Puma recently filmed a project entitiled i-cycle wich documents the resurgence of bicycling in urban youth culture. The interviews are passionate, the music selection is great and the overall impression you get from watching this is that you want to feel the pavement for yourself. So go into your garage bust out your 76′ Peugot or Schwinn or your Huffy, find your bike pump, pump up those wheels and hit the road and you might just find the cure for whatever ails you, if not, at least you will have some fun.

The Fine folks over at Anti Advertising posted a link to this article about posting advertising in public spaces it turns out that they are not fans of it. The ad campaign in question is a guerrilla marketing campaign for Vespa Motor Scooters which blurs the lines between public art and dubious corporate messaging to sell the latest make of its Italian Scooters. The peeps over at at Spacing Toronto who are sticklers for abiding the law no matter how many parades they rain on, had this to say:

Despite the creativity of the campaign, this form of guerrilla marketing is illegal. Even if the advertising company responsible for these ads got permission from property owners to paste the Antlerheads on the exterior walls of their buildings, as third party advertising, they require a permit from city hall. And, according to Rami Tabello of illegalsigns.ca, chances are, they didn’t. “It’s easy to tell that they are illegal. They are located in places not permitted in the signs by-law and didn’t receive city council permission,” says Tabello.

Legality aside, guerrilla marketing of this kind is socially irresponsible and an abuse of public space. “It is corporations claiming public space as their own, engaging in vandalism for profit, and leaving it up to the City and perhaps citizens and business owners to clean up their mess,” says Goldsbie.

I think taking a hardline stance against all public posting (legal or not) is wrong (public art or corporate messaging matters not) because there is always grey area. For instance, what if the post is for public welfare such as the We Love This Place signs posted in downtown Reno. Sure we posted them. Sure it was illegal, but the intent was not to bolster the company’s bottom line. The intent of “signs” was to benefit local Reno-ites. Though both projects are illegal, one was right and one… was less right. The difference, I think was in their differences and similarities.

The two ideas are similar in that they were both illegal postings and they both cleverly blend into their surroundings and coax the viewer to interact with them and find out what the message means.  The two projects differ in that one had a public welfare message and one was trying to make some money. Also the cleanup (which probably annoys most people) for the Vespa campaign would take much longer to scrub off the walls of buildings.

I think the main difference which is the decider between right and less right though, is the intent of the message. The intent of Signs was to communicate “good vibes” and increase public morale rather than sell something. Although I like the Vespa campaign aesthetically, it is apparent, is art being used (dubiously but artisticly) as a vehicle for a corporate message…in a public space… illegally. So it’s kind of a grey area between right and wrong, lets call this less right, or grey. I am not saying Vespa is right or wrong, that should be left up to you, the reader. All I am saying is that I don’t want to have to be the one to scrub the walls of downtown Reno removing the next campaign of urban blight.

Just wanted to give everyone a quick head’s up. We (Kelly Glenn and myself) are going to be hosting the first Likemind coffee morning in RNO this Friday, June 20 at Dreamers Cafe downtown. It’ll be at 8:00 am. For those of you who don’t know about likemind, it was started by Noah Brier (NoahBrier.com) and Piers Fawkes (PSFK) as a way for people, who don’t necessarily know each other to get out, network and talk about stuff. Cool idea given that it might get people off line to develop a social network.

Piers had a few words of description a while back:

* You just turn up.

* You don’t have to turn up at 8. You can come sometime between 8 and 10 (or 9 and 11 if your city dictates). And you can go whenever. (**Note – RNO starts at 8:00)

* You can do anything for a job. By being so early, it normally means that you do something for a living, but even that’s not altogether necessary either.

* You buy your own coffee and tea, bagels and toast. Although, the longer this runs, we’re not adverse to some nice company offering to cover the cost of coffee across all Likeminds.

* There maybe a Likemind night event but it will be less chatty, more talky. In order to do this we need venues that can hold people. If anyone wants to volunteer something…

* Two people host Likemind, always. This means if no one else turns up, the hosts have someone to talk to.

* You have to wear a name badge. Yeah, everyone cringes at first but once you put it on – just see the effect. Wow.

Anyway, first one should be fun. Please pass the information and website www.likemind.us along to anyone you can think of who might want to check it out.

Ingenious ad placement by Papa Johns…   http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2008/06/papa-johns-ingenious-door-peephole-advertising-flyer-stick-on.html 

The San Francisco Chronicle recently published this article detailing one ex-San Franciscan couple and their new found obsession with the simple pleasures of life in the Nevada Desert. The article conjures images of Hunter S. Thompson or Jack Kerouac roaring across the Nevada desert strung out on Benzedrine and cheap whiskey truly being free, and “The masters of their domain.” After reading this article, I too yearn for the solitude and expanses of the Nevada desert filled with its sagebrush and salt flats. And how could anyone possibly argue with that sentiment, the desert does have a lovely look to it… so sexy… and open. It seems that their is a growing population of young professionals who agree, that a life of consuming isn’t exactly a perfect world, this is evidenced by hipster farmers abandoning their trucker caps for the salt of the earth and urban farmers and even urban beekeepers. All this “getting back to simple” begs the question, “is abandoning our proverbial DotCom businesses and pockets stuffed with 10′s and 20′s and embracing the Henry David Thoreau mentality the new black?”