Infamous street artist Banksy’s documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop, premiered this week to lots of underground-ish hype (including L.A. Weekly cover story for which Banksy created original art). In the film (which Hot Sheet hasn’t seen yet), Banksy is the subject of the documentary, only to announce that he thinks the “actual” filmmaker – another artist named Thierry Guetta – is more interesting. So Banksy hijacks Guetta’s footage and makes the movie about him. Got all that? Doesn’t matter, say jaded and arts-savvy film reviewers, because the whole thing is hoax. New York Times critic Manohla Dargis comes to that conclusion. So does Fast Company design writer Alissa Walker. Banksy himself denies it. One of the funniest denial quotes ever printed in the New York Times reads: ‘ “I don’t know why so many people have been fooled into thinking this film is fake,” Banksy, or someone purporting to be he, wrote in an e-mail message from Los Angeles.’
So, if they’ve been fooled into thinking it’s fake, who fooled them? Banksy? If so, then it is a fake. Oh, never mind…
The catalytic power of Transit Oriented Developments (TODs) is well-known: Hollywood’s snowballing economic development, for example, includes diverse densities surrounding well-designed transit hubs. But not all TODs were created equal. So ULI Los Angeles (a district council of Urban Land Institute) launched a series of TOD Technical Assistance Panels (TAPs) to re-strategize under-performing transportation centers to help them achieve full potential. The first of these workshops – led by volunteer urban-design professionals – recently presented its findings at the Slauson Avenue Blue Line station.
One key proposal may rankle those who support TODs purely to get people out of cars: The ULI TAP urges more parking… particularly, a new parking structure connecting to the boarding platform.
“Adding parking is not ‘good’ from a typical green perspective, but it will increase ridership,” said Jonathan Watts, Slauson TAP chair and principal with Cuningham Group Architecture . Indeed, many successful TODs – from Long Beach’s Blue Line stations to the large Metrolink hubs – include strong “park and ride” components.
The media has taken notice. Articles on the TOD recommendations include Urban Land Institute’s Ground Floor blog, Planetizen,L.A. Curbed, and L.A. Streets blog. Lots of heated comments on the topic – especially whether it’s smart to include parking at TODs – in all these online publications.
ULI Los Angeles will present final recommendations on this on three other TOD workshops as part of June 4, TOD Summit in Hollywood.
Brian (no last name), from Daily Conversations, a grass-roots marketing blog, noticed a panhandler in his neighborhood was getting few donors. So Brian applied his marketing skills. He rewrote the man’s confusing sign, created a clear call to action (“Help the homeless – Donate”), and added an incentive (“Free hand sanitizer”). Brian also moved the man’s donation cup from the down near his foot up to the sign itself, so that people wouldn’t have to stoop or feel uncomfortably close to the panhandler. (Brian equates this to making a website’s “buy” button obvious and attractive.) According to Brian, the man quickly drew a crowd and people were genuinely intrigued by a homeless man giving away free hand sanitizer for donations to help his family/medical bills. Brian reports: “This experiment improved this man’s earnings by over 100% over several days thanks to me, and on top of that I paid him to let me take pictures (which he was very happy about being featured in a blog article online.)” Brian says the lesson for online marketing is to continually tweak one’s home page to generate new interest.
