The flyer was the internet before the internet. A piece of paper with a band name and a date and a door price and if you were lucky a drawing of a skull or a naked woman. The flyer told you everything you needed to know in five seconds. Who. Where. When. How much. The flyer did not have a comment section. The flyer did not have an algorithm. The flyer had a staple gun and a telephone pole.

The Ramones flyer. CBGB. Two dollars. That was the whole advertisement. You did not need a marketing department. You needed a Xerox machine and somebody willing to walk around the Village at two in the morning stapling paper to every surface that would hold a staple. The flyer economy was an economy of nerve. The band that put up the most flyers got the biggest crowd. The band that stayed home got an empty room.

Every telephone pole on St. Marks Place was a museum of flyers. Layers and layers. You could peel back a flyer from last week and find one from last month and under that one from last year. The telephone pole was the archaeological record of the downtown music scene. You could read the history of punk rock on a single telephone pole if you had the patience to peel.

I made flyers. Bad ones. A guitar drawn in magic marker and DAVID PEEL WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK SATURDAY written underneath in letters a child would be embarrassed by. But the flyer worked because the flyer does not need to be beautiful. The flyer needs to be there. The flyer that is on the wall beats the poster that is in the drawer. Presence beats quality. That is the lesson of the flyer. Show up.

The algorithm killed the flyer. Now you promote a show on Instagram and the algorithm decides who sees it. The telephone pole did not decide who saw it. Everybody who walked past saw it. The telephone pole was democratic. The algorithm is a landlord who charges you rent to reach your own audience. The flyer was free. The flyer was first come first served. The flyer was a piece of paper and a piece of nerve and the city was the billboard. I miss the flyer. The flyer never asked me to boost a post.