From outside the box

I'm not one to complain about things. Well....that's not completely true, I do complain occasionally. OK, so I complain a lot....whatever. But there is an emerging trend happening in Chico that I think takes away from the class of our town. I'm talking about people standing on street corners with advertising billboards and signs or dressed in silly costumes. And they're not just standing there. Often they are dancing, waving, spinning, whatever they gotta do to get your attention. I do have to admit that sometimes when I'm sitting at a red light it can be an entertaining diversion for a few seconds. But really....how much more "in your face" advertising do we as a society have to put up with?

I think this whole trend started with young teenage girls trying to get our attention for their car wash. And speaking of young teenage girls, isn't it funny how shy they are at that age but when you put them on a street corner in a cheerleader outfit or a swim suit, trying to get your attention for their car wash, they seem to loose all inhibitions! They go straight from Ally Sheedy's shy character on the "Breakfast Club" to acting like Richard Simmons after a triple shot of espresso in front of an audience of pumped up overweight soccer moms!

But seriously, we need to limit our avenues of advertising. Corporations are already finding newer and more subtle ways to get into our subconscious. Our psyches are being bombarded daily from radio, billboards, television, newspapers, magazines, junk mail, place mats in restaurants, ball point pens, coffee cups, even banks are starting to display corporate crap on their counter tops. We think that when we shop, we are making our own rational decisions about what we are buying but....are we? They are getting into our brains! I want to have a "this Bud's for you" just thinking about it. And now we have people dressed as chickens, uncle Sam, raggedy Ann dolls, all these different characters on street corners trying to charm you into whatever business they are dancing for. I know these are mostly young folks working for minimum wage, so I don't hold it against them personally. But sometimes as I sit in my car, watching them bounce and wave, I picture a giant anvil falling out of the sky and....never mind, that's not very nice.

I think my disgust with sidewalk advertising is a direct result of my one time visit to Tiajuana several years ago. Every bar we walked by had a "barker" out front, just like how they do at carnivals, trying to get the white guys to come into their bar and see the naked women. Did they really think this kind of "in your face" soliciting would work on intelligent, educated American males? I was insulted and put off by these kinds of cheap advertising gimmicks, not to mention that they were exploiting poor Mexican women. And I let them know how I felt as I exited each bar.

My point is that Chico has always been a laid back easy going kind of town. We don't need characters on street corners trying to get our attention so we can spend more money. If these tactics prove to be successful then others will try it. I mean, what if the homeless decided to start panhandling at every freeway off ramp and entrance to shopping plaza's, then we would have a real mess on our hands!