About 725 people showed up at an urban walking tour of a sloped neighborhood on the hillside in the city of Pittsburgh. The orienteering club volunteered to create a map and placed 20 controls on the two walking routes. The idea was to expose the sport of "orienteering" to a bunch of folks already in-tuned for a walking event. A table was set up right in the middle of the thoroughfare right after the registration and packet pickup table. The club banner was on display. A big color map poster was on display. A hanging control was on display. Despite all this, and including some hawkish pandering to the passerbys, "hey, check out this free map", many chose not to stop and kept walking (people are very defensive, it was as I was selling Andersen windows). Other tables in the area were banks, health clinics, organic food vendors, artists, photographers. Of the 200 maps printed, about 100 were handed out, and a 60 second spiel given to the unitiated, on what is "orienteering" ("it's like a scavenger hunt"). A couple of hours later, some came to the table and asked what were those orange hanging things they saw on the first route. So I explained them (those were the ones that didn't stop in the first place), and some picked up the idea, and went for the second route.
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O club mentioned in the local press