Leaving tonight for Barcelona where I will be talking at the Innmotion festival tomorrow at the CCCB. Learn more about the event at the Innmotion 2009 site.
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Posts from: Steve Lambert
3 ton sign falls onto Broadway, N.Y. (1912)
July 1, 2009 – 2:29 pm
Just found this amazing image while doing some research. Another reason why the Department of Buildings regulates billboards.
Flickr Photo Download: 3 Ton Electric Sign Blown into Brdway, N.Y. (LOC). Another angle.
L.A. Weekly Reporter Wins Top Press Club Award For Investigative Article on Billboards
June 25, 2009 – 12:43 pm
Congratulations to Christine Pelisek, whose L.A. Weekly article, “Billboards Gone Wild,” won this year’s L.A. Press Club Award for best hard news story in newspapers of more than 100,000 circulation. This article that focused on the woeful job the city has done controlling illegal billboards brought the issue to widespread public attention for the [...]
Ad Nauseum comes out today
June 24, 2009 – 2:10 pm
Carrie McLaren and Jason Torchinsky’s book, “Ad Nauseum: A Survivor’s Guide to American Consumer Culture” comes out today. I have a copy and as a long time fan of Stay Free! magazine and, later, writer for the Stay Free! blog, I was still surprised at the great content I missed or forgot about. This morning [...]
Stay Free! on WNYC
June 22, 2009 – 6:08 pm
Jason and Carrie from Stay Free! were on Brian Lehrer today talking about Ad Nauseam. You can listen to it here:
Why It Matters (from Ban Billboard Blight)
June 11, 2009 – 1:59 pm
Dennis over at LA’s Ban Billboard Blight answers the question “Can’t you find something more important to be bothered about?” Fighting The Outdoor Advertising Invasion: A Trivial Pursuit?
From time to time, someone will take offense at our activities on the grounds that advocating for protection of the visual environment from an onslaught of commercial advertising [...]
Chicago Tribune: City losing war against sight blight
June 10, 2009 – 8:48 am
There’s a great op-ed in the Chicago Tribune by John McCarron. It starts:
“Chicago’s landscape is being swamped by a sea of unsightly billboards, advertising benches and illegal signs because of a toothless zoning ordinance that city officials admit cannot be enforced.”
Change is all around us, but in Chicago some things never change. Things like [...]
NYT: DoB Removes sign with 103 violation notices
June 1, 2009 – 11:59 am
From The New York Times City Room blog:
For several years — in spite of 103 violation notices issued against it — a three-story, wrap-around billboard has blanketed the lower floors of the 19th-century Cushman Building, 174 Broadway, at Maiden Lane. On Thursday, clearly feeling that its enforcement efforts had been lost on OTR Media Group, which [...]
NYT vs. SF Examiner on illegal storefront billboards
May 21, 2009 – 5:19 pm
Why is the San Francisco Examiner doing a better job of reporting on illegal advertising than the New York Times?
Less than 10 days ago the Times published a story on billboards appearing on vacant storefronts. It almost reads like an ad itself:
Taking advantage of all the abandoned retail spaces in urban areas, marketers are [...]
The Artvertiser
May 20, 2009 – 2:48 pm
The Artvertiser is an urban, hand-held, augmented-reality project exploring the live substitution of advertising content for art.
Software is trained to recognise individual advertisements, each of which become a virtual ‘canvas’ on which an artist can exhibit when viewed through the hand-held device.
The project was initiated by Julian Oliver in February 2008 and is [...]
Paintballed Billboards
May 19, 2009 – 9:00 am
It’s a shame the billboards were blank…
Prague’s street art collective EPOS 257 recently converted some blank billboards into abstract art with the help of a few paintball guns. They write:
Shooting into the white surface of vacant billboards with a paintball gun – blank canvasses in an urban environment, a gesture expressing [...]
Subway HD Screens: Round 5
May 18, 2009 – 4:26 pm
Stained Glass Post-Pixelators – Postronimos
via Posterchild’s Blade Diary
See also Subway HD Screens round 4
The NY Street Art Takeover Map
May 18, 2009 – 11:30 am
via publicadcampaign.com:
View NYSAT Project Map 04-25-2009 in a larger map
This map shows illegal/unpermitted NPA City Outdoor locations located in Lower Manhattan. All the ads together cover approximately 29,450 square feet of our public environment.
On April 25th approximately 30 participants whitewashed nearly 120 street level billboards in broad daylight between the hours of 10:30am and 2:00pm.
At [...]
NYT: Reporting a Crime as a Business Opportunity
May 12, 2009 – 1:57 pm
Just sent the following letter to the New York Times: Re: As Storefronts Become Vacant, Ads Arrive
Peter Sherman of advertising firm BBDO was quoted in your story, “All you have to do is walk out the door for lunch and notice the number of vacant storefronts — and they tend to be in prime areas, in [...]
