EP 33: The City Connection
A majorly successful social engagement program with a yearlong waiting list. Pianos left in the urban outdoors for any random person to play. And a totally mysterious city data collector. We plunge into their mutual concepts -- creative or playful ways of connecting people and their town -- and how they might work where you live. There's a lot of hectic stuff going on out there, so take this episode as a bit of fun (though our warmest and most immediate thoughts are with everyone impacted by the many recent or active natural disasters and other hardships). We also call upon you to help us solve what ranks as one of the weirdest downtown mysteries out there today. Listen now to hear about it. Shownotes: Seattle Walk Report - https://www.instagram.com/seattlewalkreport/ RDU Baton on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/rdubaton/ RDU Baton website - http://www.rdubaton.com Pianos in the Parks - http://pianosintheparks.org Episode 32: Games Over Gangs - https://soundcloud.com/municipalequation/ep-32-games-over-gangs Hugo's House of Horrors and David Gray - http://www.dgray.com/hwpage.htm Other urban piano projects: Here's the deal with all those pianos parked outside in uptown Charlotte - http://www.charlottefive.com/piano-parking-charlotte-gives-permission-make-noise-uptown/ Goldsboro public piano fuels man's musical passion - http://www.wral.com/goldsboro-public-piano-fuels-man-s-musical-passion/16431390/ Street Pianos - http://www.streetpianos.com
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Transcript
On this episode of Municipal Equation. In my head, I'm like a cool Harriet, the spy, going through the city and reporting out on what I see. You know, every time he sat down to play, all of the adults all kinda stepped back because nobody wanted to go after this kid. I can remember the day we hit, like, 10 k and we were, like, freaking out. We realized, like, how many followers we have. We look into a hugely successful social engagement project with a year long waiting list. We check out what happens when you leave pianos outdoors. And we meet one of Seattle's most mysterious data collectors. That's all coming up. My name is Ben Brown, and this is Municipal Equation, a podcast about cities and towns in changing times from the North Carolina League of Municipalities. Episode 33. This is the theme music to a video game from 1990 called Hugo's House of Horrors, which ruled a lot of childhood, at least for those who played MS DOS computer games back in the day. You're the main character, Hugo, and you're in a haunted house looking for your missing girlfriend, Penelope, which I used to pronounce as Penelope back in the day. I was 10 years old. I'm playing the theme music now because I wanna stay connected to the last episode, Games Over Gangs, about teaching coding and video game development to kids who deserve a better avenue than what they typically find in the rough neighborhood that they live in. We got a lot of feedback about that episode, lot of great feedback, and a lot of people sharing it, which I really, really appreciate. Check out episode 32 at soundcloud.com/municipalequation to hear it in full, with some more reminiscing about computer games from the late eighties, early nineties. Speaking of which, thanks also to David Gray, the creator of Hugo's House of Horrors, for giving me permission to use the theme music here. Thanks, David. And a shout out to a very special listener who just recently developed a computer game in that 1990 era style. It was a quest game with big chunky graphics. And when the game was all done, when it was ready to be played, when she was done making the game, this listener told her longtime boyfriend to check it out, to play the game. Well, at the end of it, when her boyfriend beat the game, he was shocked. Something unexpected was unfolding before him on the computer screen. What he was looking at on the screen at the end of this game was a wedding proposal. As part of the video game, a wedding proposal directed at him from his longtime girlfriend, who was sitting right next to him as he played the video game that she made. So I want to say congratulations to my game developing and hugely talented sister, Lauren, and her now fiance, Andrew, for making it official in an insanely creative way. She sent me a couple screenshots from the game. I'll post them on Twitter. Muniequation is the handle, muniequation. Okay. On with the show and a really weird mystery in the Pacific Northwest.
