Once the sun has won its battle with the clouds and rain, the events begin. Every weekend is packed with local events and nearly all of them are for a good cause. There are so many, no one person could attend them all.
But what about the banners? This about the banners.
Okay here comes the banners part.
As anyone who has planned one of the events that fill every summer weekend here in GroveAtopia knows, and I think, judging by the sheer number of summertime events, that means just about each and every one of the 35,000 people who live in and around GroveAtopia, you need a banner.
You know what I mean. You see them strung up here and there, sometimes over Main Street, or hanging on the tennis court fence, or on the Vintage Inn fence just off exit 174. They might talk about the speedway, or the Growers Market, or the Concerts in the Park, or simply say Kiwanas. Whatever they say, banners are a basic building block of event planning in GroveAtopia.
So if they are so common, how could there possibly be anything even remotely Byzantine about them?
Well I am about to tell you. And I should know because just today I hung my own banner.
I thought it would be a simple affair, especially because I have done it before. I knew the ins and outs of banner hanging in GroveAtopia. Or so I thought.
Let's start with what I thought I knew.
If you want to hang a banner over Main Street, and you have to admit it is a prime place, because GroveAtopia's Main Street, unlike so many other Main Streets, is still alive, so many many GroveAtopians will see it, you have to get a permit. Makes sense. We don't want just any cobbled together banner hanging over Main Street.
There is a 2 page ordinance that governs Main Street banners. The code specifies how big the banner must be, that it must have wind vents and use a certain type of grommet and hook to connect it properly to the wires. Once the banner permit guy decides your banner meets these requirements and no one else is scheduled to hang their banner over Main Street, he issues the permit and a city worker will hang the banner for you.
Now let's say someone has already hung a banner over Main Street for the same time you want to hang yours. Then you can go to the tennis courts. There is a lovely fence there that nearly everyone who comes out of Safeway or visits the post office has a nice long chance to look at while they wait for the light to change. It's a great spot.
But you need a permit for that space too. It says so right there on the fence. So you go to the banner permit guy and fill out permit and he decides if you can hang your banner. Seems pretty simple. Now here is where what I thought I knew ends and what I didn't know begins.
It turns out if someone is having a special event in Coiner Park, like say Bohemia Mining Days, the right to hang banners on the tennis court fence (and the basketball court fence - that's thrown in as bonus fence space) comes with that permit. If you want to hang your banner there, you have to wait until the special event permit expires.
Now let's say you just want to hang your banner on the tennis court. There is no other special event, there's no banner over Main Street, but let's say you like the tennis court space, or your banner just doesn't meet the requirements to hang it over Main Street, wouldn't you think you merely need a permit, just like the sign says?
Well I'm afraid it's not that simple. But we are getting byzantine now, aren't we? I promised you we would so here we go. The tennis court fence is only used if Main Street is taken. It's sort of like an overflow banner spot. The city really wants you to put your banner over Main Street after all.
That would be okay if you knew this in advance so you ordered your banner to fit the Main Street specifications. But I must say, it is more expensive to get a Main Street banner since it must be printed on both sides, be quite a bit larger, and have those vents and special hangers on it. But if you just assumed you could hang it on the tennis courts, you would have ordered a simpler, less expensive banner. But you would have assumed wrong.
So what if the banner permit guy is not around? Let's say he's on vacation. Well I'm sorry to say this, but you cannot hang your banner until he gets back to approve your permit. You are out of luck.
But there is one other option. You can hang your banner on the fence by the Vintage Inn. That fence technically belongs to the Oregon Department of Transportation, but the Vintage Inn, our local coffee shop that's just off I-5, informally gives permission to hang banners on the fence. That permission comes with some sort of caveat that says technically ODOT could remove the banner but they never do.
However, to get Vintage Inn permission, you need to track down the manager or the owner and get the okay. Now you can hang your banner. Which is what I ended up doing.
So remember this every time you see a banner in GroveAtopia. Whoever hung it went through a similar maze of byzantine rules. And you know what? I have a feeling there is even more to banner law in GroveAtopia that I don't know. But don't worry. You can rest assured that when I find out what else I don't know I'll be sure to pass it on to you.
No comments:
Post a Comment