Man Puts Up Sign
December 17, 2024 10:57 PM Subscribe
The Guerilla Artist Who Fixed L.A.'s Worst Freeway Sign
It can also, perhaps, be understood as a playful form of “tactical urbanism,” a blanket term for small-scale improvements of city environments, like community gardens and renegade bike lanes. That methodology has grown more popular in the last several decades, but so has governmental pushback in cases where it’s not officially sanctioned. In New York, the Efficient Passenger Project, in which citizens installed convincing signage to guide subway riders to the right car, was condemned by the MTA, which promptly took the work down. In Oakland, the Pothole Vigilantes, a group of volunteers filling in potholes DIY-style a few years ago, mysteriously disappeared just as they were getting significant media attention — and after the city unequivocally told them to stop.
...
The [making-of] video — a bizarre and hypnotizing behind-the-scenes look at every step of the process — is its own work of art.
The artist's page today.
(via, previously)
It can also, perhaps, be understood as a playful form of “tactical urbanism,” a blanket term for small-scale improvements of city environments, like community gardens and renegade bike lanes. That methodology has grown more popular in the last several decades, but so has governmental pushback in cases where it’s not officially sanctioned. In New York, the Efficient Passenger Project, in which citizens installed convincing signage to guide subway riders to the right car, was condemned by the MTA, which promptly took the work down. In Oakland, the Pothole Vigilantes, a group of volunteers filling in potholes DIY-style a few years ago, mysteriously disappeared just as they were getting significant media attention — and after the city unequivocally told them to stop.
...
The [making-of] video — a bizarre and hypnotizing behind-the-scenes look at every step of the process — is its own work of art.
The artist's page today.
(via, previously)
It's hard to believe Caltrans' response to this was to leave it in place and not have Ankrom arrested. Bureaucracies tend not to tolerate deviations from the norm.
posted by tommasz at 3:12 AM on December 18, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by tommasz at 3:12 AM on December 18, 2024 [1 favorite]
I absolutely love this quirky story, especially the video of the installation, but when the video ending showed the sign he made and installed I was “is that it?” Very professional but could have use some colored dots around it, or something.
posted by waving at 3:18 AM on December 18, 2024
posted by waving at 3:18 AM on December 18, 2024
If he had applied to Central Services to get the sign fixed he would’ve had to fill out a 27B stroke 6.
posted by Ishbadiddle at 3:26 AM on December 18, 2024 [6 favorites]
posted by Ishbadiddle at 3:26 AM on December 18, 2024 [6 favorites]
What a cool story! That guy is a hero!
As a graphic artist, trained back in the day when visual communication was actually taught as an essential part of the trade, I’ve always been a bit of a signage nerd, appreciating work by people who get it, and internally railing on work by people who quite obviously don’t or don’t care. My drives around my neck of the woods are almost always punctuated by the shit that just isn’t doing the job it should, simply because no one considered the usage patterns, the information being communicated, and the location.
The funniest ones are always info signage done by the city/county sign shops, where they’ve taken a paragraph of text and done an artificial condense on the type in order to squeeze it all on a standard-size sign, and called it a day. Utterly unreadable even at 30mph.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:53 AM on December 18, 2024 [3 favorites]
As a graphic artist, trained back in the day when visual communication was actually taught as an essential part of the trade, I’ve always been a bit of a signage nerd, appreciating work by people who get it, and internally railing on work by people who quite obviously don’t or don’t care. My drives around my neck of the woods are almost always punctuated by the shit that just isn’t doing the job it should, simply because no one considered the usage patterns, the information being communicated, and the location.