So earlier this year, I started to really enjoy taking long walks. I don't drive. I never have. So I've always walked as kind of a means to an end, but never it's never been about the journey in and of itself. But then earlier this year, I started walking more just for fun, and I found that the more I walked, the more connected I felt to Seattle. And I've lived in Seattle my whole life, but a lot of it is still kind of a mystery to me. And so by slowing down and taking these walks, I it kind of felt like discovering parts of the city for the first time. My name is Susanna Dowling, s u s a n n a g o w I n g, mysterious Seattle resident. And one day, it just kind of dawned on me that I could combine my new love of walking with two of my other hobbies, which are drawing and collecting stupid, unscientific data about mundane things. Originally, I kind of thought it more of it as, okay, if I walk from Capitol Hill, which is a neighborhood in Seattle, to the U District, which is another neighborhood, I'll record how many crosswalks there are. And so I thought of it more as kind of a kind of like an alternative walking guide where I would have, here's a map of this route, and along this route, you'll see these stationary objects. There'll be 18 crosswalks. But then when I actually got out there, I realized that there was so much more that wasn't stationary, just some temporary odd piece of garbage or odd free sign on a mysterious mattress or see say, oh, there's a purple wig on the sidewalk and just kind of keep it to myself. There just felt like there was something to it. I decided to put it out there.
This person, Susanna Gowling, is perhaps the most mysterious data collector in Seattle. And people are talking about what she's been up to for the past few months. Gowling is the publisher, so to speak, of a comic, I think you can call it a comic, called the Seattle Walk Report. It's sort of like a comic slash newspaper. It reports on all the odd or at least remarkable stuff that she finds on her walks through the city. With cartoony illustrations, it'll tally up the number of specific items she comes across, like shoes on overhead wires, 11. Traffic cones that don't seem to indicate anything, five. Amazon employees wearing Amazon backpacks, 14. Free couches, five. People on solo wheels almost getting hit by a bus because they're blowing through an intersection while taking a selfie, one.
I recently got some Cali clickers for things that where there might be a large quantity of cigarette butts on the sidewalk or that kind of thing, and I just decide that that's the thing I wanna start keeping track of that day. I have my little clicker in my notebook. So I I in my head, I'm like a cool Harriet the Spy going through the city and reporting out on what I see.
Each edition of the walk report, which is on Instagram, just look up Seattle walk report, each edition names the part of town that Gowling walks through. It also documents Gowling's actions or decisions along the way via little yes or no checkboxes, like, did I see something? Yes. Did I say something? No. But the point is that by paying attention to the things that you don't normally pay attention to, you can find charm or peculiarity in your environment, ephemera that you can connect with to where it becomes part of the identity or character of a particular place, at least at that particular time. And by documenting it and putting it out there, you can find other people who sort of do the same thing in their own minds, or notice the same weird thing that day, or have the same kind of public experiences, whether enjoyed or endured. When Gowing overhears a man say aloud, quote, none of the beautiful women are smiling at me today, that's going in the Walk Report. It's only been a thing for a few months now, but it's already getting talked about. And not because Gowen goes around telling people about it. Like the spirit of the walk report itself, people like me are just kind of stumbling upon it.
I was actually I had an out of body experience the other day where I was sitting behind two people on the light rail, and they were talking about it. They obviously didn't know that I was the person making it, but these two ladies were talking, and one of them was trying to explain to the other one what it was. And just to hear two people having a genuine conversation where one of them was trying to explain what it was was really, really something else. I was glad that I didn't have my headphones in that day. Gowling, meanwhile, has a skill of being an invisible observer
as not to bias the environment around her. I kind of like,
that I could be amongst people at any time and they wouldn't really know what that I'm oh, that's the Seattle Walks Reports person. The Seattle Walks Report is obviously hyperlocal,
but it kinda relates to anywhere local, a method or tool for understanding what's immediately around you and the changes that locale undergoes over time. Kind of like in episode 22, when we talked about documenting the identity of a place through sound, recording the audio or the sound of a space and time, and regarding that recording as a legitimate document, legitimate data.
Seattle has changed so much even just in the last couple of years. And, you know, you can get into what Seattle is and who is Seattle for and what does Seattle mean. And I I see it as kind of a way to it's kind of bridging the gap. It kind of has brought people who are new to Seattle and into the city and what's the city all about together with people who have lived here their whole lives or have lived here for a really long time. And so I think I do have kind of a Seattle specific audience, but I think people outside of Seattle can also you know, anyone who lives in a city can kind of relate it to their own experiences in their city. I've had some people who are new to Seattle message me and say, you know, I've been feeling I came to Seattle. I thought I kind of had an idea of what it was. It's not really meeting up with my expectations, but I came across your page, and you're kind of you have a lens on the city that I wasn't seeing anywhere else, and it's making me feel more connected to my new city.
