A Foam Adventure Pilgrimage

The legendary short film “Foam Adventure,” a slice of life story of two young art students on a quest for craft foam, may be known to veteran internet video gourmands. However, if you are unacquainted, I strongly suggest watching the ten-minute video below both for your pleasure and for your knowledge as you read on.

Should the original video become unavailable, it can be viewed here.

When Foam Adventure was published in 2009, its splash into cyberspace created a surge of virality and garnered it significant attention, though largely critical. The video was commonly traded in posts, threads, and compilations, where wanderers of the web wilds watched and shared emotions of "cringe." The larval person I was in those days, still suffocatingly bound by ego, saw the silly people from the video balking judgment, and it forced an acute awareness of the prison of self-conscious fear that I had built around myself. The pain and discomfort of this feeling was much more easily dismissed as "cringe" than to accept it for what it was, so I agreed. Several metamorphoses later, revisiting Foam Adventure, I no longer feel the visceral pangs of insecurity; I feel comfort, nostalgia, and the bliss of two people brave enough to embrace themselves and manifest merriment from the mundane.

But not to overly wax my own armchair, for what I deemed vital to write on is much more practical than a regaling of a youth’s insecurities. In my previous viewings, I was too vexed by “cringe” to take notice of the streets and landmarks in Foam Adventure, such as the unmistakable visage of Denver's Lakeside Amusement Park glimpsed as Riley and Zack (known as Ani in the video) drove along what could only be Interstate 70. The electricity of the realization that Foam Adventure was filmed right in my own backyard first stunned me, but was then harnessed and shaped into my own tomfooled quest: to stand where they stood, drive where they drove, and cringe where they cringed.

After identifying the addresses, locations, and paths taken in Foam Adventure, which proved to be delightfully uncomplicated, I gathered my party members, The Dedman and Pica Luna, the former of which sharing as long a history with the source material as I, and the latter carried by circumstance, and we soon embarked on our Foam Adventure Pilgrimage.

Our first stop was the Hancock Fabrics where Foam Adventure opens, located at 4230 Wadsworth Boulevard, Wheat Ridge, Colorado 80033. Along with all other Hancock Fabrics, the store shuttered its doors in 2016 when the organization went bankrupt. The unit remained empty until 2021 when an Arc Thrift Store took residence within the hallowed walls.

Upon arriving in the parking lot, our journey was blessed with an omen; while surveying the exterior, the shining of a penny on the pavement still wet from a just-passed rainfall caught my eye, and when inspected, showed to be a Denver mint from none other than 2009.

The store exterior and the found penny.

Brimming with confidence, we ventured inside, seeking two primary points of interest: the area containing the shelving that housed the titular green foam, which I will refer to as the “foam nook,” as well as the checkout counter where the foam claimed two casualties. Despite the rows of hand-me-downs and knick-knacks now in the way, the checkout area was clearly identifiable. However, the foam nook was much more difficult to track.

The store interior.

The interior of the store had been substantially altered with the tenant change, including the designation of a large sorting warehouse, off limits to customers, where donations are picked through by staff for sale on the floor. Through pained comparison of ceiling tiles, light fixtures, and walls, our clues, wispy as they were, pointed to the foam nook being in what is now the warehouse. The warehouse foreman, a gaunt and worn man clearly tired from the onslaught of managing heaps of suburban refuse, was summoned.

We explained to him our position, making the not-untrue claim that we were internet historians and that a key area from what we were documenting, we believed, was just inside his domain. We humbly requested permission to briefly enter the warehouse for our chronicles. This unusual request understandably blindsided the foreman, but betraying his burdened demeanor, had levity enough to oblige.

Absolute certainty still eluding us, we managed to identify where we believe the foam nook once stood before new structures obfuscated its prior glory. Our prying caught the curiosity of the foreman and one of his employees, and we happily recounted the story of Foam Adventure to them and provided them with the video, hoping that the myth can spread through the grapevine to all who occupy the consecrated building.

The foam nook, perhaps.

