The Anti-Advertising Agency » london

Invasion of the Boris Bikes « LRB blog

Steve Lambert — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 20:04:40 +0000

The invasion of the Boris bikes is complete. They stand on street corners, corralled like docile, futuristic horses in their blue harnesses. They’re good bikes – sturdy and solid – with a rather pleasing sit-up-and-beg riding position the better to survey the road around you. Undocking them is also quite fun, like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The name has become universal, which is only to be expected, launched as they were with all the pomp the bicycling mayor could muster. It’s not that we’ve forgotten that the bikes were originally Ken’s idea, but that Boris is a far more visible cyclist. The official name, ‘Barclays Cycle Hire’, was never going to take off, despite the lurid corporate livery.

Barclays have got a good deal from the £25 million they contributed to the £140 million scheme. As well as painting their company colours onto the streets, in the form of the pointless cyan-tarmac ‘cycle superhighways’ that run from the centre of London to various suburban hubs, they’ve also bedecked the machines with their logos.

How different from the first municipal bicycle scheme, conceived by the anarchist Provo movement in the Netherlands in the 1960s. The Provos proposed that central Amsterdam should be a car-free zone, and that the council should invest in 20,000 white bicycles that would be owned by the people and free for general use. The council rejected the plan but the Provos went ahead and bought 50 bikes which they released unlocked onto the streets, where they were promptly impounded by the police or stolen. (Some of their other schemes, like the one that urged drivers to ‘offset’ their carbon emissions by carrying small gardens around on the roofs of their cars, were delightfully Swiftian. Others were prescient: the Provos argued that prolific industrial polluters should be fined accordingly, and that the chimneys of the worst offenders should be painted white.)

Barclays’ flagrant appropriation of such a utopian idea was always going to cause tension, and the Boris bikes have become ripe targets for ‘subvertising’. ‘Situationist guerrilla teams’ have been doctoring the broadside ad space over the back wheel.

The Vélib’ scheme, the Parisian equivalent of the Boris Bikes, and the largest and longest running communal bicycle scheme around, has shown that regular investment is a necessary to maintain a fleet like this. A number of the French bikes are dredged from the Seine every month. Others are hung on trees like Christmas decorations, or ridden down stairs until they shake themselves to bits. One even turned up in Australia.

Barclays probably doesn’t give much of a shit about you, but if the bikes are going to continue to be useful then ongoing investment is a must. It’s unlikely that the money will be forthcoming from Boris.

via Invasion of the Boris Bikes « LRB blog. (thanks Mandiberg)

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PublicAdCampaign’s Recent Five

jordan — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:00:09 +0000

Introducing our newest contributor, Jordan Seiler! Jordan usually writes over at Public Ad Campaign and is a primary driver behind an AAA associated project, illegalbillboards.org. Jordan is known for his unabashed position on reclaiming advertising space for art. He not only calls for civil disobedience, but follows through in his own actions. For the past few months Jordan’s site has been must-read material. Rather than repost it all here, I asked Jordan to give the readers of the AAA periodic updates of what he’s writing about, looking at, and working on. Welcome Jordan! –Steve Lambert

1-By producing a piece of illegal art in front of students, I hope to give them both the tools and the confidence to be able to go out and re-imagine the public environment they live in on their own terms. [LINK]

Winter Weave-Easter

2-Are outdoor advertisement companies paying for your protection? They’d like you to think so. Find out what London is up to and how it’s strikingly similar to New York. [LINK]

3-If Fire safety doesn’t warrant supergraphic removal, what does? LA’s ongoing battle with outdoor signage has reached new heights. [LINK]

More at Ban Billboard Blight

4-A valentine greeting you can’t buy. These are the kind of uplifting and personal messages you get instead of advertising when you allow the public access to its visual environment on all levels. [LINK]

5-Why can’t we be on Brian Lehrer Live? Cause we’re vandals. When CUNY can’t entertain socially minded civil disobedience, something is broken. [LINK]

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If CBS Outdoor had their way…

Steve Lambert — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:37:29 +0000

This is what the London Underground would look like:

from Public Ad Campaign:

This is a bizarre little video done by CBS to showcase their future products and subway station domination in the future. Without any people or sense of place the subway system is turned into corridors and vistas whose sole purpose is to lead you through one advertising experience after another. Very strange.

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Ad Creep Hits the Bike Lanes

Steve Lambert — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:30:59 +0000

from treehugger:

We have complained before about ad creep, how the public realm is being taken over by private marketers. I don’t know if I should be happy or sad that the Egg Farmers of Canada have determined that there are enough cyclists in London, Ontario that they want to pay to advertise to them by painting ads onto bike lanes.

Matthew Blackett writes in Spacing: “What’s the next step? Using the dashes on the road to point you towards a Wal-Mart, or use the traffic screens on highways to promote a new car model?”

How did it come to this?

“The blame lies squarely on the managers of municipalities who forget that their primary job is to provide quality service to residents, not to sell our sight-lines and turn our infrastructure into advertising opportunities. A city doesn’t always have to say yes.”

via treehugger.

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