One night on Facebook, someone on the Ann Arbor Townies page posted a question about putting up banners over the street for a community event. This took me back to a cool, late summer morning in 1979, at about 5:00AM, when the late Steve “Wedge” Pysz and I trekked up to campus with the intention of hanging a banner for the Olympic Jam Sessions across State Street. Now there was probably a city form, fee and regulations about doing this, but Wedge was a big proponent of guerrilla marketing (or as we called it “wedge marketing”) and wanted to spring it as a surprise. Besides, he was pretty sure he knew where the mounting hooks were located. and I was game, so we headed over to see if we could find them.Sure enough, Steve knew where they were, and we carried the banner over to one side of the street and took a quick look. “That looks pretty high up”, I said. “Yeah, we’re going to have to find a ladder”, said Steve, and undaunted, we headed over to Second Chance to borrow one.
We carried the ladder in the predawn darkness through the Nickels Arcade up to State, and Steve started climbing. Unfortunately, the ladder wasn’t tall enough to get anywhere near the height needed but Steve would not give up. He was convinced that he could find a way to scale the wall with his bare hands, if necessary, but despite the effort, he couldn’t make it. By this time, pedestrians and traffic were starting to show up, so we took the banner and returned the ladder to the Chance. I don’t remember if that banner ever was put up where we originally planned, but if we had been successful, I’m sure Second Chance would have gotten a call from the city later that day…