Which has created a new kind of conversation.
Some of them have started tagging me in photos that they take Mhmm. Of something weird that they've seen on the sidewalk, and they'll say, oh, this reminds me of Seattle Walk Report, or, oh, you'll like this. You know? And, like, I don't know this person. They don't know me personally. But now they're seeing something. They're seeing their neighborhood in a new way, and they're feeling a new connection to it.
But nothing brings the people of a city together quite like a mystery can.
Really early on, I saw I was walking to work one day, and I saw a carrot with a straw through it. So a straw had fully punctured all the way through the carrot. And it was so uniquely baffling to me. When I see things I don't understand, I usually assume, okay. This has to do with teenagers or drugs or both. And it did not seem it doesn't seem like the new dangerous teen trend, you know, that all the news stations are talking about where, teenagers are piercing carrots with straws. But it was just alone on the middle of the sidewalk with nothing to say for itself. And I stood there and I just looked at it for several minutes, baffled by how could this how could this exist? What moment led up to this in someone's life where this carrot is now sitting here on the sidewalk with a straw fully pierced through it. And for the rest of the day, I was obsessed with this carrot with a straw through it. I was googling around trying to figure out, is this like, what is this? But I put this up. I just drew a picture of a carrot with a straw through it, and I said, I saw this at 08:00 this morning at Nineteenth And Madison or whatever. And then I wrote pertinent questions. Number one, why? Some people in the comments theorized that somebody really wanted carrot juice and didn't quite understand how that worked. And then someone else I can't remember what the other, theories about it were, but I think everyone was equally, baffled. And sometimes at night, I lay awake and I think about that carrot with the straw through it and wonder what what was going on there. Because this is just too this is too much carrot with a straw through it.
Citizen detectives are weighing in. Of course, the carrot juice theory sounds a little bit too Looney Tunes to be a credible theory. A lot of people thought, well, if you're bored and you have both a carrot and a straw,
it might naturally come to that conclusion. The thing that really weighs heavily on me is the fact that carrots are pretty hard, and it was a plastic straw.
Carrot. She left it there for others to find and marvel over. A short time later, she returned to the scene, and the carrot was gone. If you have any information, any theories as to what happened here, head to Seattle Walk Report on Instagram and locate the July 12 edition. Leave a comment. And tweet me the same via the handle muniequation on Twitter. That's muniequation. And the Raleigh Durham region of North Carolina is another Instagram phenomenon. A quick side note to news outlets and places that compile lists of best places to do this or that. There's no such city as Raleigh Durham. Raleigh is a city, and then Durham is a separate city that you have to leave Raleigh to get to. When people refer to Raleigh Durham in the correct way, it's sort of a graduated reference to Raleigh Durham International Airport and the region it serves. The abbreviation for that airport, and I guess the region by extension, is RDU, which is part of the moniker of this Instagram phenomenon for that region. It's called RDU Baton, and it's a hugely successful social engagement project that has tons of applications, really, for any city or town. This idea could be repeated. At last check, RDU Baton was coming up on 29,000 followers. And there's a clamoring among people in the RDU region, or the triangle as it's probably better known, to have a turn at it. The way it works, r d u baton is an Instagram account. Each weekday, a different person from a long waiting list, which you can join at rdubaton.com, will get the password to that Instagram account. And that person can go around to his or her favorite spots in the city or the region, take a dazzling photograph of that spot, and explain in the caption why that particular spot or object or activity or scene is important to the person and how it might relate to the people seeing the photo. For example, yeah, you'll see a lot of pictures of the baton holder's favorite local craft beer or cocktail and where they got it. But you also see shots of historic or unusual architecture and where to find it, or of a city hall, or some atypical artifact, or a brand new or off Main Street business that isn't really on the map yet, or a place that maybe has all kinds of curiosity around it, And the baton holder for that day has the scoop on what it is.
It is a collaborative, user generated project that is basically a love letter to the triangle. Toni Chester, and I live in Downtown Raleigh, right outside the Oakwood neighborhood.
I am co director of the RDU Baton. I'm Lainie Willis. I also live just right outside Downtown Raleigh, and I am co director of RD Baton. It's really cool for people who are visiting or who just moved here or are new here, because it kind of gives you the highlight of not only are here are the coolest spots in town, but here are the coolest things to do at those spots. So if it's a restaurant, some of the best things to try on the menu or some of the best beers to try, those types of things. So kind of gives you a a best of, but, like, one step deeper.
