TACOMA, Wash. — Just when everything in Tacoma seemed too quiet, a new voice could be heard shouting out “Hey Alyssa! When I get naked, the shower gets turned on!”
That’s the voice of Matt Fleming of Tacoma Shout-Outs. For $1, he will shout anything at anyone from his bike.
“It really stems from a place of boredom and frustration,” Fleming said.
Fleming got laid off from his restaurant job because of coronavirus.
“And I wanted to scream, and I wanted to yell, and I wanted to shout,” Fleming said. “So I was like, ‘I wonder if I can yell and ride my bike at the same time, and I wonder if people will pay me for it?’”
The answer was yes. A dollar is a pretty cheap price to send a smile, and most people donate more.
“Cindy! Happy birthday! You don't look a day over 35!” Fleming yelled as he rode by Cindy Sullivan, who stood in her front yard.
The sentiment was a message from her son.
“My heart is beating so fast!” Sullivan said. “This is so wonderful!”
The messages include everything from inside jokes to singing "Happy Birthday" to kids.
“We have a lot of reasons to smile,” says Fleming. “You're literally paying a smile forward. You're paying kindness forward. And that's kind of what it's all about.”
Fleming is donating all the money he receives to 2nd Cycle, a community bike repair shop in Tacoma's Hilltop neighborhood.
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