Des Moines Register
11-22-06
His world records are house of cards
Professional card stacker comes back to his home state for festival of
storytellers, magicians and jugglers
By MARY CHALLENDER
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
Architect Bryan Berg spends weeks, sometimes even months, building some of
the largest, most elaborate structures of their kind in the world.
Then the Iowa native typically picks up a leaf blower and sends his creations
fluttering to the ground.
It's all in a day's work when you're a professional card stacker.
Berg, 32, who holds two Guinness World Records for his work, will be the
featured entertainer Friday at the State Historical Museum's Toy Stories Festival.
Free and open to the public, the festival, which runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., will
feature storytellers, magicians and jugglers from across Iowa.
As a kid growing up in the Okoboji area, Berg said he liked stacking cards but
was just average until one day, during an Iowa blizzard, when he stumbled upon
the honeycomb formation that became the trick behind his trade.
That day, he said, he built a house of cards that touched the ceiling of his
parents' house. He hasn't looked back since.
In 1992, as a 17-year-old high school senior, Berg captured his first Guinness
record for tallest card tower when he carefully arranged 400 decks of cards to
build a house 14 1/2 feet tall.
Unsure card stacking was considered a normal pursuit, he told everyone he had
taken on the card challenge as a math project.
"I had no idea that incident would basically derail my entire life," he said.
Berg earned a degree in architecture at Iowa State University in 1997.
When it came time to take up a career in the field, he chose instead to pound
nails and pour concrete for his dad's construction company and pursue card
stacking projects on the side.
Since then, his unusual career has taken him to nearly every major U.S. city,
Japan, Denmark and Germany.
He has appeared on "CBS This Morning," "Good Morning America," "Today" and
Ellen DeGeneres' talk show, as well as in major newspapers, Reader's Digest,
Men's Health and the National Enquirer.
He has come to peace with identifying himself as a card stacker, said Berg, who
now lives in New Mexico.
"It probably gives me 250 vacation days a year," he noted. "It seems too good to
be true that I could actually earn my living doing something I like to do and get
the freedom and time off it generates."
Berg used some of that spare time to earn a master of design studies degree
from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2004. But his card-stacking
career shows no signs of sagging. He has a client list that includes everyone
from the World Series of Poker to the San Francisco Opera to Fuji Television
Japan.
In 2004, Berg faced his biggest challenge when Walt Disney World in Orlando
hired him to produce a replica - in special Disney cards designed to look like
theme park tickets - of Cinderella's castle.
The company went through an incredible amount of expense to pull off the
project, he said, ripping up the grounds in front of the original castle, pouring a
cement base and building a massive windproof, air-conditioned tent for him to
work in.
The tent was designed in such a way that when Berg finished, it could be lifted
away with a crane, leaving his turreted creation standing in the open in front of
the real structure.
Berg worked on the castle - which was to be a world record 14 feet tall and 14
feet square - nearly 20 hours a day for a month straight, carefully placing more
than 160,000 cards.
When it was almost finished, he left Orlando for a few days to meet a prior
commitment in Las Vegas.
The second day in Las Vegas, he got a call. A squirrel had somehow gotten
inside the tent and dashed through the castle.
Berg flew back immediately to check things out and was horrified to find a pillar
holding up part of the structure had been damaged. Even the slightest touch
could bring it down.
Not seeing any other option, Berg tried a high-risk maneuver - inserting more
cards to brace the weakened column. Somehow, it worked. Then he went back
to his hotel room and collapsed.
"It was literally ... I can't even describe how close it was to going," he said. "I was
pretty freaked out.''
A few days later, Berg was back at the site for the official unveiling of his
creation. Disney officials held a press conference, using the event to get press
coverage for the theme park's new ticket prices. Then, a short time later, workers
gave a big tug on some hidden ropes and the 450-pound structure collapsed
upon itself.
"It imploded like a real building," Berg recalled. "It was so cool."
Berg said he felt what any good card stacker feels at a time like that, when
hundreds of hours of painstaking labor are undone in the space of a few
heartbeats: pure and total relief.
"You don't want to fail when you're working for Disney," he said. "You don't get a
chance like that every day. Ironically, the one piece the squirrel damaged so
badly is the one piece that didn't fall during the implosion."
Reporter Mary Challender can be reached at (515) 284-8470 or
mchallender@dmreg.com