January 6, 2007
If You Can't Beat Illegal Signs, Cover 'Em!
Finally, the Department of Buildings realizes that it needs to take more serious action against illegal advertising on city construction sites. Many buildings and advertisers ignore the $2,500 fines since they are pittances in the scheme of things, so now the DOB will start covering up the ads with vinyl sheets!
The NY Times reports that the DOB's crackdown is "already showing results," with only 3 of 62 illegal signs found in October remaining. News that the DOB might even have a "hall of shame" of illegal advertising on the DOB website probably helps, too, but we secretly would love to see a hall of shame. Remember when the wind blew the scaffolding (with a huge Helio ad on it) down? We heard from some people that the scaffolding wasn't even for any construction - it was just there so the building could make advertising money!
Naturally, different buildings and advertisers say they've been complying with the ordinances and have taken down illegal signs as soon as they heard of the ordinance - but it's not like this is new news. The DOB's been pretty clear about illegal sign advertising at least since December 2005 - here's part of a notice about what is ad isn't allowed by the DOB:
More about DOB sign enforcement here. And check out the Muncipal Art Society and Curbed's Shoot It Down gallery of illegal advertising offenders.
Top photograph of some advertising in front of the Flatiron by strawberrysweet on Flickr who writes, "i fucking despise advertecture. like the inventor of email spam and spyware, whoever invented advertecture should be sentenced to death by extreme case of herpes."
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you mispelled the title, no?
Ms. Chung has never been good at proofreading her posts. It is rather frustrating.
Get an intern to proofread! Interns are free!!! The reduction in errors should be worth at least an extra $10 million when Gothamist joins the list of Web 2.0 sellouts.
Interns have, as have copy editors so far, flaked. But thanks, anonymous peoples, for your constant criticism!
They should make the scaffolding illegal after a certain time it's there. That crap goes up and never comes down...
Perhaps we should shuttle all the proofreading complaints into their own thread? That's all people seem to care about anyway.
www.forgotten-ny.com
I don't know what the big fuss is about posting mo bills on construction blight, let 'em post away, who the f*)k seriously cares?
#6, the problem with posting illegal advertisement on temporary structures such as sidewalk sheds is this: buildings keep the temporary structures longer than necessary in order to rake in more advertising revenue. This creates both a potentially dangerous situation at street level (pillars take up valuable sidewalk space, scaffolding can fall down if not properly maintained), as well as an aesthetic issue.
by strawberrysweet on Flickr who writes, "i fucking despise advertecture. like the inventor of email spam and spyware, whoever invented advertecture should be sentenced to death by extreme case of herpes."
HAHA This fucken guy! Classic!