Today I learned a few lessons about planning ahead, jumping the gun, the inefficiency of bureaucracy, and cleaning up your own messes.
Communicycle engages in outreach activities throughout the year that we call Mobile Shops. We gather our bike stands, pumps, tools, a few spare parts, and a bunch of friends and set up shop on a Sunday afternoon to repair bikes for the neighbors and anyone who happens to drop by. We usually set up mobile shops at apartment complexes (with management's permission of course) but we decided to pursue something more daring this month. We chose the parking lot in front of a busy store that is within one of the local city's jurisdiction (I will make this as general as possible so I don't burn any bridges).
We made initial contact with the management of the store and received an OK to proceed, and proceed we did. For weeks we have been telling people that Sunday, November 14 the mobile shop would be hosted by a wonderful local business, bringing us lots of exposure and new customers for free bike repairs and discount parts. Josh designed a new flier for the event, and I made dozens of copies of the flier. I spent the first three hours of my day distributing fliers.
I didn't just distribute fliers, I went hardcore on these fliers with a clandestine tub of wheat paste (glue made from boiled water and flour) and a paint brush. I decided not to fool around with tape and staples this time because people tore down the fliers I posted that was the last time. I realized I would be responsible for taking these fliers back down after the Mobile Shop but I found the effort to be worthwhile. I even added a pinch of sugar to my recipe for added potency.
After pasting up dozens of fliers around the neighborhood, I went to the host store to ask them how I could promote the event near the store and get final details on how and where we would set up. I was under the impression that everything was squared away, but somehow the communication had broken down and nothing was certain. After a long discussion, the store manager told me that if I could get him some documentation making this event legitimate in the eyes of the city and relieve the store of all liability, it would work. Off to city hall!
I was bounced from one city official to the next, running from one building to the next for a while. I met some great city employees (and one very rude one!) and finally came to the conclusion that Mobile Shop at this location could not be done legitimately, which means it would not happen at all. It has something to do with the city's zoning ordinances and they are working on solving this, but this does not help us right now. Maybe it will be easier to set up in a few months when the council has gotten together and hatched a plan to make it ok for people to fix other people's bikes for free in a parking lot.
I am half tempted to just show up somewhere else, direct-action Food Not Bombs style, and do it anyways, but the risk of ticking off public officials might compromise some important relationships. However we do this, it did not matter when I remembered all the fliers I had just glued to telephone poles, walk signals, and concrete pillars around the city. They had to come down. I spend the following two or three hours tearing at any loose edge of every single flier, trying to make them disappear before we and our intended host business get in trouble for littering the city with obnoxious fliers for a non-event. Splashing a little water on them helped to soften them up, but it was still hard work. After scraping the last flier, and my fingernails, into oblivion, I had just enough time to drive home, eat an energy bar and a fistful of sorghum and ride my BMX bike back to the shop for Tuesday night shop hours.
While undoing my mess, I encountered a curious sight. A man in a chicken costume was dancing in a parking lot outside of a Mexican chicken restaurant, and a random woman passing by had decided to join him. They were dancing in a parking lot, in the midst of Atlanta rush hour traffic, a man in a chicken suit and a woman. The woman then approached me, introduced herself, and told me to "behave in this neighborhood." I smiled and waited for her stern expression to crack, but she just stared at me, scowled and said "I mean it." I think she saw me tearing down fliers and assumed I looked like a hoodlum and I was up to no good. But as weird as this encounter was (I am not sure if this woman is entirely lucid), she stopped and talked to me when I would have just walked away.
This lead me to question my methods of advertising. How many people would have actually noticed those fliers and come to the Mobile Shop? More importantly, if Communicycle is about forming relationships with people in the community that we can help them and learn from them, is there anything wrong with using the same approach that corporations and politicians use to sell soft drinks, super stores, and slogans? What if we subverted the economic paradigm of exchange in the way we spread our word about services? Perhaps relationally?!
Rest assured, we are working on a new location for this month's Mobile Shop and it will go down one way or another. Stay tuned.
However, I have a new challenge for myself: no more anonymous fliers and posters. If I cannot talk to a person, look him in the eye, and tell him we want him to join us in fixing bikes, then it's not on the terms that I want. Maybe I'll put some slick tires on my mountain bike and cruise the neighborhood all day this week with a back pocket full of fliers and a face full of smiles to be distributed not with wheat paste and secrecy, but a handshake.
