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Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine
- ComputerGuru 5y agoI feel like we live in a world where it is becoming increasingly impossible for things like this to exist. I don’t have much commentary on the matter other than to say it makes me sad.
- EamonnMR 5y agoI think that this has lead to the popularity of ARG/Analog Horror/SCP/etc. The Unknown is shrinking, so we need to create the Unknowable.
- mintplant 5y agoOddly, true Alternate Reality Games [0] peaked in the mid-to-late 2000s, even as the world has shrunk by orders of magnitude since. Perhaps that's the period when the internet itself was at its most Unknown, before the great silofication of everything. [0] ...as opposed to, say, ads with base64 "puzzles" tacked on or narrative-less viral videos with arbitrary distortion.
- jmcgough 5y agoARG for promoting films / games kinda peaked as a guerilla marketing campaign then. Once it became less novel, less money was spent on developing them. But yeah they become a lot less compelling when it's solved so quickly and there's wikis devoted to them.
- EamonnMR 5y agoARGs for promoting nothing seem to be on the rise (I don't have links to back that up though.)
- jacurtis 5y ago> true Alternate Reality Games peaked in the mid-to-late 2000s I agree. Early 2000's were the glory years of the internet. The internet was powerful enough to be bringing people together that could have never communicated or met before. It allowed niche interest groups to connect so that these types of stories and mysteries could proliferate and spread, but it was not so widespread and attention-focused that the mysteries dissolved. I'm actually surprised that this mystery survived into 2018. I would have expected some Tik Tok/Instagram/YouTube/Facebook influencer to camp out all week with a camera to find the mystery re-stocker like they were hunting santa clause. The video would go viral for 8 hours, the influencer would get their 15 mins of fame, then the mystery would be forever ruined. The internet would forget that there was ever a time when we didn't know how this machine worked, and the mystery would cease to exist. Edit: Ok, apparently someone did camp out and ruined the mystery, spotting who restocks it. [Source - If you really want to know, but the mystery will be ruined...](https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2014/05/spoiler-alert-mystery-of-the-capitol-hill-mystery-coke-machines-mysteries-revealed/ https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2014/05/spoiler-alert-mys...)
- Aeolun 5y agoWell, it’s clear now! TBH, that picture couldn’t give us less information if it tried…
- lamontcg 5y ago> I agree. Early 2000's were the glory years of the internet. You know how every generation thinks that the music they grew up with was the best and its all gone downhill from there? Well, lemme tell you little shits a story about Usenet and Eternal September...
- EamonnMR 5y agoI've been searching for a natural way to browse pre-eternal-september Usenet. Google Groups is less than ideal.
- randomswede 5y ago
- pbronez 5y agoIt's literally a story about this thing happening.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kgermino 5y agoIt’s a story about it ending 3 years ago. Not sure if I agree with GP but “here’s a story of something that used to happen” doesn’t contradict “this type of thing can’t happen anymore”
- GavinMcG 5y agoIn the past. The comment said "increasingly impossible," looking toward the future.
- 1986 5y agoIt's a story about this thing going away!
- pbronez 5y agowhat the point of things mysteriously appearing if they can't also mysteriously disappear again? You only want permanently observable mysteries? If you want more fun inexplicable stuff in the world, go put some out there! Go yarn bomb something!
- fighterpilot 5y ago
- voidfunc 5y agoNothing wrong with a more orderly, predictable, benign, ideally deterministic world without variance.
- claudiulodro 5y agoIsn't there? The moon is a "world" without variance, but I wouldn't want to live there!
- ip_addr 5y agoPass the Soma.
- voldacar 5y agomight want to get your T levels checked
- meowkit 5y agoNot sure if this comment is sarcastic. Perfect determinism doesn't exist in the human condition. To embrace such invariance is to embrace the sterilization of art, culture, and our ability to adapt to the unpredictable.
- mindcrime 5y agoHe gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. Voidfunc loved Big Brother.
