One: who owns the street sign posts

This morning I rode my bike to a not-so-close subway stop because I had to run into Manhattan for a meeting and make another meeting in Brooklyn right after that one. And I was late. I get to the station, find a street sign to lock up to, and the guy hawking the Daily News comes up to me yelling. He tells me that is his sign, and that he is going to lock up his newspaper rack AND stool to it, and I have to go find somewhere else. I tell him he doesn’t own the street sign and start locking up, and he says that if I do that he will simply lock his rack up around my bike and I will not be able to get it out. And I’m running late.

As I scuffled off around the corner to find another street sign on the next block my head was full of expletives, but now, sitting on the ferry to Staten Island I am a bit more calm about it, but I have nagging questions: who owns the space. Who has the right to lock what to signs. Are the rights of individuals different than those of corporations. What about corporations acting via pseudo-independent citizens like the Daily News guy. And what is the answer in principle, what is the law’s answer, and how wide is the gap?

Two: obeying the law like an obedient dog.

I ride the Staten Island ferry three times a week to teach at the College of Staten Island. Sometimes I am on bicycle (not as often this semester as I would like) and usually I have a backpack full of books, student papers and my daily rations for my excursion into the crypto-suburbs. Almost every time I pass through the threshold of security I am eyed by the man with the bomb dog. About half of the time he asks me to take my bag off and let his dog inspect it. But every time one of the bomb-dog-men tells me to take off my bag for inspection he says it as if I should already know that I was supposed to take it off for him.

Today I’m running late (its the theme for today) and I am trotting towards the door to the downstairs bikes-only segregated waiting area in my bike shoes (which means I can’t go very fast), and the man yells out “Hey! You!” and points at me. He is jogging over to me. He simply points to the ground. I’ve done this enough times that I have internalized this procedure. I remove my bag and put it on the floor. Take two steps back. You always have to step back from the bag — as if it is a bomb… The dog sniffs it for 10 seconds. Walks back to his master, and the master walks away.

It is amazing that I have been interpolated into the bomb-dog-man’s vocabulary of power. He calls out short commands, I stop, and respond. He points to the ground. I know what the command means, and do as commanded. I am an obedient, well disciplined dog in the dog master’s control society.

“…it’s about hitting people with something visceral that will force them to confront an unlicensed alternative to the current monopoly on visual space held by our local governments and their corporate sponsors.”

“Part of defining a public space is decorating it, inhabiting it and playing with new uses for it. Just because we weren’t consulted on the design process of our cities doesn't make them any less ours, and shouldn't mean that we have to sit out when our idea of how the space can be put to use doesn't mesh with the official stance.”

“Turning a public space into a vehicle for any kind of art is a politicized act in itself, whether or not the project has overtly political content.”

“The power of street art doesn't necessarily even have to lie within the content of the pieces themselves, but rather in the knowledge that no permission was sought, that someone is still working outside the systems that dictate who is allowed to use public visual space.”

via Public Ad Campaign: Situationist Methodology Still Sits Well With Me.

The billboard industry is—obviously—in the business of getting messages across.

This they have managed to do, with a vengeance.

In anticipation of today's City Council debate on a proposed new billboard bylaw and tax, the billboard industry has been using its own platform to communicate its deep opposition to these measures. The Out-of-Home Marketing Association of Canada (OMAC), which represents the vast majority of billboard companies operating in Toronto, launched this campaign last week, setting aside 139 billboards for the cause.

Inconveniently, it turns out that at least two of these 139 billboards have been deemed illegal by the City. As pointed out and explained to us by Rami Tabello of Illegal Signs, both are in violation of existing regulations and neither should be doing what they are doing, namely expressing just how aggrieved and put-upon the billboard industry is feeling.

And this, say public-space activists, is precisely the point.

[snip]

The proposed regulations will not eliminate billboards, and they aren’t trying to. Nobody is attempting to strangle the industry to death, stamp out all billboards across the land, or otherwise start a revolution. The City has every right to govern what goes on in our public spaces, and it has every obligation to be a good steward of those spaces, balancing the commercial interests of the industry and the property owners to whom billboard companies pay rent with the civic interests of the majority of Torontonians, 70% of whom support this tax according to a recent poll [PDF].

Nobody likes to be forced to play by the rules. That doesn’t make refereeing an unfair practice.

via Billboard Companies Protest Billboard Tax…On Illegal Billboards – Torontoist.

I woke up half drunk today cause last night was crazy! Had a feeling today needed to involve some art and a bit of takeover. Went to Da Vinci and bought some paper and voila. Art happens at all times of the day. PS: I met couple that is going to do their wedding photos in front of this piece if it is still up tomorrow. NPA, leave it up till tomorrow you bastards. This will be a fantastic moment for the bide and groom to be. 18th and 10th avenue, NEW YORK, 09-25-09.

via Public Ad Campaign: Newest PAC Work.

