We do know that ninjas, throwing stars, blow guns, Wu Tang Clan lyrics and alcohol are an awesome combination. Our little bad ass throwing star range earned Kentucky and Lexington a little media. It earned Cornett a little media. It gave the Internet some fun content to play with. Hopefully the websites that wrote about it got a ton of shares and views. I think the Laughing Squid article had over 4000 tweets. Maybe it sparked some ideas. Maybe it will make someone rich, ninja rich. Maybe it created some awesome memories of throwing throwing stars as a child. Who knows, maybe we’ll turn this joke into a reality and end up opening the world’s first throwing star range and sake bar later this year. Until, then go get your ninja on online.
