Parksville Mayor Ed Mayne believes the city should step up its selfie game.
Mayne brought forward a recommendation at a recent council meeting asking staff to prepare design and location options for a ‘selfie bench’.
The benches have been popping up around tourist hot spots for some time. Essentially, it would be a bench turned to face away from the ocean, or some other scenic backdrop, that would have #Parksville or some other signifier on or around it.
“We thought it was a great idea, very novel,” said Mayne. “It wouldn’t be any different than our bench, except for the fact that it would have the Parksville name somehow implemented in it and some way of doing selfies.”
READ MORE: Parksville Qualicum Beach celebrates Tourism Week
The purpose? To encourage visitors to take pictures of themselves.
The conversation went back and forth during council, with some members worried about it being too costly and too much work, especially with Parksville’s 75th birthday on the horizon.
However, Deb Tardiff, manager of communications for the city, said the process isn’t very expensive or complicated.
“I think it’s actually as simple as taking one of our existing benches, flipping it around, turning it around on that same pad, so that the view is behind,” she said. “And then maybe we could look at some signage that just says #Parksville, which would be next to nothing other than some staff time.”
A new committee that is meeting next week, on parks and open spaces, will discuss the recommendation, and it is deferred until after that meeting.