City crackdown on fliers hurts local artists

Everyone has seen them when they walk down the streets of Bloomington. For every lightpole or telephone pole one walks past on Kirkwood, there are sure to be many brightly colored pieces of paper plastered up and down the beam, advertising a band playing at one of the local bars, or an arts festival going on the upcoming weekend. And now the city of Bloomington is responding to complaints from store owners about them and are cracking down on the posting of fliers. This is a crackdown that is unnecessary.\nBeing that Bloomington is a college town renowned for its music, local bands are as easy to find as someone with an opinion on the Canterbury Apartments construction. Many of the bands are just starting out, and thus have little-to-no fan base. Therefore, the only way to get people to their concerts is to advertise. And one of the best ways to do it is by posting up fliers. For the cost of a bunch of copies and some staples, a band could post fliers throughout the city about their performance to get people out to their show. These fliers are part of the Bloomington culture, part of what makes the city great. It's refreshing to come to Bloomington and find cheap advertisements of local bands all around you, alerting you to the culture that is around you that you might be missing. And now store owners want it to stop.\nThe main complaint by the store owners is that the fliers take away from the 'beauty' of the downtown area. Millions of dollars have been spent on renovations in the past year or two on the downtown, building new sidewalks, putting in new benches and renovating People's Park. All of these renovations, while nice, are simply doing one thing to Bloomington: Making it undiscernable to any other town in America. \nWhile it is true that there has been a law on the books since 1984 concerning the fliers, there has not been any crackdown until now. It does cost money for the signs to be taken down and to keep up the appearance of the poles that are used for the fliers to be put up. Yet, unless the city comes up with another avenue for these fliers to be put up, like the kiosks one sees around campus, city officials should refrain from this crackdown and be proud of these fliers for not defacing the city but instead giving it some character and highlighting the great music and arts culture that exists here in Bloomington.\n