         
towne clubtowneclub curating and PR (public relations)club research townetext paul 3/28 sign (pepsi) towne club mini hydroplane course
4.29.05 phone interview with George Geran (former owner of 4 Towne Club Locations). George now works in his home office in Salisbury North Carolina. He is 70 years old and sells machinery for botteling. He had also done this before his involvement with Towne Club. Towne Club originated in the Detriot area (Warren) in the mid-late 1960's (probably '67 or '68) by a friend Harold Samhat (a Detroit bottler). George owned 4 TC locations, one factory where soda was bottled and sold. This was in Wyoming MI, south of 36th St. at Jefferson. Another was on Plainfield, a satellite store north of the 196 exit (where the expressway crosses Plainfield). It was on the right side. TC was bought by the case. Customers were allowed to mix and match whatever flavors they wanted in the case of 24. There were 35 regular flavors to choose from and 9 diet flavors. Some of these were: 3 kinds of colas (each formulated to taste like Pepsi, Coke, and Dr. Pepper (a cherry cola), pineapple, pinapple orange, sasperilla, root beer, creamy root beer (draft), strawberry, cherry, lemon lime, sparke up (7 UP), grapefruit, grapefruit lime, club soda and tonic, dry gingerale (canada dry), regular gingerale (vernors), orange, diet orange, diet cola, diet root beer, and diet sparkle up. When I asked George about the name Towne Club, he thought it was used because TC soda embodied the early towns way of selling soda. Every town had its own brewery and soft drink factory. These places would always selll their products right there at the place they were made. This was before supermarkets were around, or at least common. George also thought that a more upscale connotation, especcially with the "e". TC's main asset was the closed loop of re-using their bottles. customers wo uld pay a deposit for the case and for each bottle. They would get their deposit back when the bottles and cases were returned to the Towne Club factories. In the earlier TC times, the total deposit would cost $1.50 (30c/box and 5c/bottle). By the end of TC times, the total deposit was $3.00 (50c/box and 10c/bottle). The bottles would then be sterilized and re-used. TC was a cheaper soda than the big companies, but it was still a specialty soda. For most of its existance, it was only sold in the factories and satellite stores. Later it began being sold in convenience stores and at gas stations. Eventually it was put on the shelves of grocery stores, and this was the beginning of TC's end. ....there more to come....
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Saturday, April 2 paul I went back to Pitch wrecking today to buy the pepsi sign. It seemed we could use it for several possible functions. I even thought that if we finished the research questions and had "towne" and "club" questions, we could put them on each side of the sign, photograph the sign and use it as part of the poster/card design. It might be a good way of explaining the project. When I got to Pitch, the sign had just been sold 15 minutes earlier. The guy did tell me that the sign went to people who were starting "Alicia's Coffee Shop". Does anyone know where this is? Does anyone know where we could get another sign like that one?
I spoke with steve today about the possibility of text on the roof. He said that would be possible. The roof is accessible from inside the building. He would like to be invovled. There is a special roofing coating that is aluminum in color. It is inexpensive and would stick. The only concern Steve had was that he plans to reroof the builiding in the next few yearr
Club research I am interested in possibly working on doing research about what clubs people might have an interest in. It would involve picking a geographic area around Creston and gathering data about what activities or interests people might gather around. The project could culminate in some gatherings or possibly the publication of data/maps/lists/contact information regarding what interest people have. We could even add some questions about what kind of pop people prefer and what they call it "soda". . . . . Method - I think the primary method would be by talking to people, but also some forms could be left behind that would allow others to fill them out and participate. We could also have some forms available at the space. Forms could be mailed, but the return on these is not great and the expense and time involved is a bit restrictive. It would need to be clear that this is a temporary project and that actual groups might not necessarily be forming, but that this inventory is being done to study the nature and range of interests. It is possible that the information could be used for the organization of clubs. If anyone is interested please let me know. If anyone has ideas about process or questions to ask, I'd be interested in discussing it.
I went on a little bike-derivee today to explore the area where Club meets Towne. I went up every street i could that turned in toward the club–what i really wanted to see was the view from their backyards, but was not about to trespass in people's yards on easter sunday afternoon. I find it interesting that I couldn't see anything of the country club or surrounding lands from the street, but you can tell the view from any house's window gets the lay of the land. So this makes me think of sight, or the Gaze, the power of what one can see. Similar to lookout points, castles, modern-day skyscrapers–all of these house power. The more interesting streets were Kent Hills road and Country Club street. Addresses of note were 749, 741, 738 and 715 Kent Hills–upon looking at our areal photo i see they're among the biggest plots around. If anyone knows who lives there it might be interesting. Overall I noticed a seemingly sharp contrast in income, no real cohesive neighborhoods of wealthy vs. non. Though Paul is right about east of the Club being a model of suburban development. I mostly just found that area boring. But the winding streets remind me of rambling country roads (oh–adventure! you don't know just where you'll end up! but wait...you do). This makes me think of the idea of ownership over nature as power. Even if it's in the form of a yard.
