The Bottom-Up Revolution
After seeing a neighbor struck by a car — again — Abigail Hoiland set out to make people walking impossible to overlook. She shares how Stop Umbrella works on real crosswalks and how one quirky tool can spark bigger conversations about community, walking, and safer streets.
Transcript (Lightly edited for readability)
Hi there, welcome to this Bottom-Up Short. I'm Norm with Strong Towns, and a key part of my work is connecting with community members and Strong Towns members that are passionate about making their places stronger, safer, more inclusive, more welcoming, and participating in that necessary work of strengthening our communities from the bottom up. I'm really excited to introduce you to Abigail Hoiland, who is the founder and genius behind the Stop Umbrella.
I'm going to talk with Abigail about the powerful work that she's doing to use creative measures to be able to introduce things in our spaces that help people take notice, see those smaller things that we each can do and feel empowered to take action on in our places. The reality is that when it comes to our streets, we often feel like it is the domain of somebody else, and yet there are many things that we can do to make our places safer. So Abigail, welcome to Bottom-Up Shorts.
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
You know our Chief of Staff, Carly Ober. You connected with her, and she sent me an email and said, Norm, you've got to check out these stop umbrellas because they're really cool, and then go and talk to Abigail about it. So can you share what is it that Stop Umbrella is all about and what's some of the things that you're seeing as a result of this work?
We are a very small company. As you can see behind me, this is my office, so there's not any opportunity I find for sponsorship or anything of the like. I reach out to people, and that's how we connected. She offered something online. I was like, oh, I love Strong Towns. I love what you guys are about. I love what you're doing. I was hoping to help be involved in some way, and that's how we got here.
Yeah, that's fantastic. Because it's a podcast, you'll have to use some very visual imagery to be able to describe what a stop umbrella is.
Okay. It all started—I was walking to our local coffee shop. When you go for walks, you meet all your local friends along the way, and you could see the regulars at the coffee shop. I was at the coffee shop, and one of the regulars had a neck brace and he had a cane. I asked him what happened, and he said, I got hit by a car again.
We were living in a Silicon Valley area, across not too far from one of the Google campuses. I mean, it seemed very safe, but the kids knew not to run inside the streets, but the sidewalks were safe, and it just blew my mind. I had two toddlers at the time—they must have been one and three—and you're exhausted at that time. I mean, you are just running on fumes, and the kids never want to do any of the things that they're supposed to do, and none of the devices they make ever work for your particular situation.
So my mind was always just buzzy trying to figure out ways to help the situation that were not already out there. I had my son already in a shopping cart and using it as a stand-up stroller because he wouldn't sit. It was like folding a surfboard.
So on my way home from the coffee shop, I was looking around and trying to think of my neighbor's problem, how he got stopped, how it could have been overlooked. Maybe he had—it was hard for him to turn. He was an older gentleman. Then it occurred to me, well, if only he had a way that maybe he could tell the drivers he was there without having to necessarily turn or make large gestures. I mean, if it's difficult for you to do that and going forward is your plan, maybe you need a little bit of help.
That's when I noticed that a lot of our neighbors had patio umbrellas. As silly as it sounds, I just made the connection that patio umbrellas had the same number of sides as a stop sign. I just had that passing thought—wouldn't that be interesting if you just put stop on an umbrella and pop it out every time you want to cross the street?
I wrote it down. I had a book of ideas and things I'd like to do at some point, and that was one of the things I jotted down. I mentioned it to a friend of mine, and she goes, "Abby, you should really do that." And as a stay-at-home mom at the time and part-time artist, how in the world do you start something like that? I can't sew.
So I just kept thinking about it. I was formerly a teacher, and I had the pleasure of working in China, and I remembered that a coworker of mine said, anything you want done can be done here. So I started looking online. Okay, well, how do you get things made for you? I came up with the idea. I outlined everything. I got the text just right, and I sent it out. It turns out we could get people to make the stop umbrella.
Then a couple years later, we moved to an area that didn't have as many sidewalks as Silicon Valley, and I was a little shy-walked, I guess maybe ignorant. I'd always lived in fairly popular areas, and I moved somewhere that was sub-rural. It was a beautiful area, but it was a little bit more dangerous for walking and biking. I wanted to be able to pick up my kids and get them out in the open air before and after school. So I decided, well, heck, I'll just get a pedicab. I'll use a pedicab to bring my kids back and forth to school every day, and that will give them the outside experience, and it'll be a lot of fun.
I was going to the school, and as I was crossing through a crosswalk, another kid was crossing the other direction, and he got hit in the crosswalk. So that was a big debacle, and it just occurred to me—everybody needs to be seen in crosswalks.
I hadn't quite made my umbrellas a business yet. I hadn't tried necessarily mass producing them yet. But I was like, hey, this is a bigger issue. So that's kind of how it came. Not just getting one done, I started getting several done, and then looking for markets that might be open to helping me sell them, and that's where we're at right now. I'm just trying to spread the word and use them anywhere possible, and it's taking traction, and it's a really exciting thing.
