Aug. 8—On overcast days when the weather is just right, people walking downtown may come across gigantic bubbles dancing in the wind.

If they follow the trail of iridescent shapes back to the source, they'll likely find Gavin Lampert in a wacky costume letting a breeze catch onto the solution from his homemade wand.

Lampert is known around Astoria as one of the "bubble guys" because he likes to go out with his friend and "rip a few bubs" in his free time.

"It just brought me a lot of joy," he said. "I was having fun and then I started realizing how many other people it brought joy to."

He's been blowing bubbles since the beginning of the year. Astoria is an ideal place for his craft with its cloud coverage and frequent light breezes. If it's too hot or windy, the bubbles will burst.

The people are also more responsive to his bubble-blowing than people in other cities, Lampert said.

Despite only moving to Astoria this year, he said he's met a tremendous amount of people through a shared love of bubbles.

"I feel like it just cuts down on that social anxiety," he said. "It's like a way for somebody to walk up and start a conversation, you know. And so I feel like that helps a lot."

Lampert has bubbles down to a science. His homemade solution he calls "bubble sauce" is specifically formulated to create giant bubbles.

"It is a secret recipe," he said. "I can tell you the main ingredient is dish soap."

Blowing bubbles goes beyond a simple hobby for him — it's an art.

"A lot of people, they just have this impulse to just destroy the bubbles," he said. "It's like, well, would you take away a painter's paintbrush? Or a sculptor's chisel? You're kind of just ruining the art, running around popping them."

Most of the time, Lampert draws a crowd of onlookers that enjoy watching the bubbles. But occasionally, Lampert gets into "bubble trouble," as he likes to call it.

The commercial fisherman occasionally brings his " bubble sauce" with him to work. "Blowing bubbles out at sea is the best thing of all time," he said. The different air currents on the water create unique shapes with the bubbles to the delight of some of his co-workers.

Lampert was blowing bubbles out on a boat once while his captain was looking for a buoy. "We were going with the wind ... " he said. "He could not see where the buoy was. We were filling the sky with bubbles."

He's also had the police called on him for blowing bubbles on private property.

But despite these encounters, Lampert's love of bubbles carries on. Going into town dressed in a clown suit or a puffy cheetah print coat and blowing extra large bubbles lets him be his "normal, weird self," he said.

"I'm always a fan of the extra weird," he said.

"Biscuits and gravy. I want it so badly."View Entire Post ›

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