An earth scientist with a penchant for mixing street theater with apocalyptic events, Bruce Caron is now trying to save State Street from its retail "blahs" and post Thomas Fire "blues." Caron is best known as agitator-in-chief for the controversial Light Blue Line project in 2007 to highlight the impact of climate change on sea level rise. Now, he’s hoping to galvanize a pop-up “cash mob” of about 100 people armed with $20 bills to spend at a downtown Santa Barbara business whose identity will be announced Saturday at Dargan's at 4:30 p.m. Seven more similar events will kick off at later dates.
Caron said the idea came to him after hearing from the owners of Plum Goods, a locally-sourced, artsy-crafty gift and clothing boutique, how they’d been hammered by small crowds and low sales because of the Thomas Fire. “State Street was an ash-covered ghost town,” Caron said. “For a lot of businesses, this was the time they make about 25 percent of their sales for the year.”
“I asked myself what I could do,” he explained. Then he did what all would-be activists do: checked Google. That’s how he stumbled onto other cash mobs, mostly organized in Rust Belt communities in the Midwest. He’s targeting locally owned stores with “a commitment to the community." Participants are being asked to spend $20, so it’s important, he said, that the shops sell items priced accordingly. “We’re not asking people to buy $200 shirts,” he added. “Also, they have to sell things that both men and women can buy.”