El Toro, Bob Will Reign Protest Bureaucracy

We don’t have too much political graffiti here in the good ol’ US of A, only a couple of anti-war signs and more anti-war signs. But don’t fix a bridge in New Jersey, and somebody in Camden will make a statement!

The “historic” State Street Bridge is “fresh off its latest round of structural damage” and has been out of service since Aug. 20. It also closed during 1999 and 2004. And though residents thought the bridge was important enough to fix right away, nobody seemed to help them. So a resident took his spray can and the Camden Courier-Post infuriatingly didn’t show us the whole message.

“If the State St. Bridge were in Cherry Hill or Haddonfield it would have been fixed in one day. Where are your politicians now?” it read.

Where’s your messiah now, Camden? The graffiti was sadly removed due to “unauthorized use of the pavement,” like those kids from my high school who spray-painted the school’s initials on I-95 a few years back.

Historic city bridge to be fixed [Camden Courier-Post]

City Residents Soon To Be Blinded With Ads

The pay toilet that has been letting you shit on City Hall since last November will soon have a bunch of friends in town: The City of Philadelphia will soon choose from one of three companies to install street furniture in the city.

The street furniture — benches, bus stops, newsstands, honor box corrals, trashcans, advertising kiosks (sadly) and, of course, toilets — will make whichever company wins the bidding a lot of money from advertising. The city will get a bunch of money, too, which will be evenly distributed among city citizens and also given to the poor. Or they’ll pave the sidewalks with platinum and buy John Street a space shuttle.

The city did ask the companies to create a uniform look for the city’s street furniture, so all our ads will be color-coded. The company who wins the right to put giant ads in Center City will also be allowed the right to complain about Frost/El Toro and Bob Will Reign, who aren’t big companies paying for the right to put graffiti in the city.

Meanwhile, one of the bidders is a group that includes Clear Channel and two former press aides to Mayor Street. I look forward to their ugly street furniture.

Ads to adorn Phila.’s new shelters, benches [Inquirer]

When You Lose The Graffiti Artists, You Lose The Election

Snapped by a reader on Richmond Street near Allegheny. Love the “Bob Brady” in the corner, too. (You can click to enlarge.)

Between this and Santorum’s campaign pulling broadcast television ads, it seems like Casey is going to actually win this stupid election after all.

Santorum In Trouble? Campaign Pulls Broadcast TV Ads [AP/NBC 10]

Random Old Guy On Loose

From the police log of the Doylestown Intelligencer:

Dugout vandalized: Graffiti was found on the back of the dugout of field three at the Upper Moreland Little League at 198 Fairhill Street on Friday, police said. The words “random old guy” and a stick figure of a man wearing a hat with the numbers “348” were drawn in black paint, police said.

Okay… anybody know the significance of either of those?

Police news 10/17/06 [Intelligencer]

Bungling Cleaners Erase Mercer Museum Artwork

Every once in a while, crime will hit even the pride of Doylestown, the Mercer Museum:

Graffiti was found on a wall at the Mercer Museum on Friday night or Saturday morning. The drawings included a portrait of a female and a circle.

A portrait of a female? Impressive, graffiti artists.

Police News [Doylestown Intelligencer]

Is Our Children Learning?

Fuk Bush, and fuk spelling, too.

First they sticker our boxes, and now…

And the copy of the paper a staffer found on his way to the office (click to enlarge):

I must say, excellent penmanship.

Cop Out [PW]
Semi-Related: Stuck on Philly [PW]

It’s the season for marketing backlash!

We just passed the holiday devoted to the celebration of commercialism in this country, conveniently placed on a day when a carpenter many consider to be the Christ was born over 2,000 years ago. And, during the run up to this big ol’ commercialism holiday, there are plenty of ads. Too many to really attract everyone’s attention.

And so the ad wizards at big companies come up with these pseudo-underground campaigns that try to be all hip and edgy and, of course, fail. Sony recently launched a campaign for the PSP, the portable video game console, that uses graffiti art, like the image at left (which I took with my camera phone at Good Dog, I think).

Once the pseudo-underground campaign launches, there’s the oh-so-predictable backlash. It seems silly to me. It’s like when someone in the media makes fun of bloggers and every third person with a blog has to weigh in about how the media doesn’t respect this more pure form of “citizen journalism” and blah blah blah. (It’s no surprise that bloggers have been bashing this.) Who really cares if Sony is using an art form usually done by people just for fun to promote their product? If you really hate it, just ignore it. Or, you know, deface it. That’s kinda funny, at least.

Either way, the backlash has extended past the usual “corporation infringing on our counter-culture” argument. The Society Created To Reduce Urban Blight called the ads “very arrogant and very disrespectful.” And the city’s managing director accused Sony of encouraging graffiti. All well and good, I guess. But the real graffiti artists are only going to find Sony’s ads stupid at best. And anyone inspired to tag somewhere else by an ad for a PSP is, well — there’s not really much to be done with someone that receptive to messages.

So don’t worry. These stupid ads will disappear in a few weeks and we can all move back to complaining about more important things — namely, the Eagles.

Sony ads draw public ire [Inky]