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Scott 08/23/2010 4:36:00 AM
I'm sorry I didn't see this article sooner.The city counsel should be giving far more attention to issues of importance, like budget deficits (There's an issue that needs serious attention!), road and traffic improvements, LAPD and LAFD manpower, job creation for its residents - the list is obvious. Advertising is critical to free markets, and the success of companies that create jobs. Posting on construction sites, and sides of buildings with property owners' agreements, billboards, rolling billboards and similar means are not a "blight". It's just advertising, and if it's well done advertising it can even be interesting or informative. Sure, residents should have there input, and a variance-like method makes sense. We do it with buildings, and some are as ugly as a building can be, and they remain ugly for a long time! Cleaning up gang graffiti is a good trade-off but how about public safety messages? That would be a more than adequate trade-off and the city would collect their license fees, instead of wasting dollars and taxpayer's money on city attorneys and huge numbers of staff doing mindless piles of work attempting to completely ban some selected forms of advertising. As for entrepreneurial success, and the people who do well creating successful business, well that's how it's supposed to work! If our city counsel used it's better sense of business and commerce for the city's most pressing issues, they'd work the process of negotiating so everyone benefits. This article is purely preaching and goes no where. I make no apology. This is being handled absurdly.
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30YearLA resident 04/13/2010 12:27:00 AM
Terrific article! I grind my teeth every time I read about Delgadillo's inside deal with those companies. Its information we could never, of course, expect the LAT to furnish. And the flak being emailed in about the "little people" employed by these companies and their alleged "First Amendment" rights appalls me. The things are a blight on every neighborhood that has to tolerate their incessant light show. They distract us on the roads. I suppose the companies will want to erect them in Yosemite next. I applaud Trutanich and his effort to cut these things back. When this is discussed in our office there is not one person who is not bitterly opposed to those godawful signs.
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Camille Ameen 03/29/2010 10:42:00 AM
This is the first time I have ever read one of these kinds of exposés about someone I know. I can’t speak to the issue of urban blight, but I can speak to some of the characterizations of the people involved, specifically my experience with Pete Zackery and Gary Shafner. The author impugns them for being wealthy and quotes Hathaway who says, "There is no evidence that they care about the communities they blight with their signs."
This is blatantly false. Pete and Gary’s firm, NPA, has donated extremely generous amounts of in-kind services for the non-profit I co-founded, Inside Out Community Arts, which serves under-served middle and high school youth throughout Los Angeles - from the Valley, to Venice, South LA, the Garment District and Northeast LA. Over the years, NPA has made a dramatic difference for us providing stationery, art cards, brochures, invitations and tribute journals for fundraising events, and 5,000 full color media kits. All of these donations are vital calling cards for non-profits and allow us to present our story in a way that encourages other donors. NPA’s generosity meant we could focus our funds on our mission to make a positive difference to youth in need through the Arts.
Additionally, Gary Shafner has graciously hosted many fundraisers for Inside Out at his home, which is truly a unique manifestation of creativity. He has invited hundreds of children in our program for tours of his house. He provided lunch and talked to them about his poor beginnings and struggles in school. He encouraged them to not let anyone get them down-- and they listened. At his “luxurious and over-the-top wedding,” he and his wife requested no presents, but rather asked that guests donate to two charities doing valuable work in the community. My non-profit was not one of the two.
Gary, Pete and NPA are committed to MANY non-profit organizations working to make a difference in under-served communities through out Los Angeles. A more “fair and balanced” portrait would have been appreciated.
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PeterG 03/26/2010 1:16:00 AM
Fantastic article! Thank you for running it.
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Ira Ingber 03/24/2010 8:36:00 AM
To the editor:
I was troubled by Christine Pelisek’s March 18 article “The Mad Men of Los Angeles” — a rather one-sided specimen of gotcha journalism. It’s fueled by the presumption that ad graphics, on any scale, necessarily equals blight.
There are really two issues here: content and legality.
If Pelisek and her high-minded activists want to argue about what constitutes urban blight, they should at least offer an opposing view: Speak to theorists who deem such posters & billboards a source of city-street adrenalin that often adds visual interest to otherwise ugly architecture. (In fact, why not go after the truly-rich mercenary developers whose hack architects scar the cityscape unto eternity. Posters have the virtue of never being permanent, and are dynamic by definition.) Look at Times Square, or Tokyo's vibrant neon heart, or Parisian ad kiosks... whose dynamism is to a large extent commercial & profit-seeking. Ask daily commuters how much they mind the printed surfaces that morph weekly and make their grind through traffic a little less monotonous. Advertising, as a broad component of pop culture, has always been ubiquitous in the city environment, and has recently extended onto our own smartphone screens. Rapid-cycle messaging, checkered with consumerist hypnoptics, is an essential element of 21st century life. Most of what is seen in the streets are rock & film posters — which some collectors who consider them to be a legitimate art form eventually pay top dollar for. Why is blank plywood around a construction site preferable to the visual energy, and cultural stimulus, of that signage? Why is advertising imagery only palatable after it has made its way into museums and galleries? One woman’s blight is another man’s Warhol. It's related to the debate over graffiti—urban decay or exuberant free expression? Not nearly as black and white as Pelisek’s reporting suggests. Nor as consistent: The LA Weekly itself emblazons its 10-foot-high logo at the northbound 405 on its Mar Vista office building, and has advertised on everything from bus benches to news-vending boxes. Blight?
