grown men spent

So these grown men spent six straight hours hauling wheelbarrows full of sand into the middle, building a private island, one shovel at a time. It looked like most pointless beach project, that pile of sand was actually in action. You see, on New Year's Eve of 2017, the Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand had banned all public drinking after years of drunken holiday arrests. Anyone caught with a drink on the beach faced a 250 dollar fine or a trip to jail. So a local named Leon Hayward gathered five friends, including three visiting Americans, and waited for low tide in the Tairua estuary. The crew heaped black sand and seashells into a mound, topped it with wooden planks their weight, and hauled out a picnic table and an icebox. Their legal theory was simple, they had built their own island, they were international waters could not touch them. As the sun went down, the men cracked their drinks and rang in the new year watching fireworks from their private nation. Kayakers and paddleboarders circled the tiny island while its citizens partied on. When morning came, the island was still standing, and not one of them had been fined. Even the mayor admitted the international waters argument was legally nonsense, yet praised the crew's creativity instead of punishing them. The local police commander gave the perfect verdict. That's creative thinking, I probably would have joined them.