Sticking Together on Vermont Ave.
Post-it Note Art Spreads From Window to Window

By Laura Yao
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 9, 2008

You don't see them at first. After all, the office buildings on Vermont Avenue are tall, and you're walking quickly with your head down, maybe because you're late for work, or just because it's hot outside.

On the corner of Vermont and L Street NW, though, a cluster of perfectly bland buildings has managed to attract the attention of passersby. People crane their necks and point -- look up there! -- at an 11th-floor window, where a Ms. Pac-Man figure is wearing lipstick and a pink bow. Six floors down, there's a Mario. A few windows to the left, Link seems to be chasing a fleeing Princess Zelda.

Across the street, there are ghosts, some fruit and a Pac-Man. Frogger and Space Invaders also make guest appearances. All of the figures seem kind of pixelated, as if they're straight from some old-school video arcade machines.

Weird.

Here's Amy Smith, standing at her office window on the 11th floor of 1110 Vermont, to explain. There's a Ms. Pac-Man behind her, which now that you're up close, you can see is made of Post-it Notes. It looks like it's nipping at her head.

"I always dreamed of leaving my mark on D.C.," muses the 38-year-old, who works at Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm. "I guess this was one way to do it."

It all started about two weeks ago, when Smith sent a group e-mail to some friends about a barbecue she was hosting. The e-mail ended with the name of her firm, her phone number and her work address. Her friend Laura Elliott responded immediately.

"Dude," she wrote. "We have almost exactly the same address! You're at 1110 Vermont, I'm at 1101 Vermont. You're in Suite 1100, I'm in Suite 1100. Go to your window and wave." Smith and Elliott waved, laughed and went back to work.

Later that day, Smith received a new e-mail from Elliott. "Turn around," it said. Bypassing traditional modes of communication (smoke signals, semaphore, string telephones), Elliott had made a big yellow smiley face on the window, using Post-it Notes.

Smith reciprocated with "BEACH!," she said, because Elliott "had just told me she was working so hard at her firm and wasn't sure she was going to be able to take a vacation. And I was like, 'You know, we work so hard around here, you need to take a break.' "

The next day, she changed it to "OBX," urging Elliott to make the time for a trip to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. Then one of Elliott's colleagues thought it would be funny to change Elliott's original smiley face into a Pac-Man, and Smith responded with a Ms. Pac-Man.

It was around this time that another Amy took notice. On the floor above the original Amy's office, Amy Crosby and some co-workers were charmed by Elliott's Pac-Man. Not knowing about the signals passing between Smith and Elliott, Crosby put up some Pac-Man fruit with Post-its. It was a fun workday break, said Crosby, who works for Penn, Schoen & Berland, a research firm owned by Burson-Marsteller.

"Suddenly, it started to have a domino effect, floor to floor, building to building," Smith said. "Now it's made its way down the street."

Crosby speculates that more than 40 windows along that block of Vermont are now festooned with Pac-Man references, Marios, Space Invaders, Froggers, many putting Elliott's original design to shame. Some extend floor to ceiling and incorporate several colors.

Scott Talan, director of communications and public affairs for the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, works at 1029 Vermont, where a little blue ghost sits in a window way up high. Talan says his colleague Crystal Calarusse put up the ghost; Talan himself checks for new additions every morning, but says he prefers to enjoy the hoopla from afar and not contribute. He has no idea who Laura Elliott or either of the Amys is, but says that while the artists themselves are anonymous, the art fosters a sense of community up and down the street.

Smith and Elliott are talking about changing the theme in weeks to come. But even if they replace the video game characters, they'll think of something else just as whimsical. "You have to keep it authentic," Smith says. "There's no political message to it at all; there's nothing serious to it, that's not allowed. We spend way too much of our time on serious matters."

It might be a symptom of raging urban ennui on Vermont Avenue, but there's nothing that deep about it. In fact, just the opposite: "Every now and then, even in D.C., you've got to lighten up and enjoy life a little bit," Smith says. "Maybe it'll even make it to the White House window."