The lamppost with all the flyers for music shows says “Dont Advertise” but… do they mean, don’t advertise anything other than indy rock. Or does no one care?

At first we thought that the Ginger Ale was listed as Sugar Free because it has Corn Syrup in it, not real Sugar. That would have been some amazing mislabling. Instead, they just ran out of the diet version, and slid everything over. Kind of a let down, but still funny.

The antique store has its new antiques, delivered in a new container from china. Oh, authenticity.

And the Mens Multi. So much for the rumors that it doesn’t exist.

And last but not least, this young woman was go-go dancing in her red-white-blue underwear on the street corner in NW Portland trying to get people to come into the lingerie shop for a big sale. Sex sells, but is that really how bad the economy is, that the company is that desperate, and the young woman is that willing to… dance near-naked on the street for money? I mean, I wholly approve dancing naked on the street for fun, but for money, its just a whole other thing.

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 leasing them at cut-rate prices and filling them with their ads.

At first, advertisers saw storefront advertising as a poor man’s billboard — that is, a bad thing. Now, they see it as a poor man’s billboard — that is, brilliantly frugal.

Nowhere in The Times story did it mention the ads were illegal. I wrote a letter to The Times, I got in touch with the writer, and I am hoping they will do a followup.

Meanwhile in San Francisco…

Today Brent Begin at the San Francisco Examiner published a story on the same phenomena, but with an entirely different take. In the first sentence he mentions that the signs are illegal:

A bright-blue advertisement for Intel popped up on the shuttered storefront that used to be a Disney Store on Post Street in Union Square, becoming one of many vacant buildings that has been illegally plastered with promotions.

Turning empty storefronts in San Francisco into advertisements is against city law and bothersome to anti-billboard advocates, but this latest trend in marketing is catching on.

The rest of the story is worth reading. Begin goes on to talk about the planning department’s effort to fight illegal billboards (at current count 43% of the cities 1532 billboards are illegal) and summarizes a brief history of guerilla marketing gone bad in San Francisco.

Kudos to Brent Begin at the SF Examiner for following the money.

P.S. If you’re interested in reading more, Rami Tabello of illegalsigns.ca visited San Francisco in 2007.

Reporting from Paris — Over the centuries, the French have cultivated the fine art of rebellion. The list of targets encompasses tyrants, wars, colonialism and, above all, capitalism in its many manifestations. The latest enemy may seem unlikely: billboards.

The Dismantlers, as a nationwide group of anti-ad crusaders call themselves, aren’t violent or loud or clandestine. In fact, they invite the police to protest rallies where they deface signs. With a copywriter’s flair, one of their slogans warns: “Attention Avert your eyes from ads: You risk being very strongly manipulated.” The goal of the Dismantlers is to get arrested, argue the righteousness of their cause in court and, you guessed it, gain publicity.
Read more: In Paris, an anti-ad insurgency – Los Angeles Times - thanks Chris

While most other street or graffiti artists concentrate on adding their own imagery, illegally, to parts of the subway system, Poster Boy, a kind of anti-consumerist Zorro with a razor blade, a sense of humor and a talent for collage, has made his outlaw presence known all over the city by cutting and pasting the images that are already there in the form of ads.

You’ve seen his work on this site before, in New York Magazine, The New York Press, and you’ve heard more over at PublicAdCampaign as Jordan is on it and has been for weeks.

The point of the New York Times piece is that there’s a lot of questions about whether the police arrested the right person.

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said that Mr. Matyjewicz (pronounced Mat-ee-YAY-veetch), who was also being sought on a warrant for a petty larceny charge from last year, was arrested in the art space, at Broadway and Howard Street in SoHo, and charged with two misdemeanor counts of criminal mischief.

“The officers had information that he was, in fact, going to be at that gallery that night,” Mr. Browne said, adding that he believed that the department had evidence of Mr. Matyjewicz at work scrambling parts of subway posters. (Although his face is obscured, there is also plentiful video of Poster Boy doing his thing at friendswelove.com and on YouTube.)

But a man identifying himself as “Henry,” who called The New York Times on Tuesday in response to messages for Poster Boy sent through friends, cast some existential doubt on whether Mr. Matyjewicz was, in fact, the man the police were after.

“Henry is one of many individuals who believe in the Poster Boy ‘movement,’ ” the man wrote later on Tuesday in an e-mail message, referring to Mr. Matyjewicz in the third person. “Henry’s part is to do legal artwork while propagating the ideas behind Poster Boy. That’s why it was O.K. for him to take the fall the other night.”

He added, “Henry Matyjewicz is innocent.”

