2nd Saturdays Downtown is a happening place! The event features street vendors and performers, food, musicians, visual arts, “pop-up” retailers, indoor concerts, and discounts from Downtown merchants, restaurants and clubs stretching the length of Congress Street, including many downtown side streets.  When I came to Tucson 14 years ago we used to frequent Downtown Saturday nights. It’s the same thing with a new name, new organizers, new businesses, and just as much fun.

The folks at Odyssey Storytelling (disclosure: I’m one of them) decided to bring stories to the streets with the newly launched StoryArts Cart. Julie Ray generously donated her former Burrito Files cart and transformation began.  We borrowed a battery run amplifier/speaker and mic from a musician friend, grabbed a couple of flashlights and our video camera and we headed off down Congress in search of tellers and listeners.

We decided a theme would help people when thinking about what to say so we chose Bad Behavior and it turned out to be a great idea.  It seems that lots of people have stories about being bad.

Originally the idea was to have “shows” in a pop-up space where people could find us.  Turns out that it’s more fun for everyone to just stop people on the street and ask them to tell a story.  Sometimes a crowd gathered, sometimes the appreciative audience was Kirsten, Sarah, Adam and me, the Odyssey crew.

We have some rather dark videos with lots of street noise behind the storytellers voices that are great examples of how spontaneity can bring out the creativity in anyone.  I’ll be posting a few to the website soon.

Look for us next month on October 9 wandering down Congress in search of your story.