- smitty1e 5y agoI'm going to take a contrarian view here and opine that society will rebound from the fascination with "AutoTuned" reality. (Eventually), it may settle on a minimal set of areas where everything has to be spied upon and logged to a fare-the-well. Grew up just fine without Alexa.
- tabtab 5y agoI would hope Capitol buildings had better security so that Putin cant randomly put in an arcade claw game with microphones and radar. (Cue SNL's Elf and Shelf.)
- quickthrowman 5y agoYou must not have read the article, it is on Capitol Hill in Seattle, which is in the state of Washington, not Washington D.C.
- tabtab 5y agoSeattle may have or influence tech secrets Russia wants.
- travoc 5y agoThey want to manipulate the weather on our toolbars and sell us counterfeit goods.
- dghlsakjg 5y agoI can assure you that there are no tech secrets on Capitol Hill in Seattle. It is a bar district and lively neighborhood, but contrary to its name has little to do with government. A vending machine on the street of a random american neighborhood is not a security risk.
- gsk22 5y agoExactly. Even our most obsolete soda flavors could cause untold chaos if they fell into the hands of the Russian government.
- chucksta 5y agoAll is not lost, behold the Shrek Box; http://phillynews.fyi/22327/shrek-box-appears-in-south-philadelphia-gets-filled-with-onions-and-art/ http://phillynews.fyi/22327/shrek-box-appears-in-south-phila...
- mattkevan 5y agoIn a sort of similar vein there was the Mystery of the South London Hellraiser VHS. A few years ago, someone spotted a Hellraiser VHS on the roof of a bus stop. It was removed and a replacement appeared. Then it happened again. Then more Hellraisers appeared on other bus stops. It can still be seen on Google Maps. I always thought Stoke Newington was a gateway to hell, so it was good to have it confirmed. https://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3299131/bizarre-story-vhs-copy-hellraiser-bus-stop/ https://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3299131/bizarre-story-vhs...
- dylan604 5y agoMaybe we should internet-sleuth Ebay auctions of Hellraiser VHS copies and see if it's the same account winning them.
- Aeolun 5y agoOn the other hand, the internet also makes it possible for someone like me, on the other side of the world, to learn that it exists.
- kypro 5y agoNot sure how many people will get the reference, but I was thinking this just yesterday about the Pokémon red and blue games. Back in the nineties many rumours spread about hidden secret in those games, but we didn’t have the internet to verify or debunk them. Like many kids back then me and my friends spent hours trying to move that truck to get a mew, but it was impossible, it was just a rumour that spread because back then no one knew for sure if it was possible or not. That couldn’t happen with the internet today. Another thing I remember growing up in the nineties was being told orbs in photos were spirts, and again without the internet I couldn’t prove or disprove it. It was a complete mystery which I thought about all the time. The internet has taken a lot of those mysteries away. Don’t get me wrong, it’s really cool that we’re able to look things up so easily on our phones today, but I do share your sadness that the world isn’t as mysterious as it once was.
- iscrewyou 5y agoThis but with the Mario games. I couldn’t believe it there were shortcuts in the first game. Someone told me and I didn’t believe them. Same with contra and how you could have more than 3 lives. The shortcuts spread through word of mouth and some you wouldn’t find out after years of gameplay.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Ieghaehia9 5y agoThere were rumors like that for the Final Fantasy games too, like how to get Leo in FF6 by doing something ridiculously complex (or just ridiculous) for hours on end. And then FWAKs, which satirized the whole phenomenon.
- mattl 5y agoI found out about the original Green Pokemon game in Japan on the Internet around 96/97 so there was chatter about them.
- cryptoz 5y ago> That couldn’t happen with the internet today. It happens with more frequency and stronger beliefs today on the internet than it ever did before. Rumors spread faster and take hold for longer. The internet is huge fuel source for spreading rumors, not a dampener. Easily verifiable facts are no match for the internet's rumor-spreading capabilities.
