A few years ago as a junior at Wilmington’s Salesianum School, Spencer Bahnsen made a splash at a school dance when he arrived with glowing LED strips strapped to his shirt and khakis.
The head-turning outfit was the first version of what is now known as the Ultra LED Man, an 8-foot illuminated party-starter who has been making club appearances across the East Coast for a few years. While his homemade robot costume has rocked clubs from Atlantic City and Philadelphia to New York and Atlanta, Bahnsen is finding more and more gigs right here at home these days.
Recently, he debuted at The Queen in Wilmington for its Royal Nightclub DJ dance party. Also, he was seen entertaining onlookers in his costume at venues such as Newark’s Klondike Kate’s and Dewey Beach’s The Rusty Rudder. During his shows, Bahnsen leaves the DJing to the DJs. Instead, he dances on his four-foot drywall stilts and impresses with the costume, which cost about $1,500 to make. The suit is expensive and finds a unique application of LEDs; moreover, Bahnsen finds countless hours building and improving his suits.
“This really is my passion. I’ve put blood, sweat and tears into this and have burned myself with the soldering gun plenty of times,” says Bahnsen, who now lives in Pike Creek with his girlfriend, Stacey Mitchell, and their 11-month-old daughter, Rylie.
The journey from a school project to nightclubs has been a wild ride for him. The exciting LEDs have uniquely helped him to carry on this journey, not only giving him fame but also a profession. With a lot of applications that LED lighting finds this one surely is definitely eye-catching.
Reminiscing about his school dance stint with the LED outfit makes him laugh. He proudly stuck LED strips on his pants and shirt and affixed a CD to the center of his chest, which glowed like an orb thanks to all the lights surrounding it.