So people are walking, just going about their day, but when they need to cross a crosswalk, they will just open up the umbrella. Or maybe if it's raining, they'll already have it facing the sky, which doesn't need to be told to stop—although in Seattle, or where I live in Vancouver, sometimes we want the rain to stop. But then as you're about to cross, you just flip it to the side, and you're much more visible.
You're sort of communicating at a car-scaled size rather than the individual size, which is look at somebody, make eye contact. If someone's walking past you, I can generally navigate, unless you do the little dance of, are you going left? Am I going left? But in that context, we have seen that doesn't work with vehicles, especially in contexts where it's rainy or the conditions aren't quite right.
Can you describe what are people's reactions? Because there must be either an element of not necessarily taking offense to being told to stop, or else finding it somehow—not comedic, but oh, I've never seen something like that. There's a novelty to it. Can you describe some of the reactions that people have engendered because of it?
Oh, those are such great points that you brought up, because that's exactly what it is. It's something that nobody has seen before, and the reactions are so great. Sometimes people are offended. They say, how dare you tell me to stop? I know what to do with this situation. I know that there's a pedestrian. But I think communication in general, and this in the same way—when you send a text, you don't know how it's going to be read because it's just a word.
When you present somebody with the stop umbrella and with the word that says stop, you also have to deliver a smile or a wave or something that kind of makes it softer, and not that you're trying to control traffic, because in no way are you trying to control traffic. You're just trying to get safely across the street.
So for the most part, people are shocked. I've come across very few who are irritated, but again, you meet them with a smile and a wave, and most people are grateful, especially those people turning right. I mean, when people are making a right-hand turn and they're looking for the oncoming traffic, they're looking for everything else. The last thing they're looking for is a pedestrian. You pop that umbrella in front of their window—they see it. They're definitely not missed.
It's almost like a community joke. Everyone laughs together. Everyone sees each other and says, oh, that worked. Go ahead, you can cross. Overall, I think the work I've done in the community with the stop umbrellas and other various things—just the idea of something bringing community together is just phenomenal. It is really the best feeling overall.
It's certainly less threatening than the crosswalk bricks that became a bit of a social phenomenon on the internet. Because in Vancouver, people had set up on both sides of an intersection just bricks, and they called them crosswalk bricks, I think is what they called them. You would basically grab it and then walk across holding it.
It was playing into that sense of the unexpected, but also sort of the inherent dignity of anybody that is looking to cross the street doing a very normal thing, and yet having to contend with the fact that if you are not visible, it is going to be a real challenge to be confident that you're safe. Because if most people stop, I'm still not safe because I can't be assured that everyone will stop. We have to navigate our spaces in that way.
But the size of the pillars on our vehicles keeps getting larger and larger, and so an umbrella does a great job of expanding the size of what otherwise a body would take up, especially a child or a youth or others like that. Can you describe maybe how do people get these, and then let's talk about sort of your background in this as well.
Wonderful question. If you would like to get a stop umbrella, you can get them on Amazon or Etsy. I've tried doing the farmers market approach, and that is just not the best one. So I found Amazon really to be the best place for people all over to get them. Surprisingly, I've sold them all across the U.S. and even in Canada, which was very exciting.
They work with Amazon delivery vans, so perfect.
I have to say, I absolutely love that brick video because once that came out, everyone was sending it to me. Oh, I bet.
I'd love to hear then for yourself—you shared the origin story is certainly showing care and compassion for this man that had been struck not just once but now twice, and having to contend with that impact that this was having for others, children and other vulnerable users in the community. Can you share what's been part of your story that's led you to say, I am that person that can take on an idea like this? You mentioned that you're a teacher and you've had lots of experiences. Do you want to share just a little bit? Because I find it a good way of introducing members of our audience to kind of the whole range of backgrounds and interests that people bring when they begin to take on challenges like this.
Well, if you really want to go back, I'm the daughter of a Marine, so we were definitely brought up to help the community and to be tough. We had to put up with a lot, and if we wanted to do something, we had to figure out how to do it ourselves. We were praised for doing it ourselves, but also you got to figure it out. You're not going to get a lot of help.
I was very fortunate to live in Europe, in Germany specifically, for three years. Over there, everybody walks, everybody rides bikes. So I spent a good amount of my youth, at least junior high years, just walking everywhere. It just became a part of me.
So mix that in with a do-it-yourself attitude, and you kind of feel like you can take on the world sometimes. When I came back to the U.S., walking wasn't as prevalent, and I did walk everywhere, and it just brought me to other families and seeing how other people lived. I just have this love for community. I just feel like the larger your community is, the more you can see how other people live, the richer everything gets. So to me, community is everything. Walking just helps you in so many ways.
I've interacted with people of all ages. Then bringing in teaching, I ended up using the idea for the stop umbrella, and I turned it into a kids' book, and it was Giblet, the Chicken Who Crossed the Road. Because we all know the joke about why the chicken crossed the road, but it just ends there. I was like, well, for pedestrian safety, that seems like it makes a lot of sense.