- betwixthewires 5y agoI came here to say something like this, it makes me sad too, but I do have commentary on it. Imagine buying beer or wine from your local dude who brews for fun, like at a farmers market. There's a sense of community in things like that. But you can't, that guy would have to spend six figures on commercial licensing and FDA inspections and code compliance and whatever else. We can't just buy things from people anymore, we have to be consumers and can only buy from businesses, there has to be a clear cut distinction, all our relationships must be in compliance. Governments are regulating and taxing our communities out of existence and leaving us with a sterile system of impersonal distribution in which they are the middleman so that they can milk every cent that is "rightfully" theirs out of every single interaction everyone has.
- abeppu 5y agoWhat are "things like this"? Is it things that exist in public but which don't have clear attribution? B/c in 2020 there were the "monoliths", which were pretty cool. Or, you know, Banksy still exists. Or @fog_karla / @karlthefog for that matter. Is it playful, non-scalable experiences? There's Improv Everywhere. My city has a number of curb-side bird-house sized "libraries". There's a guy who keeps doing extremely long walks in the UK in his speedo for charity but presumably also to make people smile. There are more than 7.5B people on the planet and plenty of them are doing weird fun creative things. Just maybe fewer of them revolving around 80s soft drinks.
- autoexec 5y agoFor anyone else who hadn't seen these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_similar_to_the_2020_Utah_monolith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_similar_to_the_2... Somehow I'm not surprised that in addition to local artists copying the one in Utah several companies also put them up as advertising.
- goldenkey 5y ago80s soft drinks is cool but when you realize what a plague upon humanity that sugar beverages are, it kind of detracts from the playfulness tbh. I stopped drinking soda years ago and haven't looked back. It is one of the largest causes of metabolic disease globally. And it's sad that people associate having a sugary beverage as a 'good time with friends.' Lets enjoy poison together?! :-/ I predict this won't go over well with the HN crowd who'll probably downvote me, and loves to snack on junk while coding, but there are better ways to get energy effortlessly without chewing or being protein heavy, like complex carbohydrates and MCT oils.
- cowboysauce 5y ago>And it's sad that people associate having a sugary beverage as a 'good time with friends.' Lets enjoy poison together?! :-/ Oh boy, just wait until you learn about alcohol.
- 5y ago
- magospietato 5y agoThe smallish town where I live has a Yarn Bomber. She/he knits little totems and fixes them to street-lights and public fencing; sometimes even front doors. They are usually themed: Easter, Summer, Remembrance Sunday, Halloween, Christmas. And quite wonderful, I should add. Of course I say "she/he". We all know who it is. It's no suprise our smallish town has such a great knit shop, and the bomber has been outed numerous times anyway. But sometimes the really important thing is to learn how to play along.
- secondaryacct 5y agoBut it s obviously a coca cola viral ad... it benefits no one else, needs to source rare exotic products that are not at all exotic for coca cola, has a facebook page for tracking... I mean... things like that are the cancer of the world, what are you so fondly missing :D Yet another stupid ad ?
- philosopher1234 5y agoOr its something fun made by someone random. Your cynical view is possible, but its not the only possibility, or even the most likely.
- throwawaycities 5y ago> I feel like we live in a world where it is becoming increasingly impossible for things like this to exist. Everyone says crypto is the answer in search of a problem, but if you’re really sad and would support it I’ll make a collection of mystery NFTs where you/buyers can’t see the art until you buy the NFT.
- futhey 5y agoBackground: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/capitol-hills-magical-pop-machine-stays-stocked-and-a-mystery/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/capitol-hills-magi... Restocking: https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2014/05/spoiler-alert-mystery-of-the-capitol-hill-mystery-coke-machines-mysteries-revealed/ https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2014/05/spoiler-alert-mys... Disappearance: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/seattle-mystery-soda-machine-is-missing https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/seattle-mystery-soda-m...
- ju-st 5y ago2nd link for Europeans: http://archive.is/2017.08.07-014013/http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2014/05/spoiler-alert-mystery-of-the-capitol-hill-mystery-coke-machines-mysteries-revealed/ http://archive.is/2017.08.07-014013/http://www.capitolhillse...
