Tollefson Plaza Conquered: Secrets Revealed
Inspired by the Frost Park take over I rallied team In-Tacoma and we made our way down to the cement deadzone in Downtown Tacoma Called Tollefson Plaza. We decided to hold an experiment to see what would happen if Tollefson Plaza was turned into a real world wiki for a day. (A wiki is website or similar online resource which allows users to add and edit content collectively.)
With a large bucket of chalk in hand we began to draw in the center. I created the message “imagine.” very large in the center to get people to start thinking about this space and with the period its quite actionable. We then created a defined chalk area with the word “free” around it and a simple task of “Have Fun”.
We were interested to see if people would actually participate.
Leaving the park we came back 2 hours later to find that people were indeed participating and I had to add more chalk for people to use. We did this throughout the entire day.
Conclusion:
- People are ready to use this space
- People do some pretty wild things in this space like, take off there pants and jump in the fountain.
- Over 30 people participated and only one chalk penis
- People that wrote inappropriate things were moderated by others
- Security won’t stop you from chalking
- People created waypoints to help people find things in Tacoma, arrows pointing to the cupcake place for example.
Photos:
Thanks all for participating!
Michael works and lives in downtown Tacoma, he is a fulltime graphic designer, social media expert, and entrepreneur. Michael enjoys building online tools to help connect individuals and just really loves Tacoma.
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Comments (11)
RR Anderson
April 30th, 2008 at 9:06 am
brilliant! Nice work sir. Way to spread the memes.
RR Anderson
April 30th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Tollefson Wikiplaza. You should get a medal or something.
andrew
April 30th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Great experiment! Who is the crazy swimming guy?
In-Tacoma
April 30th, 2008 at 9:37 am
no idea
elle
April 30th, 2008 at 10:10 am
inspiring. Next time invite us down… we’ll show them how it’s done. Riding the train back from Frost Park last friday I slobbered at Tollefson Plaza a little for its large unchalked expanse of concrete.
tressie
April 30th, 2008 at 10:11 am
There is no way I’d ever put my precious body in THAT water! I’ve seen people peeing in it!!! I know urine is sterile but Grosssss! And I’ll get naked at the drop of a….whatever. But not there.
Erik B.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Nice work. Kevin found some of the drawings but the life of the event had died out by then.
In-Tacoma
April 30th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
These shots with the people are actually after kevin found it thanks!
Heather
April 30th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
The guy “swimming” was part of Tap into T-Town, a scavenger hunt benefitting Tacoma City Kids Marathon. It started and ended at The Harmon. Most points could be gained between The Harmon and Meconi’s, within a few blocks of Pacific Ave. No cars allowed. Points were given for a wide variety of items and pictures including: one team member completely submerged in water and a picture of the whole team “in their underwear.” So that explains the nakedness and swimming. It was a lot of fun. Pictures are being posted here: http://www.tapintottown.shutterfly.com/action/
My team, somehow, managed to avoid Tollefson Plaza and I missed the art.
I’m also going to miss the noon chalk off on Friday and would love, love, love to see a regular Saturday or Sunday chalk event in Tollefson for those of us that don’t work downtown.
tressie
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I’m gonna open up a funkoma vintage tollefson pop-up ! I gotta buy another tent thingie from China….then watch out…..Those pop-ups happen in the big cities….Guerilla Commerce….
In-Tacoma
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:31 pm
I don’t see anything wrong having our own farmers market in the summer guerilla style
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