By far, this little gem earned us the most smiles per minute so far. We loved it so much, we did it two weeks in a row so more of our Smarties could try it out. Video at the end.

The first week, I called Katie for a brainstorm before we were set to meet up. We were flying duo and needed an idea. We piled out some ideas and I mentioned that I’d seen some huge cardboard boxes on the side of road on my drive home from work. I mean, enormous boxes. Katie had the killer idea to make a freestanding door and we figured to add interchangeable signs to explain where the door led. Perfect? Perfect. See you there? Yeah. *hang up*

We met up at the boxes with a box knife, some black spray paint, duct tape and a magic marker. It turns out a hotel had purchased some new sofas and left the boxes out for the city to pick up. After some digging and checking dimensions, we were giddy to find two flat sides already connected with big cardboard blocks around the edges, between the two sheets. In other words, we cut off the back panel and sliced into the front panel and BAM!, a door with a sturdy frame.

We tried to invent support stands so we could leave the door on its own in the middle of an open public area and spectate, but we started running out of time and decided we’d just hold the frame up ourselves. This turned out to be one of our best decisions since it gave us the chance to invite people to use the door and help them pull instead of push (a design flaw with the way we cut the cardboard–apparently writing “Pull” didn’t help either). We sprayed the door frame black to give it some definition and legitimacy (so it didn’t look entirely like we’d just pulled it out of a dumpster) and cut some squares for the door sign. A slit in the door and an uncut bit of cardboard on the top of the door signs meant we could hang the signs, no problemo.

We tried a few different signs and even took requests from passers-by. By far, the hit was “The Future,” though “England” gets the honorable mention (we switched to British accents after they’d walked through the door–Enjoy your stay, gov’nah!). Surprisingly, nobody wanted to go to “Tom Cruise’s Closet.”

Through it all, we had a steady stream of door users. A few skeptics and a few repeat users gave some balance to the night, but nearly every person smiled.  One of my favorite moments was when two friends wanted to see what would happen if they both went through the door at the same time in opposite directions. Fortunately, we didn’t trigger any time vortexes or alternate realities (or did we???).