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 [...]
With a wave of business closures in New York, store fronts are being converted over to street level billboards with little regard for New York City’s sign laws. In these tough economic times it seems cheap adhesive vinyl and corporate crime lose to city permits and legal billboards in the corporate cost-benefit analysis. While they [...]
This is like the mafia complaining that law enforcement hurts their business…
Sign companies claim billboard fines are crippling the ad industry BY Adam Lisberg DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF
New York’s crackdown on oversized billboards is hurting the ad industry, as sign companies say inspectors are hitting them with huge fines for minor infractions.
“Here is an industry that [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
The city of San Francisco has been slowly working to enforce a 2002 city proposition which banned new billboards on private property. Of course, we all know city governments are notoriously cash-strapped. So it comes as no surprise that it was only in 2007 that the city had completed a survey of the [...]
As you probably heard, on November 12th a group of artists and activists unveiled a “Special Edition” of the New York Times dated “July 4th, 2009″ and outlining the end of the war in iraq, a national tax base for schools, and free public universities, among other things. In addition to the print paper, [...]
Last month Jeff Crouse received an email from Adam Kluger asking if Jeff wanted his fake, Second Life sweatshop “Double Happiness Jeans” featured in the lyrics of a Pussycat Dolls song. Jeff wrote back a hilarious response.
Then Kluger threatened us with a lawsuit for… well, whatever straws were in reach.
You [...]
Another bad deal to trade public space for money from The New York Sun: Council Member David Yassky of Brooklyn is calling for the city to begin allowing advertising on municipal trash cans and suggested that such a move, which he estimated could bring $2.5 million in revenue, would help during difficult economic times.
“We need to [...]
excerpted from – In Florida, Billboards Trump Trees : NPR
Highway 192 used to be exceptionally plain. It was lined by weed-filled ditches, with no sidewalks and poor lighting. It was drab. So the property owners voted to tax themselves $29 million to make the roadway safer and prettier. “Look at it today,” says Lizasuain. “We have [...]
Billboard Co. Says No to Soldier Portraits in St. Paul
A billboard company has canceled its contract to display one of photographer Suzanne Opton’s portraits of active-duty soldiers on an outdoor space in St. Paul, Minnesota, site of the Republican National Convention. Opton, a New York-based photographer, shot her “Soldiers Faces” series at Fort [...]
