Deep within the big asphalt city, where an army of drivers with oversized wheels, marauder grills and gas-gulping engines threaten to flatten what little is left of a civilized spirit, one man and his Post-its wage war.
The man is Ben Weese, first-rate architect, lifetime contrarian, epitome of that great American archetype, the rumpled rebel.
The Post-its, the beginning and end of his arsenal, read: “Save the Planet, Get a Small Car.”
This is Weese’s latest act of nonviolent civil disobedience, in a life of protest that has seen him conscientiously object to the war–the Korean War, mind you–and take to bicycles decades ago when the rest of the world was sucking up gas like it was presweetened Kool-Aid.
And this is how he goes about this particular battle: Armed with the sticky yellow rectangles always in his breast pocket, Weese weaves his bike down the lanes of the city, eyes flickering side to side in search of the villain, the Sport Utility Vehicle.
He describes his prey: “Most of them are black, Darth Vader black. The windows are tinted so you can’t see who’s in there. The headlights are above your belly button, they hit you in the chest. The chassis are 3 1/2 feet above ground; they’re aggressive, the housewives need ladders to get up in them. They have Terminator grills on the front.”
When he zeroes in on his target, he picks up the pace, slips hand in pocket, tears off a Post-it, and, SPLAT!, sticks it dead center in the tinted-glass windshield. He doesn’t wait to read the face of the SUV owner, when he or she returns, stunned to find his or her armored tank essentially shot between the eyes. Weese wastes no time in stealing away, moving on to his next object of disdain.
In fact, the Post-it pulls right off, no more of an urban nuisance than sheaves of junk food coupons stuffed under windshield wipers.
Ah, but slapping that sucker on sure makes him feel the sweet surge of victory.
“There’s a war on between the pedestrian life and the auto excess,” says Weese, 68, who gets around town with his CTA Senior Citizen Pass, 75 cents a ride. “The CTA is a beleaguered operation, but you can get 40 people on a bus. A lot of traditional cordiality can be practiced in spaces where you meet people, where you give up your seat for a senior citizen. That happens on buses, that doesn’t happen in traffic.
“It’s a matrix of problems, but I find the social isolation, which has come to a millennial head, is epitomized by the sport utility vehicle.”
Weese came up with his little Post-it campaign last summer when he sensed how the humble-wheeled masses were being driven to fear and loathing by the Big Bad Wheels.
A doodler by trade, he sat down and doodled. He wanted to pen something that would make the Big Wheelers “stop and ponder, something to get through their shell.”
He settled upon a non-incendiary slogan; his campaign, after all, seeks a ret urn of old-time civility. He ordered up 4,000 of his custom-printed Post-its, and to date he’s personally slapped on or distributed to his disciples some 1,500 of the 3- by 4-inch gluebacks. “I give them away to like-minded people,” he says. “They almost line up for them.”
Weese is a white-haired, bespectacled gent who has bought only one new car in his life, a Volkswagen Beetle back in 1960. Sometime around 1972 he did put $300 down toward two Pedicars, foot-pedaled automobiles that, alas, never made it off the assembly line.
He has a few favorite haunts. “The most laughable situation,” he says, “is the cars idling up the block from Burton to the park in front of (the) Latin (School). All these women, petite little things, in these big boats with kids piling in and out. They’re masquerading as truckers. Why do you need a four-wheel drive to get around a city where the snow is plowed immediately?”
Another mother lode, he says, is just south of the Fullerton el stop, in the heart of DePaul. “You can just zigzag down the street, sticking ’em on the driver’s side window,” he observes.
Come Friday night, when he makes his one automobile trip of the week, he scores big at Midway Airport where he picks up his wife, Cindy, who commutes weekly to her job in St. Louis as dean of Washington University’s School of Architecture. He darts through the Midway lot, “sticking” SUVs here and there on the way to the terminal. On the way back to the car, it’s Cindy’s turn to be the Big Sticker.
Only problem, he was amazed to find out this autumn, she didn’t know a SUV from a van. She was sticking stickers willy-nilly on vans, minivans, delivery trucks, only the occasional SUV.
He steered her straight in no time. “You have to look at the wheels,” he told her.
There is at least one SUV driver, unstickered as of yet, who quakes in fear of strolling out to find his 15-mile-to-the-gallon, rainforest green Nissan Pathfinder pocked by a sticky yellow tsk-tsk.
Meet Dave Ebert, 33, office manager at Weese Langley Weese, the architectural firm of the aforementioned stickermeister. (Ben’s brother Harry is also a Chicago architect.)
“I know all about his campaign,” says Ebert of his boss’ battle. “I didn’t until last May when I walked in and said I bought a new car. He asked what I got and when I told him, he said, `That’s a sport utility vehicle!’ I said, `Yes it is, that’s why I bought it.’ “
There issued forth a long list of adjectives Weese saves for SUVs and a few other contemporary urban blights: Dangerous. Ugly. Hostile. . . .
Ebert admits his way-up-high-wheels do make him a more aggressive driver, even if his usual destination is the always-rugged Old Orchard Shopping Center.
Does he ever take his Pathfinder off-tarmac for some authentic four-wheel driving?
“Oh no,” says Ebert, “I baby my little truck.”
A Post-it waiting to happen, if we ever saw one.
