PASTING UP

One hot Mid-August evening in Cardiff city centre down one of the alleys around Cardiff Museum, close to the student areas. Me and Andy ‘Shrew’ pasting up art work and posters. We’d chosen a spot that could be seen from the busy road and had good footfall in the morning from both workers and students. Both laughing and joking until from the far end of the skinny alleyway the blue lights flashed. Luckily it was a riot van so we had time. The poster I was just slopping the last bit of wallpaper paste was my character DroneBoy wearing a crown, the top wasn’t yet covered so his crown sagged and dripped slimy paste as he curled in a bowing motion to the floor. We quickly gathered up our remaining posters, long handled wall paper brushes and buckets of wallpaper paste.  In my head I’d like that moment captured on tape, but in truth we looked like Del Boy and Rodney Trotter escaping a bungled cash in hand job. Even though we had arm fulls of utensils we still had a decent lead on our pursuers. Andy in front had the long handled brushes which in hindsight was the best thing to grab for a sprint through the city, I trailed behind with two half full buckets of wall paper pasted sloshing around whilst the cheap handles almost gave way, rolled up posters in my arm pit. Too concerned with the slimy substance getting on my new DC trainers, I didn’t notice the route Andy was taking, he was hot stepping directly to my car. As soon as I clocked this miscalculation, I called out that I’m not getting in the car for a police chase. We turned to change direction but it was too late the blue lights were dazzling and the police were already slamming their doors shut. Immediately put down the offending items and were both slammed against the side of the van, spread into star shapes and giving or names and date of births. The female officer in-charge, slick back pony tail, piercing blue eyes and the strength of two of me, asked me to repeat my date of birth, then, swung me round top face her “Ur older than me, what are you doing pasting pictures on walls?” She looked at me utterly disgusted, for the first time I wished I had a spray can in my hands to make it look legit, because the creased up condescending look was enough to make me quit. They didn’t want anything more to do with us, just shook their heads and got back in the van. They weren’t angry, just disappointed haha. And the flashing blue lights had already disappeared into the heart of the city, before we were creased up balls, lying on the warm floor laughing at what just happened, They didn’t even take our offending items.

This was early 2000’s, the internet was still seen as a fad for nerds, so if you wanted to get your raves known you had to be fully analogue and this meant posters printed and distributed. It was the wild west, but there was still honour amongst thieves. The big poster walls in the city centre were dedicated to the big boys. If you pasted over their events there was a physical tax to pay, so you had to be creative or have black eyes. To be seen in the city centre you had to network, you made friends with shopkeepers (record shops were top tier in this networking game, full of people who spoke music 24/7), snuck in to changing rooms of cool shops and second guessed where your target audience would eat and spend. The perimeter of the city was dashed with stickers, just above the push button crossings either adorned your logo or a small A6 line-up poster. On the outskirts of the city centre was the student accommodation, this was your bread and butter. A good few nights work getting into the halls for posters and the pigeon holes of students for flyers could make or break your nights. Rainy nights were best as the security guards would be tucked away and people would buzz you in. All four pockets of your jeans were full, one for drawing pins, another sellotape, another blu-tac and the last a tennis ball to chuck up to windows to get attention. They were great days, hard work, long slogs but I look back to them with rose tinted glasses, I would take these days over trying to mould a great advert and copy on Meta ads, it had more soul, the networking was real, you met real people and shook real hands.  I’ve made life-long friends with people who would take in the posters, see them at the night and found out about their real situations. I may be old, but I’d take scaling perimeter fences at 2am than hunched over a computer like a croissant wondering whether my poster will be seen.  My real buzz was people stealing your posters to put on their bedroom wall, asking if you had more so they could give them to their friends. Locally I wasn’t just promoting the raves but people got to see my artwork.

If you’re reading this as a young promoter (or old) I still believe in the old ways of doing things, and if you’re garnering local support I think the return on the investment for analogue and organic ways are still undeniably good. I don’t think anything beats stickers, good quality vinyl stickers beats anything, I still see stickers that I know have been on lampposts for over a decade (and thats a British weather decade).  If you create a brand that people take on as their own they will stick the sticker on their laptop, water bottle, car, all their prize possessions and will openly talk about what you do and how you do it with anyone interested. Thats the 10/10 organic community building and most of the time it starts with a sticker. If you wanna take it up a notch and paste posters and scale fences that's on you, it did work well in the past and I believe their are more opportunities today than there were back then, you just need to be creative and know your audience.