Sunday, June 14, 2009

Next Event?

As many of you may have seen, at the garage sale we were collecting ideas for future events on the lot. Unfortunately I only have this photo of the board from early in the day, which shows about a quarter of all the ideas received:


Don't believe me? Here are the post-its on the PPL headquarters floor:


The ideas range from practical to whimsical, from active use of the space to leisure. The point here was to both solicit feedback for actual events as well as giving attendees a way to participate, the latter of which is the real point of this blog: email me if you want to be a team member and post your own articles here.

Without further ado, here are the ideas, in random order:

Sounders tailgate party
Masquerade ball/Carnaval
NO MORE UGLY CONDOS
Movie tent & chai stand
Crowdsource development of this property!
More events like the community garage sale (drawing of a happy sunshine)
Runway show!
Neighborhood BBQ!
Arts and Crafts fair, folks
BMX track
Outdoor Movies
discoteque!
independent shops
lecture series
Ballroom disco hall (drawing of a disco ball; i heard one was for sale at the lot)
Farmer's Market @ light rail station
Block Party -- BBQ, Music, Neighbors
Potatoes (could they grow in that mound of dirt? maybe...)
Invite Skillet Airstream once a week
60 second idea pitches
Walkable streets!
Free tacos
Skill building workshops (this link meshes nicely with Unpaving Paradise and the newly formed Howell Collective)
Street food vendors
Zombie dance (Flash mob ideas are very popular; anyone ever participated in or organized one? If so, email me.)
P-patch on every block!
Flea market
Swimming pool!!
Lego build
Carnival with rides
Putt-putt golf
Bands! Movies! Temporary Gardens!
Crop circle and/or corn maze
Strand bar (beach bar) sand + beach + chairs + booze
Solar powered robot battles
Pinewood derby
Speed dating on roller skates (now that's speedy!)
Ski mountain plus shooting range
P-patch in large (moveable) containers -- shipping containers?
Inflatable pool park (imagine if all these people were sitting in inflatable pools)

So, what do you think of these ideas? Outdoor movies was a recurring favorite and someone is serious about getting a lecture series going through their nonprofit. Someone else would like to move this year's incarnation of this block party to the lot and many folks expressed interest in a weekly flea market.

As it stands, the major hurdle to any of these events is getting the insurance required to use the space. I personally bought the insurance for the sale and am still quite a few bucks in the hole. If you'd like to help out, CHS is trying to recoup some cash so that we can hopefully put on more events soon. I'd appreciate the help.

But still, money or not, let's keep the dialogue going about what needs to happen next!

2 comments:

  1. How about different events on different nights? I mean I'm just thinking about how excited I would be if I knew that I could go down to the lot and catch some friends and see some good times. I wonder if insurrance is cheeper if it's all the time and not just for a single event.

    ReplyDelete
  2. yeah, it would be great to have a policy that covered recurring events: that's how the farmer's market handles it but they are covered under a group policy that is used by markets all across the state.

    a few other ideas for insurance that have popped up are getting in with an artists group and applying for grants through the small sparks programs, the latter of which i'm looking into this week.

    but, yeah, imagine if every thursday was, say, movie night and saturday afternoon was inflatable pool parties, and it all went down between a bunch of temporary gardens and sculptures...

    ReplyDelete