After moving to Chattanooga, Lisa hit three potholes in three years and ended up buying five new tires. She knew people elsewhere had taken pothole repairs into their own hands, and as a mosaic artist, she already had the materials to try her own version. Soon, bright smiley faces started appearing in Chattanooga’s streets. They attracted attention from drivers, neighbors, and eventually the city itself, raising questions about safety, public space, and what happens when one resident decides to fix something in her own strange, joyful way. Now Lisa keeps stacks of smileys in her car, ready for the next pothole that could use a little silliness.
Hi there, and welcome to Bottom Up Shorts. I'm Norm at Strong Towns, and I love being able to connect with stories of people taking action in their community. Today, I'm going to introduce you to someone special: Lisa in Chattanooga, who is running the Potholes of Chattanooga account on social media. But she's not just doing things on social media; she's also going out and improving potholes within the community. Welcome, Lisa, to Bottom Up Shorts.
Thank you very much, Norm. I'm glad to be here.
So you call this your little side hustle or side project? I would also call it an amazing labor of love. I've got an image up on my screen, but can you describe what you're doing and what the end result looks like after your work is complete?
Well, when I moved to Chattanooga from California, I was hoping to save money. I had just recently retired, and within the first three years, I hit three potholes and ended up having to buy five new tires. So all of a sudden, tire purchases were a line item in my budget, which was really expensive, and I was getting very frustrated.
The streets had been neglected for a while in Chattanooga, and that is improving. But at the time, I thought, shoot, I want revenge. I do mosaic art now, and I thought I have all the materials I would need to fix something. It's not unprecedented. There are quite a few people in different parts of the world who are filling potholes independently. I just wanted to start with something really graphic, fun, recognizable, and easy because I didn't want to take a lot of time.
So I started with a smiley face in round potholes. It's easy to see against a gray or black street. My very first one I built with pure revenge early on an Easter morning, probably two or two and a half years ago now. I had no idea how much fun I was going to have or how much joy it would bring me to step back from that pothole and just beam.
It was silly fun, and it started getting some space, and people were being kind around it. They would drive around it as opposed to over it, and we were all savoring the silly smiley faces that I put around town. It still brings me joy, and that's the only reason why I'm doing it. There are plenty of potholes out there. I occasionally experiment with other designs, and that's great fun as well. I try to stay away from nastiness or politics because it really is about me. I'm just having a good time, and that's my story.
Adding a touch of whimsy to the world is something we could all benefit from. But you're doing so in a way that means if somebody does happen to drive over it, they're not going to blow a tire or have to get their vehicle realigned. Even if somebody is out walking or riding a bicycle, those potholes can become an even more significant threat, and you're addressing that one by one by one. Can you share a little bit about the materials that you use and some of the learning you've had with that?
Well, I started my first pothole with a porcelain plate that happened to be yellow in my stash and quickly realized that's not very durable. The shards break up quite small and could damage a bike tire, for instance.
I happened to stumble across a box of Daltile at Habitat for Humanity, full of yellow tiles. It was perfect, and I bought them all up. It cost me probably $5. I started hand-cutting those pieces and grinding the edges so there weren't any sharp bits. I use a fast-drying cement, and that's probably my biggest expense.
I mix it up in my car. Then I learned I don't want to inhale all that cement dust, so I started mixing it to the side of my car, pouring it into a cleaned-out hole, and adding my smiley face, which I put on tile mesh. Then I add more cement for the grout lines and clean it up. I remove any rocks or debris in that immediate area. Then I just step back and smile, and you just can't not smile when you see it. I'm in and out in about 10 minutes.
Okay, yeah. Have you had to be quite careful about how and where you're installing them? I would imagine, obviously, not in open lanes of traffic. But you're doing so in a way that also interfaces with things that belong to the public realm and that city crews have a responsibility for, but are overwhelmed and maybe not always able to get to.
I do know that Chattanooga has really taken some strides to be more innovative and to say, all right, how do we break this mold that a lot of our places have gotten into? It seems to me that you've found that sweet spot in saying, I can participate in this. You're not being hit by responses from a city that might be so discouraging that you'd go away and not want to do it again, and yet you're thoughtful and careful about this. Do you want to shed a little bit of light on that as well?
Sure. I don't do it at night. That would be terribly unsafe. Number one, my favorite time is early Sunday mornings. There usually are no delivery trucks or traffic in the area. I do wear a safety vest. I do have a traffic cone. I do have one of those lights that go on top of your car that spins around. I have a clipboard, just all the accouterments of authority.
I've yet to have a problem with traffic or with somebody upset with me being on the street fixing it. The city once reached out to me and said they were concerned about my safety and the safety of pedestrians because people were taking selfies with the smileys. They were concerned about the materials that I was using, and they were concerned about the cost it would take to dig up my filled pothole. I had a conversation, and I think I assuaged many of their fears.
Again, we had this mutual respect. There have been times where the city has actually paved or re-asphalted around one of my smileys, which, okay, beam. There's also been an incident where one of the pothole crews covered one of my faces but left seven other holes on the street. So that made no sense. But the city is remarkably improving their pothole maintenance. They do ask the community to report potholes using 311, and they've recently acquired another pothole truck. I think we now have two or three that just travel the city to repair the potholes. They're making a difference, without a doubt.
There are plenty of potholes to go around, and the bad ones I don't really touch because they're deep, and that would be very costly to fill with cement. I have learned not to try and fill potholes in a bike lane because they could get slippery. I've learned to keep a little lip around my pothole fill in case I do need to asphalt over it, so it won't jut out into the street.
