Sunday, May 09, 2010

Flyering in New York.

Yesterday, after the really bad week we had with the disaster of TDF deleting us from their computers, I decided to take matters into my own hands and hand out half-price flyers among the thousands of people in Union Square.

There's a big farmer's market, and artists showing their paintings and sculptures, and people reading and sitting on benches. It's really a remarkable place.

So, for an hour, I went around like a carnival barker, "Zero Mostel in Union Square! Half price tickets!"

Within 15 minutes, a girl in a very official looking t-shirt approached me and said I couldn't do this in the farmer's market area, but that I could go across the street to the sidewalk. She was very nice, but it put me out of the mainstream of most of the people.

So, I crossed to the other side of the park, just across the street from our building, and tried there.

Oy.

This is hard work. For the next 45 minutes I stood there trying to cajole tourists and New Yorkers to take flyers and it was an almost impossible task. Let's face it. They're used to avoiding strangers with flyers.

Finally, my back hurting like hell, with the clock running down to the opening hour, I stopped, got some food from a vendor and went in and fell asleep in the dressing room.

Jim wasn't feeling so hot, so I got him some hot soup and a sandwich, and then made my way back to Times Square.

I tried again to hand out flyers, but this time, I was competing with people dressed in crazy uniforms, sandwich boards, groups of religious nuts trying to convince everyone they were going to hell if they didn't change the sabbath back to Saturday, people wrapped from head to toe in tape (!), a bachelor party where the groom had a "Kick me" sign on his back, and... well, nobody wanted my flyers there, either.

The wind was blowing so hard, it kept throwing dust and gravel into my eyes. So, finally, after about 45 minutes, I gave up, got some groceries and went back the apartment, laid down on the couch and fell promptly asleep.

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