The funniest ones are always info signage done by the city/county sign shops, where they’ve taken a paragraph of text and done an artificial condense on the type in order to squeeze it all on a standard-size sign, and called it a day. Utterly unreadable even at 30mph.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:53 AM on December 18, 2024 [3 favorites]
More previouslies. But weren't we just talking about this a few months ago? Anyway I love it.
posted by intermod at 7:47 AM on December 18, 2024
posted by intermod at 7:47 AM on December 18, 2024
The Drive has a nice recap, not sure if this is in the links. Interesting note on the ordinary social milieu that enabled it at 6:37.
posted by Brian B. at 8:28 AM on December 18, 2024
posted by Brian B. at 8:28 AM on December 18, 2024
on a much smaller scale. I lived for a few years in a rural community that wasn't officially incorporated but there were enough people around for traffic safety concerns to be an issue. One of the big ones was a long straight stretch that happened to have a blind brow just before a spot where a side road intersected. The side road had a stop sign and, if people actually travelled the speed limit on the straight stretch, it was a safe enough situation. But many people didn't travel speed limit. They just bombed along, crested the brow and ... hopefully nobody had decided the way was safe and clear.
There was never an accident but there were a bunch of near misses, and high speed ones at that. Add to that, there was a school bus stop in the vicinity. Needless to say, people were worried. The highways dept was consulted etc but nothing was ever done because it was a unincorporated area and rules-is-rules, bureaucracy is bureaucracy, there was always a 27B stroke 6 that needed to filled out and sent to all the right offices ...
Finally, somebody just placed one of those dayglo pylons in advance of the blind brow. Only one (cost = less than fifty bucks). And it worked. People started slowing down a touch, or at least being more aware as they approached the brow. The close calls stopped.
At some point, somebody (possibly a highways functionary) removed the pylon. Within a few days, there was a new one in its place. And so on. That was over five years ago. Last time I visited, it was still there.
posted by philip-random at 10:00 AM on December 18, 2024 [2 favorites]
There was never an accident but there were a bunch of near misses, and high speed ones at that. Add to that, there was a school bus stop in the vicinity. Needless to say, people were worried. The highways dept was consulted etc but nothing was ever done because it was a unincorporated area and rules-is-rules, bureaucracy is bureaucracy, there was always a 27B stroke 6 that needed to filled out and sent to all the right offices ...
Finally, somebody just placed one of those dayglo pylons in advance of the blind brow. Only one (cost = less than fifty bucks). And it worked. People started slowing down a touch, or at least being more aware as they approached the brow. The close calls stopped.
At some point, somebody (possibly a highways functionary) removed the pylon. Within a few days, there was a new one in its place. And so on. That was over five years ago. Last time I visited, it was still there.
posted by philip-random at 10:00 AM on December 18, 2024 [2 favorites]
Finally, somebody just placed one of those dayglo pylons in advance of the blind brow. Only one (cost = less than fifty bucks).
Or one cone could wander off from elsewhere and find its way to the needed spot.
posted by Brian B. at 10:09 AM on December 18, 2024 [2 favorites]
Or one cone could wander off from elsewhere and find its way to the needed spot.
posted by Brian B. at 10:09 AM on December 18, 2024 [2 favorites]
It's hard to believe Caltrans' response to this was to leave it in place and not have Ankrom arrested. Bureaucracies tend not to tolerate deviations from the norm.
as mentioned in the article, this was pre-9/11. today they would probably be arrested and charged with terrorism :(
posted by supermedusa at 10:40 AM on December 18, 2024
as mentioned in the article, this was pre-9/11. today they would probably be arrested and charged with terrorism :(
posted by supermedusa at 10:40 AM on December 18, 2024
It's hard to believe Caltrans' response to this was to leave it in place and not have Ankrom arrested. Bureaucracies tend not to tolerate deviations from the norm.
as mentioned in the article, this was pre-9/11. today they would probably be arrested and charged with terrorism :(
So there's a couple of things going on here, right?
If the CalTrans workers who happened to see him doing it had decided it in fact WAS weird enough to call in about, he would almost certainly have been arrested.
If CalTrans (or some other official entity) had noticed the change right away, it might have been reverted and there'd be less of a story.
