LA/Road Trip

Santa Monica Freeway Eastbound

(All signs posted in Los Angeles on January 4th.)

San Diego Freeway Southbound

The building behind this sign, near LAX, represents the latest trend in outdoor advertising: covering entire buildings with vinyl and making billboards seven or eight stories tall. This is why I don't pay much attention to arguments that my humble scraps of cardboard are a dangerous distraction to drivers.

Ventura Freeway Eastbound

Santa Monica Freeway Westbound

Pasadena Freeway - both directions

San Diego Freeway Northbound

This is what you need to hang cardboard signs just about anywhere: bungee cords, duct tape, hammer, nails, binder clips, spring clamps, wire coat hangars and a safety vest. Around freeways, a safety vest is like a backstage pass: you instantly look like you belong. Even when you're putting up signs, people think you're taking them down.

Signs are made using cardboard, duct tape, white and black paint and an overhead projector. Print your message on to a transparency, shine it onto the cardboard (painted white), trace the letters and fill them in. It costs practically nothing and, once you've got the hang of it, takes a lot less time than you'd think: maybe five to ten minutes per sign, large or small.

With fifty or sixty signs packed into my Prius, I'll be heading north along the I-5 corridor: first to the Bay Area and then, maybe, Portland and Seattle: there's some great posting spots up there. I figure as long as I keep hanging signs and people keep seeing them, eventually some of you are bound to catch on.

Ventura Freeway Eastbound (above and below)

So long as money continues to control, and practically monopolize our political dialogue, things will continue to get worse. But if you've got something to say and you're not a PAC, media outlet or corporation, this is how to do it.

Pasadena Freeway (both directions)

Hollywood Freeway Northbound