her name is ZoĆ« Bread and she doesnāt show her face, and sheās a British artist whose videos are basically her fucking with people in harmless ways - like, asking retail workers if they want an āofficialā picture of King Charles that is in fact a cartoon and filming their bewilderment (the person is never in the video; she films the floor and her shoes while sheās doing this). she also calls up companies who have stuff like ācall us to talk about [X]!ā written on their products to see if theyāll really talk to her about [X] and if the person at the call centre doesnāt know (āfull unedited silenceā is a feature in most of her videos), she will dig and dig until she finds someone who can. or, until she gets bored, which. fair. canāt fault that.
Iām currently trying to get a member of the british peerage to give me Ā£50 because weāre distant cousins. I appreciate her.
she travels around for these videos and one day she went to Manchester and parked on a road called Collier Street.
Collier Street has (or had, at the time) another car park at the end of it - the SIP car park. SIP is a private company that runs these. the signage on Collier Street indicated that the payment machine there was where youāre supposed to pay, so ZoĆ« and a fuckload of other people assumed that that was where you got the tickets. ZoĆ« put it on her car and went about fucking with whoever she decided to confuse today
she gets back to her car, has a parking ticket, and is confused
again - she paid for a ticket. she wasnāt trying to get out of paying.
because sheād bought a ticket from the machine that the SIP car park instead of the council run machine that is actually on a different road, sheād been ticketed. and, rightly so, she contests it and the person at the council says that the rules are the rules and thereās clear signage
Zoƫ: the signage is misleading
council: we donāt believe it is
council: we believe the signage is adequate
ZoĆ«, being ZoĆ«, doesnāt agree with this. she pulls up literal yearsā worth of data on the history of that sign, the parking on the road, and the number of people who got ticketed. very early on, she says sheās not actually bothered about her own ticket, but sheās upset that people are being caught out and sees that itās a money-making scheme for the council. she speaks to parking wardens, who mostly seem to agree that the signage is misleading. she has data. she calls them back. same response.
ZoĆ«, being an artist, makes her own sign. which she puts up below the official one. and then she waits to see how long it is before itās taken down.
[note: there was a side quest sometime during this - it went on for months - where she put cones in the parking spaces. the council moved them onto the pavement/sidewalk. this made it inaccessible for wheelchair users, people with prams, other people who canāt just move around them, which is illegal. so she called the council repeatedly to complain about the cones and monitored them until they were moved. this took ages - we are talking weeks.]
ZoĆ«ās sign gets taken down.
the signpost it was attached to, with the misleading sign, becomes a point of pilgrimage for British people who appreciate a good bit of humour with the intent of bullying the local government. it is COVERED in stickers.
her sign is taken down. the sign is not changed. more people get tickets.
[there was a second side quest, where ZoĆ« discovers that the SIP car park - the private one - doesnāt have planning permission. she doesnāt let this slide.]
not happy with this, ZoĆ« calls in to the local radio station. which has a Q&A with Andy Burnham. the Mayor of Manchester. she calls in and asks him about this. Andy Burnham says heās taking her concern into consideration and will look into it, and get back to her if she calls in next week.
sheās not put through next week.
she calls in again and brings it up.
[all this is happening while sheās repeatedly ringing the council to ask them about it]
she has gone from āharmless tiktok pranksterā to ācalling out government incompetenceā. with a MASSIVE platform.
eventually, after her being interviewed by the BBC, Manchester City Council puts up a sign saying where the actual car park for Collier Street is (there is a running bit where a council worker misheard her and thought she said āCollyhurst Streetā, which to my knowledge does not exist. ZoĆ« now exclusively refers to it as that, including in her radio appearance and on her phone calls)
she isnāt done. she now has a petition to force the government to change vague signage. the government said no, all their signage is adequate. sheās now fighting with them. in one of her most recent videos, she was on the phone with the House of Commons enquiry department trying to figure out how to contest it. sheās brilliant.
anyway, this is why the art of Fucking About must never be lost. big up Zoƫ