How long have you been doing it? When did it launch, and what was the origin? How'd it come to be?
Coming up in November on our fifth birthday
Mhmm.
The baton actually started by two friends of ours, Britney and Susanna. They saw, an Instagram account called the NYC baton. Same sort of model, someone else some new individual every day would hold that, and tell kind of their story in New York. So they loved that account, started one here, not really knowing how it was gonna do, and then it took off. The RDU Baton founders, after a couple years, decided to move on.
Lanny and Tony were big fans and didn't wanna see it die, nor did they wanna see it misappropriated in the hands of anyone else. So they swiftly stepped up to take the keys and to keep the Baton alive. And it's just blown up with popularity. I mean, you guys are headed toward, like, 30,000 followers. I've got Municipal Equation account has maybe about 250 right now. Actually, close to 400 now. So follow municipalequation on Instagram. But
what was that like? I mean, when did you see it generate steam, and and what did you attribute that to? I honestly, like, I can remember the day we hit, like, 10 k, and we were, like, freaking out with each other. So I think it was probably around that time we realized, like, how many followers we have. And also right now, we have a wait list that's a year long. So A year long? Yeah. It's a year long.
And the people on that list take it seriously. RDU baton day is like Christmas day. And if you miss your turn, like if it's your day to hold the baton and you let it pass, then you gotta sign back up and wait all over again. People are on the ball though, and they keep signing up. It would be like
20 people a week, like, at sometimes. It would be insane because we get notifications when people sign up, which is also fun, but also can be really scary when you see your project take off. You're like, oh, man. This is now a big deal to some people. And, we care passionately about it, but it was a moment when we realized other people also care passionately about it. I think my big
moment of, oh gosh, was we use a form service. Like, it's it's through a service. And we got an email one day saying that we had, met the number of forms allowed for a month.
I would say at that point, you start feeling more responsibility to people and more like it's a service. It's a free service, but it's still a service. And, like, we don't wanna miss days or have, like like, people not have a great experience with the baton. That's very important to us. So they've waited so long to hold it and, like, you wanna make sure that they get to tell the story that day like they wanted to.
Lanny and Tony both have full time jobs. Despite the added commitment to the baton, they don't make any money off of it. They just know it's important to keep alive. They told me about one baton holder who works in government and would frequently eat lunch in the basement cafeteria of the North Carolina Legislative Building, which a lot of people don't even know that they're allowed to visit this basement cafeteria. I used to eat there all the time, partly because it's really cheap. Anyway, this guy posts a picture on the baton of the fried chicken or something. And people freak out with joy. Like, you know, wait a minute. You know about that stuff? Or, hey, you eat there too? Or have you tried the fried squash? It's amazing. So it's an example of people finding hidden gems in their town, where certain insiders will say, you know, oh my god, that's amazing. And people who weren't aware prior will take note and maybe seize on it or try it out or join in. So it's an opportunity generator that's completely driven by individual people and their knowledge of where they live. And in this case, everybody wants to be that ambassador.
It's interesting because I think when we realize people are taking days off work to do this, like, it's it's mind blowing to me that it is that important and that, special of a day that you would take one of your vacation days to, like, run with the baton.
So if it's that big of a personal investment, then the baton is really kind of only gonna get people who respect the privilege of holding the baton for that day. So there aren't many cases of people being inappropriate with it. But there are, of course, some rules. They're emphasized on the RDU baton website. For instance, you can't post any more than six to eight photos, which ends up being a good way to get people to post only golden material, the best photos. Go for the high points. You know, we ask that people not,
promote their,
politics on the matine. I was gonna ask about that, about, you know, promoting your your business or, blatantly using it for a commercial purpose or a political purpose. I mean, do do you have people who've tried to do that? We yes. We say no to any sort of political stance.