I've learned to respect the type of traffic and the time of day when I put in a pothole, so there definitely has been a learning curve. But I do feel semi-supported by the city and the community, and that is just so delightful.
I'm fascinated also by not only the practical considerations here, but the art behind it. Mosaic is one of those things that is often reserved for the private realm. At least when you think about our experience right now of where you would go and find a mosaic tile placement, it's often private homes or art collections or things like that.
But it actually has a great history of belonging to the public and being about adorning public spaces and improving them. I like that you're taking some of the most ugly forms of our current urbanism, which is our streets that are just asphalted over, and you're saying, all right, even there, we can have that beauty. What does that speak to you as an artist and as somebody saying, I want to bring beauty and whimsy into these places?
I do have a mosaic art practice, and as I mentioned, this is a side hustle for me. It's very cathartic when you break stuff and make something new out of it, so I find great enjoyment with it. It's a specific art form that's not always in the public realm. You are correct. But in Chattanooga, I've found an amazingly supportive art community, particularly when I'm able to tell the stories behind why I break stuff.
I think there are pockets of mosaicists that are thriving in their respective communities, and my house is a little bit of a visual assault because of all the broken bits around my house. But the whimsy part is so easy to embrace with mosaics.
Yeah, especially as you bring it into the world of potholes, it's something that's already broken, and now through broken materials, you actually reconstitute something that has a greater sense of wholeness and a greater sense of purpose. I just think that's amazing.
If you were to give some advice for somebody who wanted to get started, what would they need, and what would be some of the early things that they might be able to tackle? You said not in a bike lane because that can get slippery, but there probably are other places that you can go on a Sunday morning and identify a safe way to make your first mark in your community. What would that look like?
Well, safety first, without a doubt. If you make something to put into a pothole or on a sidewalk or on the side of a building, do it on mesh first in your home so it's portable. I have stacks of smileys in my car.
Check out the area and the atmosphere of the area. I would not put something on the side of a historic building, for instance, or cover up a beautiful brick street by any means. It's a lot of common sense: safety, taking the time to make something in a safe place before you go out and try to put it in a public environment.
Again, it's a learning curve for me as well. I'm still learning new stuff, and I'm learning to maybe sift my cement so I don't have such big chunky rocks in it, or maybe add a little bit of color to the cement to have some of the tiles stand out differently. As I said, it's a side hustle, and I'm just enjoying it tremendously. When I have time to experiment and try something really weird, I will do it.
Recently, I acquired almost an entire warehouse of one-inch tiles. Somebody DM'd me and said, "Do you want these for smileys?" But there were so many colors, and it was a form that was super structured for me. It kind of intimidated me, so I started looking into pixelated art. I've been making pixelated hearts and putting them up around abandoned bollards or cement chunks sticking out of the ground or the bottom of some of our electrical boxes. That's also brought me great fun that I had not had on my bucket list whatsoever.
It's the timing. It's the materials. It's the effort. For me, it's just that silly joy.
There was someone who posted in the Strong Towns Commons, our member discussion area, about organized versus unorganized public art. They were being critical of some of the very public art installations that have gone through an extended process with a jury and a vetting process. There are so many variations on that. Sometimes it can be excellent; sometimes it's just, oh, not my style.
They contrasted that with a really interesting crow demonstration. It was a crow bar, a bunch of crows at a bar, that was mocked up out in the world. I think that really stood out to me as somebody just thinking, hey, my community could use a little bit of my charm, and sharing that.
I love installations on power boxes and other small gaps. Probably what you are helping people do is pay attention to a place they otherwise never would have looked at, and that feels very on-brand for what Strong Towns is seeking to do and what our community members are participating in.
I'd love to hear from you, as we close out, what are some of the things that give you hope, not just in this work, but hope in your community?
Oh my gosh, I've got so much hope in the city of Chattanooga. There are so many interesting, dynamic people here. The art community is very supportive and very involved. I also really enjoy the fact that our neighborhoods, at the neighborhood leadership level, are getting so many things done in Chattanooga. Chattanooga is just abuzz with creativity and problem solving and support. It's an amazing little town. We call ourselves a little big town, but that gives me a lot of hope and keeps me here and thriving.
Yeah, I love that because there's the "build it and they come." I always feel that before that, we need "let them, and they will build it." There's that opening of that permission structure that makes such a huge difference. If people want to follow along or get inspiration from what they're seeing, where can they find that online?
My Instagram account is Potholes Chattanooga. There's also a link there that will show everybody where the potholes are—or the smileys, the fixed potholes—and where the hearts are now as well. Sometimes, if I do a different form or format, there will be a note about it in that map link.
I don't do anything on Facebook. I don't do newsletters. I don't take a whole lot of requests, but I do want to post my happiness.
Yeah, Lisa, this just fills me with joy. I'm looking at the pictures, and I want to learn how to do this. I'm going to take some inspiration to go and try it. Go smash a plate, because I'm sure that'll feel good, and then figure out what I can make out of it. I'm really grateful for you joining us on Bottom Up Shorts today. Thanks for sharing your story.
Thank you, Norm. It was a real pleasure.
It's wonderful. If you want to go and take notice of what is happening in your community, identify where people are potentially missing an opportunity to have a little spark or a little joy in their lives, and contribute in that way. Take inspiration from what Lisa is doing, as well as so many other ways for us to do this.
This can look like a party in your front yard. It can look like taking note of a neighbor and just assisting them. There are so many ways to bring that joy and to continue to build hope within our communities.
With that, I hope you will 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.