The Pasadena Freeway Is A Hotbed Of Social Unrest

In terms of sheer convenience, it's really hard to beat this overpass on the Pasadena freeway just east of downtown. Here signhanging is simply a matter of parking, walking thirty five feet or so and dropping the cardboard in between the railing and the fence. No fumbling around with bungee cords or duct tape, just drop and go.

(Signs pictured have appeared over the past month.)

This just came in the mail: Posted December 9th and measuring 27 feet across, this sign stayed up over 24 hours and was installed in seconds.

This sign, on the other hand, stayed up for five days, with over half a million drivers passing underneath.

This sign has been up for close to a month now, in plain view of literally millions of drivers. Although difficult to reach, it's by no means impossible, but for some reason nobody has bothered to take it down.

I'm a big fan of this guardrail. Hovering just above eight lanes of some of LA's densest traffic, these signs are almost close enough to touch. Good luck taking them down though: to physically get off of the the freeway, back to the sign and back on the freeway again will cost you dearly in terms of time and mileage.

Nevertheless, a motivated individual could pull it all off in ten or fifteen minutes, so it confuses me to see these signs staying up for days and weeks on end.

Could it be that each and every one of the 110.000 people passing by per day agreed not only with the content of the sign, but the right of the sign to be there?

Or could it be that none of 110,000 drivers per day who disagreed with the sign actually had the extra ten or fifteen minutes required to do something about it?

Either way looks bad for America, but good for the signposter.

If you've got a point you want to make, or a message you want to spread, you won't find a more abundant and captive audience than freeway traffic, or a better way of reaching them than simply putting up signs.

What's important is to take some time, practice some art, and make them look good.

If it's worth saying, it's worth saying well.

Using cardboard, paint and an overhead projector, these signs took minutes to make, cost practically nothing and have been seen literally millions of times.