We're fine with the get out the vote stuff,
but anything that takes a side, we're just we're not okay with that. If it's a neutral awareness Yeah. We're usually okay with it. But if it's if it's a firm stance or trying to kind of push your opinion, so Tony and I try to hold the baton once every year, as kind of and it's typically around our anniversary. It's just kind of a it's a way for us to to be involved with it a little bit more publicly facing just to have a little while. But then Yeah. It's also a good way to, like, introduce the project or reintroduce the project. But this past November, we held it on election day and the day after election day, and we did that very much on purpose. Otherwise, people are on pretty good behavior. If the content is just really inappropriate, we'll just take that down too. But, again, very rare. Like, very rare does that happen. We've had a couple of, late night Yeah. Friday posts that have had to come down the next morning because we'll, like, wake up and just, like, what? What happened? Obviously, you were at a bar last night, which is fine. Do do you, but, like, holy crap. That was inappropriate. But everyone now knows that we were at the bar doing shots last night. So And doing god knows what what else.
Yeah. Instagram also has its own rules, and they remove inappropriate material based on reporting. But on the Artie Ubaton account, you'll find about 8,000 photos that exclaim the best parts of the community. It's food, its murals, its friendly secrets, its best skyline views, its different cultures, its beer, its personalities. It's a running list of best ofs that clearly isn't trivial in the grand scheme. Earlier this year, Lanny and Tony, being just two people who have real lives and full time jobs, took a short break from the baton. They kind of took it offline, so to speak, just so they could catch up on things and refocus on life. What happened in response? Take a guess. People freaked. Even the newspaper for the capital city, the paper of record for North Carolina, reached out and asked them what was up. Was this the end of Artie Yout Baton? What's gonna happen? I mean, this was news The people wanted to know. Eventually, Lainie and Tony put up an Instagram post explaining the downtime, and they assured everyone that they would be back soon enough. And what followed was an explosion of applause and smiley emojis from the comment section. One person asked, are you still taking applicants? I signed up over a year ago. Tony and Lanny responded, your baton day is gonna be soon. We talked a little bit more about how other towns or communities might try this themselves, might do their own kind of baton account. I also wondered how, say, a municipal government might try it. Governments are always looking for new ways to humanize themselves and connect with people. But is this just not the right way? Is it too risky? You know, turning over a government social media password to a stranger? You can answer that for yourself. But there are some best practices that we can learn from Lanny and Tony. They said the best posts, the most popular posts on RDU Baton are those that show people something they don't ordinarily see, like behind the scenes shots. Ever wonder how we do x y z? Well, here's a pic showing you how. And, you know, if you think about it, you've also got people in city hall or on the city payroll who have amazing historical or institutional knowledge that can feed stellar photo ideas and captions explaining what they are. You know, point something out that most people don't know. Show things that people don't normally get to see, maybe stuff from the archives or stuff behind the walls, with good judgment, of course. But that's also sort of just within the idea box, the toolbox of social media. That's different from a baton type account run by a different person each day. Well, Lanny and Tony, who have advised government officials before on why the baton is so successful, they sat on a state economic development panel once. They also brought up the idea of a trusted street team or a team of people on staff who, with their diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise, can bring a good variety to an Instagram account if they all participate. And so the hope is that you create great engagement and trust with the community and identify with its many different voices and walks of life, and you humanize and educate and share and create more of a sense of community. So that's the goal. Alright. So we've got art and mystery. We've got Instagram and a year long waiting list. What else is sort of at the core of community? What else brings people together?
Music is a shared thing. You play, yes, for yourself, but you change the environment around you, and people are really affected by that. I think in positive ways. Music makes us all feel. It takes us back and transforms
us. And mixing music with discovery is sort of hard to beat. Like when you're at some random small club and a hugely popular band shows up and plays under a different name. Like, REM used to do that. So that clip you just heard was from a promotional video for a program around the Seattle area. Area, and yes, we're back to Seattle, called pianos in the parks, which plunks pianos down in the urban outdoors. For people listening in North Carolina, it's been done here too, like the program called piano parking Charlotte. And it's like, even if you don't have any music training or background, if you see an instrument sitting out, there's this kind of magnetic effect where you're just kind of drawn to it, drawn to that instrument. You wanna strum it or press the keys or have somebody else play it for you. And, well, their video is pretty good at explaining it. So back to that.
Our hope at Laird Norton is that pianos in the parks will inspire people to reconnect with some of their favorite parks and discover some new ones, while enjoying the music and art that these pianos provide.
It's liberating for people to come strolling into a park expecting to enjoy nature, birds, and then to find pianos in the parks. It breaks down all the the barriers and it creates an opportunity that would never exist otherwise in a location like a park. It's it's magic.
