IllegalBillboards.org

from the Village Voice with IllegalBillboards.org’s own Jordan Seiler.

City government and citizen vigilantes wage a losing battle against Clear Channel and illegal ads

By Elizabeth Dwoskin

Over the past seven years, Jordan Seiler estimates that he’s taken down hundreds of billboards, posters, and other signs to replace advertising in public places with his own artwork.

Armed with a screwdriver and anti-vandal bits, Seiler commits his acts of vandalism both as an ongoing art project and as a political statement: Thousands of billboards in the city, he says, are technically illegal.

And he’s right. According to the city, all billboards within 200 feet of “arterial highways”—the West Side Highway, the FDR, the BQE, and major thoroughfares such as Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway—have been illegal since the 1940s. All ads put up on scaffolding and construction sheds are illegal, too, unless they’re advertising the business whose signage has been covered up.

As Seiler has discovered, once you know the rules, you realize that illegal ads are, literally, everywhere: on building walls, sidewalk sheds, phone kiosks, and alongside highways. There are so many of them, it makes you wonder if that city has given up on enforcing its own laws. Continue Reading »

Riding my bike into Manhattan today I turned a corner from the Williamsburg Bridge onto Lafayette to head uptown. A massive Heineken ad popped out at me.

That doesn’t look right does it? That vinyl must stretch across six windows. Take a look at the building as it was just a couple months ago though Google Street View:

View Larger Map

And honestly, I know it’s naive, but I expected more from CBS Outdoor. They even included their plaque and an inventory number below. But sure enough, this billboard is 100% illegal according to the NY Department of Buildings.

Continue Reading »

While you’re out hunting illegal billboards, you’ll probably come across a lot of illegal poster advertising on construction sites. Certainly small-time compared with the tens of thousands of dollars in monthly income an illegal billboard will bring in, these poster ads are illegal and very easy to identify. Basically, if you see poster advertising on a construction or deconstruction site: it’s illegal.

Last year we made up a flyer to help the Department of Buildings crack down on these illegal ads. This can be printed at 3×5 feet at a local copy shop for about $6-10. Or you can print it on 8×10 paper and staple or paste it up.

Be sure to call 311 or the Sign Enforcement Unit!

Noticed the longstanding billboard at 64 3rd avenue on the corner of 11th and 3rd was gone last night. Looking into why it was removed, it turns out a complaint was filed way back on 8-14-2006

On 5-16-2007 the permit was revoked by the commissioner for no response within 10 days of letter after it had been deemed illegal.

This permit revocation happened several times in the following months and I guess finally some one got around to demanding it come down cause a lady who works across the street at the movie theater said it was only removed last week.

Two years from the original complaint is a pretty awful response time. We need to figure out a way to expedite this process.

Here is what the billboard looked like with an ad off google maps:

This is what it looks like now:

UPDATE: This sign was removed in the last week and here is what it looks like now.

Also, Rami Tabello has a post on this at IllegalSigns.ca.

So I have found at least a few billboards I think are illegal and while doing so stumbled upon this ad

Not only is it illegal but has been deemed so by the DOB upon inspection almost a month ago and still has yet to be taken down. In the words of Rami Tabello, an incompetent buildings department is no better than a corrupt buildings department.

If you missed the presentation on July 1st. Lucky for you, IllegalSigns.ca has been nice enough to post their slide presentation online. Download it as a PDF or in

Activists estimate that half the billboards in New York City are illegal. Between fudged permits, lack of enforcement, and millions in profit, outdoor advertising has become a corporate black market that wont flinch at breaking laws to get your attention. On July 1st, the Anti-Advertising Agency and Rami Tabello of IllegalSigns.ca will give a free workshop teaching you how to identify illegal advertising and get it taken down. You will leave this workshop equipped to have illegal signs removed in your neighborhood.

Canadian activist group IllegalSigns.ca is responsible for the removal over 100 illegal billboards in the City of Toronto and will reveal how the billboard industry gets away with breaking the law and what New Yorkers can do to stop it.

sign up now at workshop@antiadvertisingagency.com
Tuesday July 1st, 2008 6pm - Free
Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology
540 W. 21st St.
New York, NY 10011

image mashup using Joe McKay and incendiarymind