- techsupporter 5y agoQuick question: Why "for Europeans?" I tried from a couple of EU-based endpoints and could access the second link just fine. What error did you get? I ask because I know the operator of CHS via a friend of a friend kind of thing.
- asadhaider 5y agoAlso European (UK) and can access the original link just fine.
- hereforphone 5y agoSpoiler alert: it was the locksmith in front of whose shop the machine was allowed to exist (rent free)
- praisewhitey 5y agoThere's photos confirming it's not the locksmith himself doing it, but they're presumably the owner who oversees management of the machine. https://twitter.com/saeofdoom/status/460157462197198849?s=20 https://twitter.com/saeofdoom/status/460157462197198849?s=20
- chickenbane 5y agoI live in the neighborhood and have bought a few sodas from the machine. I always assumed it was locksmith, they are powering the machine and I've never seen nor heard a reason to believe it was anyone else. It was a cute novelty, and if you're not picky it's a fast soda, but honestly it was just stocked with cheap, off-brand gross soda. Would have been genius if occasionally it gave you something interesting (or at least good).
- jeramey 5y agoIt certainly used to! That machine introduced me to a weird variety of things when I lived near it almost 20 years ago. Cheap thrills as a broke young 'un. Thanks to it, I still have to try strange sodas when I am traveling--especially abroad. It's not always good, but it's always fun.
- chihuahua 5y agoHave you visited the Coca Cola museum in Las Vegas? Not sure if it still exists, but I went in 2000. They had about 100 different sodas from around the world. These days, I haven't had any soda in years. 35+ grams of sugar per can is a terrible idea.
- splonk 5y agoThere's also one in Atlanta, and I think maybe Orlando as well. Always fun to see the tourists getting surprised by the one bitter drink in the whole collection (Beverly, from Italy). Wikipedia claims it was discontinued 12 years ago, except for the Coke museums.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago> dispensed drinks were rare cans that were either ordinarily unavailable in the United States or have not been in circulation since the 1980s > In June 2018, the machine mysteriously disappeared I don't think it's mysterious. The owner likely ran out of full, rare cans of soda and could not / did not want to source them anymore.
- dylan604 5y agoor he didn't have to restock it because at some point, people got tired of drinking flat stale soda from the 80s
- slaughtr 5y agoI never got anything particularly weird out of that machine. Drunkenly dropped $20 in it a few times. Mostly it was the odd flavors of things you only see in specialty stores, but I never saw anything "rare" other than an out of season Mtn Dew.
- xenadu02 5y ago> I don't think it's mysterious. The owner likely ran out of full, rare cans of soda and could not / did not want to source them anymore. For folks who aren't aware your local distributor cans / bottles a much wider variety of product than what you find on typical grocery store shelves. If you have a commercial account with them you can get the list. Sometimes they make special runs for a promotion, special event, or special client order. Depending on the circumstances and if you have a good relationship with your sales rep you may be able to get notified and grab a case or two. It is possible they were vending long expired drinks... but it is also possible they simply had a hookup at the distributor and sourced rare drinks from time to time.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agoOk, but that doesn’t explain cans from the 1980s, does it?
- toast0 5y ago
- whearyou 5y agoWould be eerie if it wasn’t so darn cool
- rootsudo 5y agoAw, totally random to see Seattle on the front page. Yes it's gone and the locksmith shop is still there, for now...
- every 5y agoI lived in a co-op decades ago that had something like this. It was an old, single brand soft drink machine. The co-op however stocked it with cheap bottled beer. You had no idea what would appear in the slot when you fed in your coins. And it was a sad day indeed when Special Export came sliding down the shute...
- dhosek 5y agoMost of the dorms at my college had a mystery beer slot in their soda machines (they were stocked by the students). Random soda was also a popular option. After a couple significant alcohol poisoning incidents during my time (late 80s), the college became less willing to turn a blind eye to these sorts of things.
- ro_bit 5y agoThis reads like an SCP
- klyrs 5y agoIt's funny, I probably walked by that thing a few hundred times, but I don't drink soda so I ignored it entirely. But once the locksmith was mentioned, its location clicked in my head, a dim rectangular outline of a hole in my spatial memory. Brains are so weird.