Andrew Sobe. I live in Seattle, Washington, and I am the, projects director for an arts nonprofit here called OneReel.
And so pianos in the parks, is is that a a special project of OneReel, or is that one of many initiatives that you guys have?
So that's, one of one of many things that we do. We're we're best known around here for, producing Seattle's art music festival, Bumbershoot. Mhmm. This was actually this was our first year doing pianos in the parks here. It was the, fourth year of the program overall. It was founded by, Laird Norton Wealth Management. They're a a wealth management firm here in Seattle. And they, founded it and funded it and, actually ran the whole program for the first three years. So they brought us on to, to produce the event this year, and we just finished our, our first run.
So was it already pretty popular? I mean, it it had to have some sort of momentum behind it for you guys to step in and say this is something we wanna do.
In in the first year that they did it, they had 20 some pianos, I think 24 pianos out in parks for six weeks, which is, I mean, a truly ridiculous Wow. Ridiculous thing that they pulled off. But it also meant that, you know, nearly everyone in the Greater Seattle area saw a piano out in their neighborhood at some point in the summer. And from there, it just, you know, picked up more steam as the program evolved year to year. So it definitely had a lot of followers. We had, quite a few superfans who show up at every single piano to play and and catch performances. So, yeah, it was a great,
a great foundation for us to to jump off from. Andrew said the program takes donated pianos from a local partner called Classic Pianos in Seattle and gets local artists to decorate the pianos, to paint them, and make them really eye catching. So they're not just wood stained masses that blend in with surrounding area. And we make them available for the public to play, and we also do some scheduled performances on those. So when you put a piano out in a public space, does it stay there? Do you pick it up at the end of the day? You know, how does all that work?
We did a mix of both, this year. So we had, we had five pianos this year that stayed out for the full run of the program, which is about two and a half weeks. And so those, we have to have someone lock those up at night if there are houses or apartments or anything nearby. Mhmm. You know, we have to cover them up in case of, in case of rain, which we actually did not have any of this year, which was nice. Okay. But, yeah, we leave some of them out, out for the full run, and then we had another six, single day events where we would bring a piano in at eight in the morning, and, we would have performances, and open time throughout the day, and then have it picked up at, about 06:30 in the evening each day.
Have you ever had occasions where people have tried to kinda take advantage of the situation or make off with anything? Or, you know, what's the protection like?
Well, the the protect the protection for the piano itself is that, it's a piano. Mhmm. Right. Yeah. It weighs a little bit. Thing to to run off with. Yeah. You know, I was a little bit worried this year with, some of our our canopies that we had to protect the pianos from rain. And some of the we had sidewalls on them. I thought somebody might have grabbed one of those to, you know, to use as a tent or a blanket or something. But, we we did not have any problems with that. In the past, they've had, one or two, instances where pianos have been vandalized somehow. But, for the most part, I think, people don't mess with them. I mean, in part because, a lot of people just love love the opportunity to play a piano out in public. And also when you have a local artist, you know, putting their work out there, I think a lot of, a lot of people respect that, and a lot of people don't want to, take away from that in any way.
So, I mean, that that's really awesome buy in. I mean, just just being able to say that that people kind of embrace it. They they don't wanna lose that reward of of the program existing or flourishing. You know? They wanna it's good behavior because they wanna protect it. So Yeah. Pretend I I'm totally green to it. I I I'm kind of a foreigner to the concept. I wander into one of the parks where you got a piano. You know, is am I instructed anything by signage, or is there anything kinda telling me that this is something I can play if I want to? Or how does that work? How are people kind of educated about it?
So, the pianos that we have, out for the the whole time, we have no, no instructions or no nothing like that. We have, a sign with the program, the pianos in the parks logo. Mhmm. And then we have sponsor logos there, just so, so we can give some love to everybody who supports the program. And beyond that, it's just there. It's just a a decorated piano that is, sitting there waiting for someone to sit down and play. It it kind of blew me away this year. This is my you know, being my first year actually being involved with the production of it, how quickly people see a piano and just jump in there. I mean, there are so many there are so many hidden talents out there, and people are so willing to, to get right in there and just start playing. It was it was really cool to see that.