As for legality, it’s interesting to look back at the years of Weekly championing of such midnite-marauding artists as Robbie Conal, Banksy, Blek Le Rat, and Shepard Fairey (who has made a fortune on work that his early guerrilla activities boosted). I happen to admire and endorse their art, but what I question is the Weekly making itself the righteous, bullying arbiter of when it’s okay to engage in illegal placement of graphics and when it’s not—depending on whether the political or aesthetic agenda is compatible with its own.
Sincerely,
Ira Ingber
Los Angeles
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Dorothy 03/24/2010 1:10:00 AM
On the article "The Mad Men of Los Angeles". Has anyone thought about the little people that work for these companies. Most of these people are only making enough to provide for their families, yet articles are written like this to put the companies out of business and therefore, putting these people and theirs families out on the street or on welfare. Isn't there something like robbery, murder and mayhem that the DA could pursue as hard as he is pursuing this. I'll bet his supporters and the groups that are pursuing this are not unemployed. What kind of houses do they live in? There is more than one side to any story and we are only hearing the DA's side, not the little people. I have never seen a person so doggedly pursue something that has a domino effect on everyone. Not just the owners of these companies, but the employees who work for them and the real estate owners that rent them space to use.
The DA lives well, yet he does not care what happens to the employees of these firms.
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Jill Stewart 03/24/2010 1:08:00 AM
Jill Stewart, LA Weekly news editor, here. Dan, we do not cover or assign stories based on what the ad side of the newspaper wants or needs. You may not know about the fire wall between news operations and ad operations. We are attacked frequently for covering stories the advertisers don't like, such as our stories about AEG's massive corporate welfare and subsidies from city taxpayers to help make billionaire Phil Anshutz richer via Staples Center and LA Live. So, grow up Dan!
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dan 03/20/2010 8:47:00 AM
Oh and i think its pretty evident as to why this article is so Anti Billboards the author is employed by an advertising based website that is fighting for those very same advertising dollars... no billboards equals more online spending ? is that it ?
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Dan 03/20/2010 8:43:00 AM
We have lots of billboards here in NYC as well.. and i dont always like what i see.. but honestly the free speech argument is pretty damn good argument.. and i find civil liberties to be the most important and that they come before politics... by the way who ever wrote this article sounds very jealous of rich people.. just an observation
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Jill Stewart 03/19/2010 11:19:00 PM
Hi folks, this is Jill Stewart, news editor at LA Weekly. As to the economics discussion, I saw something interesting near my home last week: A panel truck from a Hollywood studio support company had a crew at my corner gas station, working for a few hours to dismantle and remove three illegal Fuel Outdoor mini-billboards that had blighted the block for months.
If you imagine the illegal outdoor advertising industry in Los Angeles removing its several thousand illegal billboards from Los Angeles, and if you imagine the industry being forced to shore up the thousands of other nonpermitted, enlarged and illegally expanded billboards so they are no longer threats to public safety during an earthquake, that would perhaps equate with several years of work for the billboard installation industry. It would be the billboard un-installation industry.
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anonymous 03/19/2010 4:32:00 AM
The "installers, advertisers and all other people associated with outdoor advertising" need not be unemployed. They can go to that Rush fellow's hometown on the East Coast and plaster it with signage. Surely he'll pay them.
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alex 03/19/2010 4:07:00 AM
I wonder how much Christine Pelisek received to write this ONE SIDED story, All Carmen Trutanich doing is making installers, advertisers and all other people associated with outdoor advertising unemployed and LA weekly helps him to do so.
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alex 03/19/2010 3:56:00 AM
I wonder how much Christine Pelisek received to write this ONE SIDED story, All Carmen Trutanich doing is making installers, advertisers and all other people associated with outdoor advertising unemployed and LA weekly helps him to do so.
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Dennis Hathaway 03/18/2010 8:44:00 PM
Christine Pelisek and the Weekly deserve great credit for lifting those supergraphics to show the raw greed of people with no concern for the law, the communities they operate in, or the safety and quality of life of people working in the buildings they turn into giant ads and cash machines. One point, however, deserves clarification. The Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight represents numerous community groups and individuals throughout the city. Whatever impact the organization has had in raising awareness of the threat to our public spaces posed by rogue operators like Barry Rush, Pamela Anderson, and others is due to the support and hard work of those groups and individuals, not just to the efforts of a single person.
Dennis Hathaway
President
Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight
www.banbillboardblight.org
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Pershing Square 03/18/2010 10:01:00 AM
Great article Christine. We've all been wondering where the money goes, and now we can see who is gaming the system. Also good job on "outing" Jan Perry, that woman has the audacity to think she's going to be the next mayor? Well, I suppose the example set by the present mayor explains that!
Trutanich seems to have the wind behind his sales though, and the Dragongate saga that put a 'businessman' in jail 'til he took down his illegal supergraphic was brilliant. I just hope Trutanich has enough handcuffs to hook up the rest of them.