But neither of those things happened. When he went public with the story, it had been in service for almost a year. I find it hard to believe that no one from CalTrans noticed in all that time. I imagine folks from the local shop saw it and decided it was easier not to make a Thing about it.
Besides, they liked his design so much, that even after replacing the sign, it still directs traffic the same way as his addition did.
That's nothing short of a public endorsement.
Also, they probably tightened the controls around who can buy the 'official' reflectors. That and the actual signage tech spec documents.
posted by ApathyGirl at 11:58 AM on December 18, 2024
as mentioned in the article, this was pre-9/11. today they would probably be arrested and charged with terrorism :(
So there's a couple of things going on here, right?
If the CalTrans workers who happened to see him doing it had decided it in fact WAS weird enough to call in about, he would almost certainly have been arrested.
If CalTrans (or some other official entity) had noticed the change right away, it might have been reverted and there'd be less of a story.
But neither of those things happened. When he went public with the story, it had been in service for almost a year. I find it hard to believe that no one from CalTrans noticed in all that time. I imagine folks from the local shop saw it and decided it was easier not to make a Thing about it.
Besides, they liked his design so much, that even after replacing the sign, it still directs traffic the same way as his addition did.
That's nothing short of a public endorsement.
Also, they probably tightened the controls around who can buy the 'official' reflectors. That and the actual signage tech spec documents.
posted by ApathyGirl at 11:58 AM on December 18, 2024
This and the Pink Lady of Malibu are two of my favorite LA road stories. (This one is decidedly more practical, the Pink Lady, more cheeky.)
posted by drewbage1847 at 3:55 PM on December 18, 2024 [2 favorites]
posted by drewbage1847 at 3:55 PM on December 18, 2024 [2 favorites]
Hey, I used to party with this guy in an art's village in Santa Ana!
We called him Sparky because he made a lot of neon and electrical art and, well, he was really sparky.
I also remember that interchange/exit and the signage was so famously bad and confusing.
If I'm remembering correctly, if you didn't get in the right lane for the 110 you were basically totally fucked and trapped on the snarl of freeway and interchanges through downtown for several miles before you could find a good exit and get turned around because there aren't any easy clovers or return ramps in the area to just do a freeway u-turn, and it was a total ordeal.
As in if you did make that ramp towards Pasadena it was something easy like 15 minutes to the end of the 110, but if you didn't make it it was a like a 30-45 minute detour or even more if the traffic was bad.
People used to make mad last minute hail mary scrambles across multiple freeway lanes to make that ramp and I would not at all be surprised if it resulted in multiple fatal wrecks.
So there's a really good chance that Richard is a real hero and saved any number of lives.
As for why Caltrans didn't take it down or fine or cite him? Well, the part about the sign making sense, being necessary and possibly saving lives or wrecks was sure a huge part of it. And the fact that no one noticed for a whole year was another big part of it.
But the other part of it is that he did his homework and made the sign to Caltrans and DoT code.
It's the exact right thickness of metal, the exact right font and design, the exact right color, the same exact retroreflective Scotchbright vinyl, the same exact adhesive or attachment solution that Caltrans would use and everything.
If I'm remembering correctly he may have even gone as far as to put a fake inspected on/created by sticker on the back just in case.
For all intents and purposes it was effectively a Caltrans sign and fully compliant. Even if they took the sign down and inspected it they would have had difficulty knowing it didn't come from one of their own shops and contractors.
Sparky was a fun guy to hang out with, and I have a cool story about him.
At some point I had a totally half-assed self produced digital photography show that was just a slide show on a CRT monitor, but this was when digital cameras were still relatively new and not at all common.
It wasn't a very serious effort on my part and it was more to show something to my artists friends in the village and have something to show for one of the art walk nights and "why not?" kind of thing.
I was doing some experimental and vaguely surreal abstract photography with what was - in hindsight - not a very good camera and a measly 0.3 megapixels at 640x480.
Anyway, some of my artist friends came through and had a beer or whatever and said hello and hung out for a bit and they said politely and blithely said "That's nice." and went on their way to the next gallery.