Yeah. Can you recall any particular special moment where you're like, you know, oh my god. This is what it's all about, or wow. I never expected this to happen, or, you know, any interaction like that between a a stranger and a piano?
I mean, there there were a lot of those. We had one one kid who was probably 10 or 11 who came to, all of our events. And, you know, every time he sat down to play, all of the adults who were waiting around to play the piano after him all kinda stepped back because nobody wanted to go after this kid. He was one of the best pianists that we heard all summer, and he was just, you know, some friendly 10 or 11 year old. But, I think I think my favorite surprising story from the year was when we were setting up, our piano, in Sturgis Park on on Beacon Hill here in Seattle. When we got there, there were some guys, you know, some sort of burly middle aged construction guys working on a new condo building across the street. And we started talking to them about the program and and what we were doing. And a few minutes later, one of them came across the street to look at the piano as we were setting it up. And then he sits down as we're setting up signage and starts to play just this beautiful music. And then after a minute or two, I realized he's playing an elaborate version of My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion.
In case you don't know, that's the Titanic song. I was thinking, you know,
I wanted to pick him for a piano player, and I certainly wanted to pick him for a Celine Dion fan. But, you know, but people surprise you.
So, you know, you you mentioned your, partners in this. I was looking at the website, and there's a lot of them. And you've got a few municipal partners, a few cities. How do you court involvement from, say, a local government, and and what do they do? Is it that they kinda buy into the concept and kinda give you permission to to place a piano out on their property, or what what's that relationship like?
Well, it's a little bit different with each, with each organization. For the most part, they are, you know, they're helping us find an appropriate location. They are, waiving the standard, you know, special events fees, and they're helping us move through that, that sometimes, sometimes cumbersome pre permitting process. And then they help promote the events to their own communities. That was one of the big things that we wanted from our, all of our partners, but especially the the partners with each parks department that we worked with around King County. This year, we started out looking at a map, and we wanted to, spread around as much physical space within the county as we could and also reach, as many different types of communities as we could. And from there, you know, from looking at the map and putting up, post its on there, we started reaching out to parks department to see, who was interested and, and who had, you know, helpful suggestions for us of of where to place these pianos.
So has it grown to the point where people are starting to, to ask for pianos or like, you know, when's our park gonna get a piano?
Yeah. So we had, four or five different, municipalities reach out to us during the program this year asking how they can get on the list for next year so that was that was great to see. So we're going to be following up with them in another month or two here to start talking about next summer and then also a lot of you know just private citizens who say hey this park down the street for me would be great when are you going to put a piano there or right or there's also hey there was a piano here last year how come how come there's not one there now we want to see one you know see one next time around so we hear from a lot of people who want pianos nearby.
So entering September, we're kind of getting out of the outdoor season depending on where you live. So why highlight this now? Well, if you like the idea, you can plan for next year. Andrew said, and this makes sense, that if you're interested in doing a program like that and you can't find a partner to donate the pianos, you might be surprised at how easy they are to come by on sites like Craigslist, where people even give them away for free. You can learn more about what Andrews people are doing and who they're partnering with at pianosintheparks.org. I'll have links to all the important stuff from this episode in the show notes at soundcloud.com/municipalequation. I hope you enjoyed listening to this one. If you or your town or region has a cool idea that helps connect people with their locale, let me know about it. One of the primary reasons for this podcast is to share good ideas or things that might be scalable to other places. You can email me at bbrown@nclm.org or tweet to me. The handle is at muni equation. That's @muniequation. You can also find the podcast on Instagram. Lots of ways to get in touch. Please do. I Also want to thank everyone who's left a nice iTunes review. Abby O underscore GA says, this podcast is very well done and does a great job of sharing ideas going on in local government. I always learn something and enjoy every episode. Michael k fifty two eighty says, this is a great and compelling listen. That's awesome. That really helps out. I'd love to hear from more of you. If you enjoyed any particular episode, we'd love it if you took about thirty seconds to tell us why in a short iTunes review. Also speaking of Michael Kaye, please go and check out the City Council Chronicles podcast if you haven't already. If you're having a bad day, it'll turn it right around. Thanks for listening today, and check out our past episodes at soundcloud.com/municipalequation. We're a podcast about cities and towns in changing times from the North Carolina League of Municipalities. We'll talk to you again soon. This is Ben Brown.
