Holy manta rays! (A journey to Treasure Island with Tiny Town Productions)

Pub date August 23, 2011
SectionVideo Pick

I’m coming to pick you up right now, we’re going to Treasure Island, and we’re gonna see manta rays. Jeff Waldman and Andrew Hartley shot this footage of the scrap of land (recently labeled a “food desert” for its low income residents by the Department of Agriculture) to practice their videography skills for the upcoming Bolivian leg of their “multi-country experiment in random acts of kindness.” What’d they find?

Definitely not grocery stores, but public housing, art collectives, condemned military structures, wineries, and a family of manta ray-anglers. “It’s a crazy weird place that’s largely abandoned but also partially inhabited by an eclectic mix of bizarre personalities. You get the sense that you can do anything there, without consequence or attention, despite being a stone’s throw from the most densely populated metropolitan area on the West Coast,” says Waldman.