Then Sparky came through, and I asked him what he thought.
He checked it out, then rapidly flipped through the slide show with the keyboard and then immediately said "This fucking sucks!"
And then he spent the next 15 minutes tearing me a new asshole and telling me in excruciating detail exactly why it sucked and gave me a whirlwind tour and epic verbal beatdown of all of the famous photographers who already did things like I was doing and that I should know them already and oh I really needed to study Man Ray more.
And it was totally awesome. He was the only artist out of a dozen or two that took the time to tell me my shit stunk and then wildly hazed me with a totally accurate critique and breakdown and I really appreciated it.
posted by loquacious at 11:54 PM on December 18, 2024 [7 favorites]
We called him Sparky because he made a lot of neon and electrical art and, well, he was really sparky.
I also remember that interchange/exit and the signage was so famously bad and confusing.
If I'm remembering correctly, if you didn't get in the right lane for the 110 you were basically totally fucked and trapped on the snarl of freeway and interchanges through downtown for several miles before you could find a good exit and get turned around because there aren't any easy clovers or return ramps in the area to just do a freeway u-turn, and it was a total ordeal.
As in if you did make that ramp towards Pasadena it was something easy like 15 minutes to the end of the 110, but if you didn't make it it was a like a 30-45 minute detour or even more if the traffic was bad.
People used to make mad last minute hail mary scrambles across multiple freeway lanes to make that ramp and I would not at all be surprised if it resulted in multiple fatal wrecks.
So there's a really good chance that Richard is a real hero and saved any number of lives.
As for why Caltrans didn't take it down or fine or cite him? Well, the part about the sign making sense, being necessary and possibly saving lives or wrecks was sure a huge part of it. And the fact that no one noticed for a whole year was another big part of it.
But the other part of it is that he did his homework and made the sign to Caltrans and DoT code.
It's the exact right thickness of metal, the exact right font and design, the exact right color, the same exact retroreflective Scotchbright vinyl, the same exact adhesive or attachment solution that Caltrans would use and everything.
If I'm remembering correctly he may have even gone as far as to put a fake inspected on/created by sticker on the back just in case.
For all intents and purposes it was effectively a Caltrans sign and fully compliant. Even if they took the sign down and inspected it they would have had difficulty knowing it didn't come from one of their own shops and contractors.
Sparky was a fun guy to hang out with, and I have a cool story about him.
At some point I had a totally half-assed self produced digital photography show that was just a slide show on a CRT monitor, but this was when digital cameras were still relatively new and not at all common.
It wasn't a very serious effort on my part and it was more to show something to my artists friends in the village and have something to show for one of the art walk nights and "why not?" kind of thing.
I was doing some experimental and vaguely surreal abstract photography with what was - in hindsight - not a very good camera and a measly 0.3 megapixels at 640x480.
Anyway, some of my artist friends came through and had a beer or whatever and said hello and hung out for a bit and they said politely and blithely said "That's nice." and went on their way to the next gallery.
Then Sparky came through, and I asked him what he thought.
He checked it out, then rapidly flipped through the slide show with the keyboard and then immediately said "This fucking sucks!"
And then he spent the next 15 minutes tearing me a new asshole and telling me in excruciating detail exactly why it sucked and gave me a whirlwind tour and epic verbal beatdown of all of the famous photographers who already did things like I was doing and that I should know them already and oh I really needed to study Man Ray more.
And it was totally awesome. He was the only artist out of a dozen or two that took the time to tell me my shit stunk and then wildly hazed me with a totally accurate critique and breakdown and I really appreciated it.
posted by loquacious at 11:54 PM on December 18, 2024 [7 favorites]
TIL that Brazil's "form 27B stroke 6" derives its name from George Orwell's address; specifically while writing parts of 1984.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:23 AM on December 19, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by kirkaracha at 10:23 AM on December 19, 2024 [1 favorite]
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