I would also like to further explore the relationship between Creston High and the Club, maybe this should be historical research. (longer derivee thoughts at Rachel Jacques)
Jenn S. has made a beautiful Towne Club Painting and Todd has colored an intense picture of a Towne Club boat. http://www.unlimitedsdetroit.com/photo_70.cfm 
I keep thinking of Jules' mom's description of the towne club store. For some reason it attaches itself to the ways in which the commercial world has taken over the civic or public world. It seems now that our conception of business and work is where we invest our imagination about human exchange, more than in our civic cultural life. We become part of communities through what we own/wear/consume in common than in what we dance/sing/form/say in common. I don't mean to slide into an easy critique of of business or capitalism as the problem, but I am curious about these things. Home-franchise business is a sector of this phenomenon. Amway and Avon set up a dual exclusive and inclusive club/community structure that you can ascend while working social connections for commercial purpose. These small soda-pop centers seem to have a possible relation to these alternate economic and marketing strategies. I'm not sure if the shops were franchises or were owned by the towne club company. Either way that they chose to establish their own distribution system is of interest. I wonder about this construct. How migh we establish a new towne club. What would it be. How would it conflate this complex notion of a towne (which includes everyone that lives there) with a club (which promises inclusion for those in it and exclusion for those not). Implicit in this concept are questions of social group, democracy, private-public space, and exclusion-inclusion. How might we create a space/event that held these questions? What spectacle-event would attract curiosity? Could we automatically give a free membership to everyone in the Creston neighborhood? What might membership include? Would it be like the red hat club? What activities would the club engage in? Games (I have this image of a twin set of images: a golf ball on a bowling alley/ a bowling ball on a putting green)/ projects? I love that picture that Todd found of the Towne Club hydroplane. I keep dreaming that we build a huge fake hydroplane out of cardboard, paper, and sticks. With a huge towne club logo on it. Then at the end of the project we walk it out of the space and cary it down to the river to see if it floats. Just imagine a picture of the the town club hydroplane tied up along the river in the foreground and the water filtration mansion in the background, like a grand riverside villa on the hill. We could do a club clearing house and gather data about who was interested in what in the neighborhood. What mutual interests are there? What would folks like to gather together to do? We could even have club patches. 
http://www.alpharubicon.com/kids/makesoda.html http://www.abqjournal.com/cook/65071food06-28-00.htm http://www.brain-builders.com/23004.html
I talked with my Mom, Elaine Dykstra (Rottman) on February 18th about her experiences working at a Towne Club Bottling and Selling Plant. Here's what I got from it: She worked there from 1976-77 for 1-2 years while she was in college, until her family business was created. She was a bookkeeper there. At the plant they bottled and sold T.C. It was also sold at gas stations. Located at Jefferson and 36th street on the SE corner behind Hoekstra Truck.... Co. It had the feeling like a small town business. She had to work in an office because the guy that worked out front was too much of a flirt. There were only a few employees there. Through the window in her office, she could watch the girl who had to stare at the bottles on the conveyor belt before they were filled to make sure that they did not have any cracks or defects in them. She thought that his job was extremely boring and hypnotizing. She earned minimum wage, which was $2.20/hour. She worked 20 hours a week. She couldn't name a favorite flavor. She could only say that there were gobbs of them. Some are cream soda, cherry lemon sundrop, and diet chocolate cream soda. There were different colored bottles. The green bottles were used/made earlier and the clear ones later. Before the smooth bottles, they made some with bumps on them which also had a different logo. Hope this helps someone! 3 jules
I was thinking along the same lines as you Kate but I was thinking of Root Beer We have all of the things that are needed here Native to Michigan to make Root Beer my Grandpa use to make it But I believe that it took some time to gain pressure because my mom tells me of the story when the bottle tops would gain so much pressure they would blow off because of the pressure and that was when they knew that it was time to drink the root beer. I saw tons of books at the Library on making beverages I think it would be fun to be organic soda makers.
ive been thinking about what paul said about maybe bottling some town club soda and bringing that back to the neighbourhood. what if we could use the bottles as a container for some other "product" that we might make (whatever that means), and use the bottles as an already recognised symbol of local production that has gone before us. presented in a non-precious way, the already discarded bottles regain use and evoke a familiar memory. this would mean that whatever we brought to the thing could be secondary and therefore not an overt assertion of our "art" on the neighbourhood. i apologise if this is stuff that has been discussed already or is pretty obvious. kate 2/22
  Paul (2/11) Near the end of the day today a few folks brought up 2 cases of empty bottles of "towne club". They got me thinking; what a perfect suburban brand. It captures the major distinction between "public" - towne, and "private" - club, and all that is loaded into these legal, cultural, economic, social distinctions. Zona placed the cases carefully in the window and took everything else out. I shot a few shots of the bottles in the window. I'm having imaginations about the product as food, culture, media. I wondered about making some beverage and bottling it. Ideally we could go up to Kent Hills Country Club and drink some as we looked over the urban meadows. Maybe shoot a video or advertise the brand and the unique qualities that will acrue in anyone who consumes it regularly in large quantities. I looked up the definition of "towne" and it did not exist in several dictionaries. I'm up for working on this as a studio project resulting in an event, the creation and bottling of some beverages, text in the window. . . . Let me know if you were part of bringing the bottles up or if you are interested in joining me in this.   http://www.towneclub.com/history/ http://phoenix.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2005/02/14/story3.html Local Public Goods and Clubs academic paper tcfront tcback  http://www.akdestinations.com/towneclubs/ These are a new line of upscale clubs that are under development in cities worldwide.
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