I hid these cards around New York and got the weirdest emails back.

How a real-world experiment to 'find my rat people' resulted in some of the craziest responses from Real New Yorkers.

July, 2022
Remedy Diner, New York NY

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I was halfway through chomping a pickle when my friend Ethan asked me a question. “Who are you writing for on your Substack?” It took me two more pickles to figure it out; “The answer,” I said, “is primarily, people who like New York stories. Also, people who are eternally frustrated, fascinated, perpetually pissed off, and simultaneously in love with the idea of New York.”

In short: Current New Yorkers, Ex-New Yorkers, and people who like reading about it.

I said I’d just finished a book by Paul Jarvis called Company of One, extoling the virtues of the humble mailing list. In one chapter, he uses the example of a community of devout rat enthusiasts to illustrate the notion of finding your niche; play to the people who want to hear from you, don't try and play to the entire world. He would often use the phrase “Find your rat people.”

Ethan shrugged, “Well, you’re in the right city for rats.” We split the check and walked towards the subway. Just before we reached the corner, a half-naked guy with six teeth let out a loud “Yeeep!” and swung a cardigan at my head before scurrying off. Ethan took a beat and muttered, “Oh, look, it’s one of your readers.”

I stopped at the corner and looked at the lamp post— It was littered with stickers, logos, and graffiti. It gave me an idea: What if I started doing the same thing I did when I was starting out as a comic, but this time for my Substack?

Some of you reading might remember I started this mailing list nearly 9 years ago by handing out cards with a QR code* to audience members as they were leaving the comedy club. I’d stand at the top of the stairs, hand them a card and thank them for coming, then ask them to sign up to hear about future shows. (Obvioulsy I’d only do this if my set went well. If I bombed, I’d make myself scarce.) I’d send out one email every Wednesday with my show dates for that week. Slowly but surely, I amassed enough subscribers that I could fill gigs with return punters, and subsequently get booked on more shows. (It beat the hell out of begging friends and acquaintances to come to ‘bringers’.)

*This was before 2020, when the QR code really got its day in the sun on restaurant tables.

I raced home with a belly full of pickles and sent off some VistaPrint cards. They had a QR code that linked to my subscribe page and a drawing on the back. Once they arrived, I’d stuff some in my pocket every time I left the house. I started hiding them around the city. I’d put them in the little black book the check comes in, wedge them next to bathroom mirrors, on bars next to the straws, between stacks of coasters, in grocery lines, lamp posts, bodega shelves, on subway cars— pretty much anywhere I could jam one of these things.

(I also had friends walk around with the New York Cartoons tote bags, but I have no idea if that did anything but make them look very, very cool.)

Slowly but surely, the subscribers trickled in, but with an extra spicy surprise I hadn’t quite anticipated:

I began getting subscriber emails from people telling me where they found the card, what they were doing when they found it, or just offering me drugs.

One guy wrote in saying “man. Saw ur shit on the bathroom wall at Billymark’s West. hmu if you want any stuff.” Another said “Yum. You look Yum Are you yum?” and another wrote simply, “Your[sic] gay.”

One subscriber sent a very long email about his cat being sick, before asking if I would like to accompany him on a date in the woods up in Riverdale. A lady in Inwood asked if I could help her fix her ‘computer phone’ because her nephew was at work all the time. I got a lot of savage curse-laden emails, but then a few nice ones from New Yorkers who ‘admired the hustle’. One guy said he actually got his whole crew to subscribe because it gave them ‘something to talk about at the table before the game started.’

So far, so good?

Over the ensuing 2 years, I updated the cards to various formats with different illustrations of different neighbourhoods. The emails got weirder, but the subscribers stuck around (hey, friends! 👋). I tried some fancy ones for higher end bars and restaurants and smaller ones for comic conventions and smaller nooks.

This month, Substack introduced their own QR code generator in the settings page. If you want to run this same crazy little experiment, I’d highly encourage you to give it a whirl. Find your people. They’re out there, somewhere. (And some of them might want to sell you drugs.)