Moni Pineda, a co-creator and producer for Friends We Love, a New York documentary video series that profiles young artists, said that she and the series’s other creator, Mike Vargas, had just begun a benefit event in the SoHo space on Saturday evening when they noticed a commotion involving a person Ms. Pineda would identify only as “a friend,” adding, “Poster Boy could be anybody.”

“The police came into a private event,” Ms. Pineda said. “They didn’t show a warrant to me or anybody. And the next thing we know, our friend is walking out with a bunch of guys we didn’t know.”

Without a doubt the police have arrested the wrong person

They’ve not only arrested the wrong person, in fact they’re on the wrong case. Plain clothes officers in an art opening? Looking for someone to arrest based on a tip from a flyer?

Why are city resources going to arrest an artist who said himself can only afford a razor blade to make his work? There are billboard companies with illegal signs all over the city collecting thousands of dollars per month off their crimes. Follow the money. This has to be the NYPD Vandal Squad in action.

Arrest the repeat offenders leading the organized crime outfits

If the NYPD has this kind of time on their hands, investigate illegal signs. As long as they are making arrests that wont stick, arrest advertising executives. I’ll quote Rami Tabello again, “There is a difference between crime and organized crime” and these outdoor companies are repeat offenders.

I wont even argue that Poster Boy is a vandal or that what he is doing is illegal. But who cares about a few signs on the subway when there’s such bigger fish to fry. Where’s the priorities? The sign enforcement unit doesn’t have enough investigators to begin looking at this 5+ story beast of an illegal sign on 520 West 17th Street and it’s been over 7 months since receiving a complaint. We’ve been on this sign since day one of illegalbillboards.org and nothing is happening because the resources are spent on tracking down New York’s hottest, penniless street artist.

New York loves Poster Boy. NYPD, on this one, the city is not on your side.

The New York MTA, in collaboration with CBS Outdoor, wants to cover the windows of subway cars with advertising. This story at the NYTimes Cityroom blog is peppered with rationalizations from the MTA. Here’s one of my favorites:

“[T]ransit officials say that advertising revenue is not the main motivation for the program.”

(Transit officials, not CBS Outdoor.)

They say the primary motivator is “to reduce what officials call ’scratchiti,’ or scratched graffiti on the windows…. Scrachitti is a major vandalism problem in the subways, costing the system more than $2.5 million a year to replace the glass and covering it with protective Mylar”

So the MTA would like to replace one form of graffiti with another, from Coke. The result is essentially the same, messages which cover the windows. Except the MTA has an aesthetic leaning toward the imagery of Coke as opposed to a few scratches that read “ZERO.” The Coke ads would be on every window and cover the windows entirely. Which is more obtrusive?

This must be the least creative, most ironic way of dealing with the “scratchiti problem” I can imagine. The MTA seems to be bending over backwards to find new ways and new excuses to work with outdoor advertising companies.

Paul J. Fleuranges, a spokesman for New York City Transit, said the agency hoped that the film, called Scotchcal, would cut down on the frequency of scratchitti.

Graffiti is all about innovation! The Scotchcal can be written on and torn off the same way the vinyl ads in the subway station are right now. The only silver lining is that Poster Boy will have a new forum and material to work with.

What can you do?

Railfan is encouraging riders to email the MTA and let them know what you think – this is a pilot program after all. (I suggest mailing them your junk mail as well.) He suggests emailing the above image, as the MTA didn’t quite get it at first.

What else? We can demand a moratorium on new public advertising as was done in San Francisco last year.

But but but, the city is broke!

“But the city is broke and this is a way it can make money,” you might be thinking. As I’ve mentioned before, advertising creeping into more public spaces should be off the table as a way to generate revenue. Overwhelming public spaces with advertising decreases livability – Times Square is fun to look at, but no one wants to live there. The city can do plenty that will increase revenue while increasing livability by increasing fines for illegal advertising and finally enforcing billboard regulations as well as increasing parking meter rates to raise $5 billion, just as an example.

Vinyl billboard blankets have been draped over all kinds of buildings, but they’re not usually found obscuring the glittering luxury outlets along East 57th Street.

Chanel, however, has done that very thing: hanging a big piece of vinyl over its building at No. 15, promoting Mobile Art, an exhibition by the architect Zaha Hadid that opens in a temporary pavilion in Central Park next Monday. The show was described by my colleague Carol Vogel as a “provocative advertisement” in and of itself.

So this billboard is, in effect, an advertisement for an advertisement. And it is illegal, the Buildings Department said, after City Room brought the sign to the agency’s attention.

The question here, as it is with so many illegal billboards in New York, how long it will take (if ever) for the city to have this removed?

via
City Room Blog – NYTimes.com