Billboard Hysteria

Two months ago, Becker Boards sent us photos of our brand new billboard. I had to go see it for myself to make sure it wasn’t a rouse, but sure enough, a 14 foot high, 48 foot wide billboard was talking about bikes. The photos got posted on Facebook and were an instant hit with our followers.

The ad was inspired by one LA Metro did. It struck a chord here. Clearing up confusion about whether bicycles are allowed to be on the road (yes!) seemed important.

And create dialogue it did. Suddenly people — and news outlets — wanted to talk to us about it. One hectic week, we had three interview requests we were scrambling to cover. We talked to two different TV networks, one twice, a morning news radio station, and a major local newspaper.

People interested in bikes in Tempe are finding us. These last two months, the ranks of people following us swelled by 25%. I thank you for joining us and hope we’re able to provide you with some delicious cycling community. Community is important.

Last week, long time TBAGers Jeremy Deatherage and Scott Nowicki organized a photoshoot at Tempe Beach Park for a possible new billboard design. We’re grateful for the dialog created by this one, but we have a lot we want to say, and our Awareness Committee latched on to a very simple message. I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but the goal is simply to make Tempe residents feel good about living in a bike town. We want to show cycling in Tempe as a friendly, welcoming, and pleasant part of Tempe.

We talk about our board, the Special Projects Unit, the Awareness Committee, and so on, but really we’re just a bunch of people who like riding bikes who meet over beer to work together on all of our ideas. Awareness, Special Projects, and Advocacy are mostly made up of interested members of the community. If you aren’t already on the Volunteers list, please click “update subscription preferences” on the bottom of this email (or click “Join Us” at the top if you’re viewing this on our site) and you’ll get the meeting announcements. Click Advocacy too — Tempe can’t say that there isn’t a cyclist community when we all show up to a public meeting wearing helmets. Thank you for riding your bike!