On Hating a Road
Interstate 4 is a river of concrete that stretches through my home town
of Orlando, Florida, distributing commuters and day trippers while collecting
the sort of animosity inherent to daily traffic jams, consistent death,
impoverished workers, and confused English tourists. Two years ago, in
order to capitalize on this abundant loathing, I placed signs along the
most congested parts of that interstate that read ‘I HATE I4.COM”
In its original intent, ihatei4.com was an unremarkable failure. I was genuinely surprised that people resisted giving me their money in return for cheesy “I Hate I-4” bumper stickers. I naively attempted to sell advertising space and ihatei4.com e-mail addresses. No one cared about these things. The cash came in trickles.
But the people did care about something. The evening after I put the signs along I-4 I had only just arrived home when two ladies knocked on my front door. They asked if I was Hank Green. I told them I was. One lady was meticulously made-up, blue eye-shadow, nude stockings, impressive eyelashes and shockingly immobile hair. The other, much rounder lady, had close cropped hair, and faded jeans. The former was Allyson Summers, human interest correspondent for WFTV news. The latter was Judy, bisexual freelance camera lady.
I am the sort of person who hates the local news, but when they showed up with their lights and their cameras at my house, I immediately caved. I looked like a huge dork on the news that night, but the other stations didn’t seem to mind. I ended up featured on 3 local news programs and in the Orlando Sentinel. Ihatei4.com was getting 10,000 hits a day. A success, I suppose, because it broke even that week.
I was being asked so many transportation questions by so many reporters, that I actually started to discover some answers. The road was never the problem, it was cars that ruined my city. But cars weren’t the root of it either. Answering question after question about the horrible transportation issues facing my city and my country, I eventually put the blame in only one place: Sprawl.
The people who came to ihatei4.com that week found that I had given up on selling bumper stickers and was, equally naively, hocking ideas. I confronted car culture. I told people to move closer to where they work, to change their idea of the American dream, to trade in their Humvee for a Huffy and avoid entirely the rising gas prices, interstate congestion, and constant annoyance of driving.
As you might expect, Orlando didn’t like being told what to do. I was angry and unhappy when I made that website: angry at Orlando and unhappy with my life. The only thing I could say when newspaper reporters asked me what should be done was “The road doesn’t need to change; people do.”
I said that so many times that I actually decided to change. I moved west and now my town is a small one. People think the road is congested when they have to wait 5 minutes at a light, they simply do not believe me when I tell the stories of Florida and our traffic woes. I can bike everywhere and I’ve let my car insurance lapse. In the last year I’ve changed so much that I don’t even hate I-4 anymore. I am no longer angry and unhappy. A year passed and I didn’t renew the domain name.
I’m fairly sure that the only person besides me who gained anything from my efforts is the guy who now uses the domain name to sell porn. And frankly, he can have it. Ihatei4.com taught me about communities, politics, sustainability and anger. On top of all of that, my life is better now, and I can only assume that is more valuable than any number of bumper sticker dollars.
For a full year I wrote a weekly column for a daily paper in Boulder CO. I wrote about being young, poor and green, and the column was widely loved throughout the city. It remains one of the most rewarding things I've ever done.
If you've got some time on your hands...check 'em out.
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