Faced with a choice of another duller than death Tony Dungy/Lovie Smith profile penned by Bob Glauber and his Newsday colleague John Valenti tracing the genesis of Fence Plowing…well, which would you choose? Thought so.
He was, by his own account, “about three beers deep” at the time. He, his cousin and some friends were in the backyard of his cousin’s house in Florida.
This was more than a year ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. There was a fence, damaged by the hurricane. There were the beers.
On that night Adam Schleichkorn, now 25, of Huntington said to one of his cousin’s friends who had been a high school football player: “Yo dude, I guarantee if you run full speed you’ll go right through that fence. I bet you can do it.”
Just like that, apparently, the sport of “Fence Plowing” — running full speed through fences, knocking them down — might have been born.
Friday morning Schleichkorn, a grad student at C.W. Post and a videotape editor involved with an indie music production company called “Hidden Track,” said he has no idea if his video led to a bunch of Suffolk County teenagers vandalizing fences in Deer Park.
Schleichkorn said he doesn’t know any of the kids involved. He said he thinks vandalism is wrong. He said he doesn’t think his video gave anyone the idea to “fence plow.” He said he just taped a moment when his cousin and his cousin’s friend plowed down a fence.
“There’s a fine line between brilliance and idiocy,” Schleichkorn said. “I’m about somewhere right on that line . . . But, they’re pushing the other side of that line a little. Mimicry might be the sincerest form of flattery, but it sucks they’re vandalizing stuff. I’m totally not for that . . . Not at all.”
“I’m not going to sit here and say I’m an innovator by any means,” said Schleichkorn, whose video titled “Fence Plowing” has been on YouTube for more than eight months now.
What annoyed Schleichkorn Friday morning, however, is that anyone might think there is a tie between his video — and these acts of local vandalism that resulted from fence plowing. He said he has taped many other “skit” kind of videos, including something called “The Cheese Incident,” where he wakes sleeping people by placing yellow American cheese on their faces. And, of course, there’s the indie music stuff he produces for a local artist named Peter Toh, who Schleichkorn said “is about to blow up . . . He’s the next big thing.”