Satisfied, we prepared to depart for our journey's next leg and glanced past the store’s humble hodgepodge of textiles to humor the far-fetched idea of finding foam. By divine mercy, half-hidden on the shelves awaited a two-foot by two-foot square of foam. In continued serendipity, due to a store-wide sale, the foam was 50% off, uncannily similar to the 52% discount our forebears enjoyed. With an excited glee much like our predecessors, we escorted our foam up to the cashier.

I awkwardly attempted to bribe the clerk with some spare money from my wallet, a measly two dollars, asking them to give us an extra 2% off the foam, a difference of seven cents. However, the growing procession of weekend treasure-hunters stretching behind us hindered my ability to impart the monumental importance of the situation, and alas, they declined. The foam totaled $1.78, and that’s with the discount. Nevertheless delighted to be leaving with foam-in-hand, we once again took to the road, but not before invoking the sacred proclamation, “We have foam,” to bystanders in the parking lot.

Leaving with foam.

The path then taken in Foam Adventure, and now by us, was as follows: North on Wadsworth Boulevard and onto I-70 East, exit on Colorado Boulevard heading South, then left onto East 8th Avenue and straight until arriving at our destination. Formerly student apartments for the now-defunct Art Institute of Colorado, the buildings at 5701 E 8th Ave, Denver, CO 80220 now serve as “luxury” apartments under the name Avenue 8 at Mayfair.

I had been eager to gaze upon the much discussed handicapped space where they had parked, but was disappointed to find that a crop of office buildings had overtaken the majority of the lot, including where our anticipated space would have been, leaving just a strip along the front for temporary guest parking.

The office farm and apartments' exterior.

We faced further disappointment finding that just ten minutes before we arrived, the building’s guest services had closed and the doors were now locked to keyless non-residents such as ourselves. However, a savior of a tenant saw us milling about the entrance, and to the chagrin of building security, invited us inside. To remain inconspicuous, I entered alone.

Once more, the churning of time and renovation had changed the interior layout significantly, and the uncut version of Foam Adventure, available on Riley’s Patreon, Mythimorph, proved essential for navigation. The front desk seen in the video, just inside the entrance between buildings two and three, is now walled off and labeled as a studio. In yet another surreal coincidence, that entrance is now the connection to a resident dog park, the mat leading out featuring two paws.

The apartment lobby.

The hallway that formerly housed the computer lab and lounge, once filled with aloof pupils unaware of their supporting roles in internet history, is now rows of additional apartment units. Following the switchbacking stairwell up to the third floor, I stopped at the apartment door that held behind it the final location of Foam Adventure.

Up to the room.

I hope it does not disappoint too much to tell you that while my hand was tempted, I dared not knock. Instead, I silently paid my respects and smirked at the on-the-nose humor of the universe, for the ornamentation the current resident picked for their door was a rainbow ribbon, a Pokemon figurine mounted to the frame, and hanging from the knob, jingle bells the sort found on a collar.

Not to overstay our imposition at the complex, we took our moment of enduring appreciation, and then departed to our last ancillary stop. In the 2019 ten-year anniversary video, “Creators React to Foam Adventure,” Riley shares that part of the green foam was used for a cosplay build of the Pokemon, Groudon, which was showcased in a sister video, “Groudon Visits 7-11.” The 7-11, once at 2160 South Broadway, Denver, Colorado 80210, is now closed, and has since been replaced by another echo of late 2000s internet culture, a bacon-themed restaurant called Bacon Social House.

Groudon Visits 7-11.

And so, our pilgrimage was fulfilled. Reappraising Foam Adventure today, it stands out as a period piece from an age gone but not forgotten, and painfully punctuates the ever-hastening rust of innocence. Riley and Zack were and are not naive to the fact that the judgment of others dogs their lives, gnawing even at the most insignificant details such as which fleeting rectangle they park their car in. Yet they defy it; stepping out of its cruel shadow and courageously choosing to live the lives they desire. They do this with such casual ease, but with a quiet power the magnitude to shift the world with just a ten-minute vignette. And even well over a decade later, the ghosts they left behind still crackle with a lingering luminance capable of soothing the spirits of the weary. What’s cringe about that?

The foam purchased from the Arc, fashioned into a pilgrimage memento.

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Within the Looking Glass Theater, the seated watcher at last sees: the myriad players, too, are seated, and they watch him.