Flyers for the Beav

Tonight, in preparation for our last performance of "Prostate of the Union" on Saturday, March 19th, we went throughout Beaver County with 145 flyers. The mission: plaster the hell out of the place. The Dwellers have an uncanny sense of gorilla marketing, and it's a system that usually produces very positive results. This time, we were serious.

Earlier in the day, Ben and I exploited these Staples Copy Center coupons ($10 Off a $10 Purchase) and made 145 black and white posters for the show. We also made 150 programs to cover us for the Seton Hill and CCBC shows. The flyers were made specifically for the sprinkling of the county.

We met at the Dweller Hostel (an apartment house where Joe, James, Christoph and Ben and his wife all live) at 5:30pm and broke into two teams: Alpha and Centauri. James and I made up Alpha, and were in charge of hitting Beaver Falls (including Geneva College), Chippewa, Bridgewater and all areas in between. Centauri was Joe, Ben, and Larry and they were on top of New Brighton, Freedom, Monaca, etc. Two groups on the same mission, with the rendezvous point being the Beaver Valley Mall.

The weather seemed cold, but dry. That is, until we stepped out of the house. The moment the mission actually went underway, what was basically a squall smashed down on Beaver County. It was a white out, and the snow was starting to stick. This was going to make things a tad more difficult, but because James works out regularly, I wasn't worried. By the time we got to Geneva College, snow was everywhere. This made us work quickly, and the fact that the campus was in the middle of spring break made level of social interaction drop down to 0. We hung up a good deal of posters on every telephone poll we could find, many of the polls still had posters from our Origami Trail show!

After getting that finished, we hopped back in Tiger and took a shortcut through West Mayfield to Chippewa. While in Chipp. we went to Giant Eagle, where we had to negotiate with the customer service chick so that she would hang up our poster in their locked community events board. Then we flew over to Wal-Mart, where we found they didn't actually have a community events board. Gamestop, however, was more than willing to take our flyers.

The next stop was Bridgewater, a small maritime town on the Beaver River. There aren't alot of places there to put up flyers, especially at this time of the night, but we did drop some off at a local pizza place and a coffee house/bar/Mac enthusiast. It was while we were in this quaint town hanging up flyers that we were confronted by an overly friendly vagrant:

Vagrant: Hey you guys! What are you doing?
*James and Mike stop taping a sign to a phone poll.*
James: We're hanging up signs.
V: Oh excellent work, can I have a sign, I'll take one for ya.
Me: Here ya go
V: Thanks. Have you been to the bar yet?
J: Yeah, actually.
V: They'll definitely put one in there
J: Yeah, they know us there.
V: Either of you have a dollar?
M: Nope.
J: What for?
V: I need to buy a beer? Can you spare a dollar for some beer? How about two dollars? Two seventy-five?
J: Here, you can have a dollar. But that's all.
V: You guys have a good evening!

Hmm... the vagabond was terrible at haggling. When we got in the car I asked James why the heck he gave the guy a dollar. "I didn't feel bad since I knew where he was going to spend it." Well as long as you can fuel the addiction...

From there we made a call in to Centauri to see how they were doing:

"Alpha, we are leaving Monaca now. Meet us in the mall in fifteen. Centuari out.... bye."

The "bye" sort of ruins the covert appeal of the conversation.

We all reconvened at the BVMall and then worked the stores. It's very effective when we all walk around the mall together, because the chances are good that all of us will run in to at least one person we know. It sort of makes you feel like a celebrity, walking through the mall and having people say "Hey, Cellar Dwellers!" It's a good feeling. And it's an even better feeling when we can hand them a flyer in return and they say "Awesome, I'll see you there!" Word.

Just when we thought our evening was over... we ran into a little (confusing) trouble in the parking lot.

While hanging out by Ben's car, the silver Neon next to him begins backing out. The man in side rolled down his window saying, "Watch out, guys in black coats!" Joe turned to him and said, "Thanks, guy in silver car." And just when we thought the confrontation was over with, Guy in Silver Car yelled "Homos!" and drove off the wrong way in a one way parking lane. "You're goin' the wrong way!" Larry yelled after him. And then we stood and laughed at him for about ten minutes. Yeah, we sure showed him. I think...

So needless to say, it was an interesting evening. Certainly a productive one, and I can't wait to see the fruits of our labor next Saturday, March 19th at CCBC.