Uber is brilliant at this type of thing.<p>Motorcades for Presidents day:
<a href="http://blog.uber.com/2012/02/16/this-presidents-day-take-a-trip-in-the-ubercade/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.uber.com/2012/02/16/this-presidents-day-take-a-t...</a><p>Roses for Valentines day:
<a href="http://blog.uber.com/2011/02/10/valentines-day-go-from-zero-to-hero/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.uber.com/2011/02/10/valentines-day-go-from-zero-...</a>
I think this is just a premonition of what's to come.<p>Fast forward a couple of years, add in a ban (semi-optional) on visual advertising a la Sao Paulo, mix with freebee creative advertising, season with flash mob and suddenly our future could become extremely odd and confusing. Anyone who's not a fan of absurdism will have a hard time living in a metropolitan city.
This would have been so useful years ago. I think it was 1996 or so. Most of my friends were still in college but I had already had my startup running. It was early enough in the dot com era that my business was designed to make money, so I had a decent amount of cash in comparison to my universally impoverished university buddies.<p>Anyhow, my best friends were throwing this weekend house party where all the local freaks, geeks, and hipsters would be in attendance. So when my best friend called me to convince me to come in for the party that weekend, for whatever reason, I had this dumb idea. Perhaps this was a harbinger of the pre-dot-com opulence to come and the idea, of course, was on a much smaller scale but nevertheless, for no reason whatsoever except that I had for the first time in my life a bunch of cash burning a hole in my pocket, I suggested we get a mariachi band for the party. My friend looked into it. He found a group. He told me the amount for the basic band. I forget what was going to cost $250 extra to bring along as a musician (maybe an extra trumpet) but it all seemed very worth it. We needed the proper instrumentation represented.<p>When the band arrived with the party in full swing, they were pretty freaked out, since, this was not the normal kind of gig they played; no, not collage parties. So the woman dealing with the thing asked for half the cash up front. She also upped the price a bunch from the initial agreed upon amount but I didn't care. I was really just looking forward to seeing them play near the tapped keg around a bunch of mystified acquaintances. Now if I could have only gotten this done for $100, I would have filled the whole house with competing acts that night. Great work Über and thanks for bring back a fond memory.
Don't need an on demand Mariachi band, just go for a walk in Manhattan and you'll be bound to have one show up before the days end :) (Atleast from my experience..)