Also, for pedestrian safety, they didn't seem to have a mascot. Growing up in the '80s, there was people who don't pollute. There were so many. There was always a mascot for everything, even cereal. So I was thinking, isn't it silly that pedestrian safety doesn't have a mascot? So I decided to go with the chicken.
Then I started wearing an inflatable chicken costume because, like I said, sponsorships aren't something I can afford, but I can afford to go into a 5K and wear an inflatable costume and give out little bookmarks to people and stickers and just kind of spread the word of pedestrian safety, and that there's options out there, and we're a community in this together.
It strikes me that you're bringing all of that energy. You could be doing it for knitted hats or it could be for some obscure art collection or whatever that is. But you've said, actually, I can bring all of this chicken suit energy to something that's also a very pressing need—not to in any way say that we shouldn't have more knitted hats or art collections, but just that recognition like this is something that's a shared responsibility that we have.
Because aside from oceans, volcanoes, and swamps, every place can be walked in, but not many of the places that we've created are walkable. So trying to get people to recognize, many people will still be obliged to walk in these spaces, so let's take that next step to make them more walkable and help our places.
I'd love to hear from you—what are some tips or suggestions or something that's helped to guide you that you could share with our audience?
I just can't say enough: community, community, community. Doing everything and meeting people and sharing your story and listening to others. I mean, it really is helpful.
When I first moved out here, like I said, it's rural. The walking isn't as easy as it has been in other areas. I thought, well, it's silly that the lines are painted as they are. So I contacted Department of Transportation, asking them why they're painted that way. That kind of rolled into going to meetings, and the meetings turned into having meetings with our supervisor. From there, then it led me to go to Facebook and reach out to other public forums.
Then from there, you start reading the comments of other people's complaints, and then you meet them. You go into the supervisor, and then all of a sudden, before you know it, you've started some kind of momentum going. You're offering signs in people's front yards. Before you know it, you've got a whole community. I mean, you think it's just yourself. You think it's just maybe one area or one weird painted sign.
The more you get into it, the more you meet people. I mean, the amount of people I've met through this process is just mind-blowing. It's really opened my work, the way I look at everything on the road. I mean, our biggest problem we have now is something I never thought would ever be an issue, which is I don't even know how to solve it, but I know the fire department needs fast streets and then the neighborhoods need slow streets for the kids.
So that seems to be the absolute biggest hiccup that our area has. I know people say sometimes the barriers can be different sizes to support different size trucks. Maybe the fire trucks don't need to be as large as they are. All of a sudden, this opened my mind up to a whole other level of problems that I didn't even realize were a problem.
I mean, you go from streets to sidewalks to paintings or roadblocks to four-way stops versus roundabouts, and you think, okay, that's just it. Then it keeps building and building and building. There's more things to look at and more things to examine, more people to talk to. Oh, it's fascinating.
Yeah, it is. It is a space where so many more participants will benefit from more participants. We will create the conditions in which we can begin to see that change happen. I'd love to hear, as a closing question, what is it that brings hope to you?
I know a lot of people are negative about the general population, but as a military brat and also growing up traveling a lot just because it was a way of life, I've lived in California, Virginia, Germany, China, Arizona, and I can just tell you there's more good people than bad people out there. As much as it's hard to believe, the more you share your story, the more you listen to other people's stories, the more you realize you have things to bond over.
I think going out and walking is so important for everything from walking with strollers and getting out of your house as a young mother to older age. I walk in a cancer walking group that has nothing to do with a cancer that's even applicable to my family. I just absolutely love them, and they go out religiously every Sunday. Oh my goodness, it's so good for you—mind, body, and soul.
If you can keep yourself safe out there, stop umbrella in hand should that be a situation that's right for you, just the world is a really great place, and I hope we all get to feel it.
Yeah, this has really resonated with me, and I just appreciate you sharing it with us. Can you share where can people reach out to you or find more information about what you're doing?
If you go to www.stopumbrella.com, that's my website. You'll get to see the history, pictures, where we've been on the news, and also contact information at the bottom, as well as buttons to click for the umbrella that you're interested in. We now feature three: an extra-large one, a stick umbrella—because I've been told that in the northern regions where the wind gets a little bit rough, they need something stronger than the collapsible umbrella. So the stick umbrellas are new. They're much bigger. So if you really want an impact, that one gives it to you—and then two collapsible umbrellas.
Yeah, and are you selling copies of your chicken suit?
No, that was a specially made one. That's always in progress. I'm always going to the tailor—I need this fixed, I need that fixed. This doesn't work, that doesn't work. But if you're ever sponsoring a 5K and you would like the chicken to be there, please reach out to me. I'd like to go to a lot more than I have already.
Excellent. Well, that's fantastic. Abigail Hoiland, stopumbrella.com, thank you so much for joining us today. For the folks that are at home listening, or wherever you happen to be, if you're navigating safely through the streets or feeling some level of insecurity, we together can certainly begin to address this more and more and more as we pick up new ideas, try different solutions, and try to address what's going on in our places. So take care and take care of your places.
This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a nonprofit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a Strong Towns member at strongtowns.org/membership.