- ianhanschen 5y agoI use operating system memory paging as an analogy for this: you paged it back in.
- klyrs 5y agoIt's a really good page, too. Just across the street was the best smell & taste in all of spacetime, the original Espresso Vivace roastery...
- ppierald 5y agoThe combination of social networks and global warming are gonna doom us all.
- nightfly 5y agoMy wife and I made sure to see it when we went to Seattle in 2017
- xrd 5y agoA "fun fact" my son loves: more people are killed by vending machines than sharks each year [1]. Perhaps it murdered someone and went into hiding? 1. https://medium.com/purple-theory/vending-machines-vs-sharks-3e2362d762fa https://medium.com/purple-theory/vending-machines-vs-sharks-...
- as-j 5y agoSure…it’s fun. But also feels disingenuous in a way. People are rocking the machines in an attempt to get a free soda are killed. This is compared against unprovoked shark attacks. Probably a fairer comparison if you only count unprovoked vending machine deaths too then. Sigh, ruining fun facts. ;(
- peanut_worm 5y agoThat implies that there are a lot of provoked shark attacks I bet the sum of provoked and unprovoked shark attacks is still less than the unprovoked and provoked soda machine deaths ;)
- slavboj 5y agoOverworked and underpaid shark attacks
- InfiniteRand 5y agoPerfect solution: soda machines can pay the sharks to increase attacks thus reducing the prominence of their own murderous agenda
- xrd 5y agoIt's so simple it's brilliant. Who has all the money and is being robbed? Vending machines. They want to fight back but keep getting attacked in the liberal AND conservative media. Who has all the teeth but no money? Sharks.
- 5y ago
- nitwit005 5y agoA friend of mine has a soda machine in his business with a similar question mark button. He had the same idea of stocking some less common items in it. Apparently people occasionally feed it money and press it repeatedly.
- samoyy 5y agoI’ve been passing by this since I was kid, it’s funny that it’s getting so much interest now. I would just use it like a normal vending machine lol
- poopsmithe 5y agoThere's a few machines like this in Spokane Valley, WA. Not that that the machine's operator is secret, but they have mystery buttons. It's been around for years and it's right outside a Coke distribution center(?). My siblings and I used to refer to it as, "The Mystery Magic Coke Machine" https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6787458,-117.2733456,3a,49.5y,21.48h,84.1t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sDPDZu58X6A7L_pvghjWmvQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6787458,-117.2733456,3a,49.5... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iNN12D4W7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iNN12D4W7k
- snypher 5y agoAnother in Walla Walla too.
- locusofself 5y agoI am from Spokane and also lived in the neighborhood in Seattle where this machine was. I recognize the mystery buttons but I can't remember exactly where I'd seen them.
- allenu 5y agoI used to live nearby and would walk past the machine every day on my way to work and way home. Over time, all (?) the options went from specific flavors to the "MYSTERY" option, but I always attributed it to them just getting lazy about filling it with specific flavors. I remember that one day it just disappeared. They were redoing the sidewalk and had to put the machine away and it never came back. I'm pretty sure the locksmith owns the machine, but it's fun to pretend it's a mystery. :)
- excalibur 5y agoFrom the title I expected an article about a soda machine near the US capitol that was secretly full of Russian spy gear or something. Pleasantly surprised, and yes it sounds like the locksmith was involved even if he didn't personally stock it.
- sydthrowaway 5y agoThis is obviously an espionage dead drop machine.
- filmgirlcw 5y agoThis was one of my favorite parts of the neighborhood (I moved to Seattle/Capitol Hill in July 2017) and it was so sad when it disappeared. Weirdly, I thought about it last summer during CHOP/CHAZ and was sort of glad it was already gone because it would have been destroyed last summer.
- stewx 5y agoOn a visit to Seattle, I went waaaaay out of my way to find this machine and use it. It just ate my change and didn't give me a drink. I was furious. On the plus side, I ended up popping into a local convenience store afterward and the cashier told me "you look just like that really famous person".