About 50 years ago when I was at Baker House at MIT someone on our floor had a piano to dispose of. So, it was taken to the roof. Some people did crowd control on the alley next to the dorm. The Campus Police came to see what was going on. When they turned their backs to confer, off went the piano.
I have pictures of the piano on the roof and I scampered down and have a picture of it in the air.
Souvenir hunters took all of it except the cover, which we converted into a big cribbage board.
It became a tradition, which continues.
During reunions one of the alumni engineering games involves building something to shoot a little piano at a replica of Baker House.
In a town I used to live in there were several bars downtown in a 2 block area, the BARmuda Triangle. One of the bars would get an upright piano and place it on the sidewalk in front for people walking from bar to bar to stop and play or maybe stay for a moment if somebody that was a good piano player was playing. They would attempt to cover it up at night but by the end of summer the piano was pretty beat up due to the elements and was then busted up and thrown in the dumpster out back after the weather started getting cold. The following year the would find a cheap (or free!) piano to takes it place.
Didn’t Northern Exposure also have a funeral involving a trebuchet? One thing I learned from a Nova episode was that if you’re really serious about using a treb, put it on wheels because the recoil can be pretty destructive.
Back to the OP…
We got some of these straps to move heavy things. Not to say we moved a piano with them, but they do help quite a bit. And when we hired some guys to move some very heavy things, we learned they use them a lot. ISTM they’re lifting with their legs instead of their arms.
I don’t remember that. Chris wanted to fling a cow, but people thought that wouldn’t be nice. He objected to their attitudes because flinging a cow was his Artist’s Vision. Then his Vision changed to the piano.
A neighbor donated their old (but serviceable) piano to our town hall some years ago. I was glad to have it, as it made our community room more useful and versatile. Unfortunately, our town chairman didn’t agree, and banished it to a storeroom. Since no one knows it’s there, no one uses it.
True, that. One of the things that took me out of the moment in the LOTR movies were the fixed-in-place trebs in Gondor. They’d tear themselves to pieces in a couple shots.
It took some doing in the logistics department, but I successfully moved my new piano into my house over the weekend. It’s a “Furniture Console”, 43" high and it was reasonably easy to move with 4 people and a minivan.
