Tales of the Freewayblogger

Orange County, CA

2012-01-26T09:28:00.000-08:00

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away." -Philip K. Dick

Signs posted along Orange County Freeways

Quotes by former OC residents

"There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white. Or a rape." -Richard Milhous Nixon

"You're not a star until they can spell your name in Karachi." -Humphrey Bogart

"I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph." -Shirley Temple

"I love Los Angeles... such bon vivance in the face of inevitable doom." -Bette Midler

"I am at peace with God. My conflict is with Man." -Charlie Chaplin

“There’s nothing more embarrassing than to have earned the disfavor of a perceptive animal.” -Michael Chabon

"The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis." -Marlon Brando

"Occupy exists as the belted command that starts the drum roll which may or may not end in something magnificent. " -Dan O'Mahoney

"A day without sunshine is like... night." -Steve Martin

Gingrich the Newt

2012-01-24T09:30:00.000-08:00

Gingrich The Newt

by The Austin Lounge Lizards)

(Signs placed along freeways in LA and Orange counties)

We'd like to set the record straight by singing of the newt
For newts are open-minded; they are flexible and cute
A newt can breathe in water and a newt can breathe on land
And if you are a different critter newts will understand.

Newts are not mean-spirited; they never are unfair.
Newts are not underhanded and are not afraid to share.
Newts do not have bad haircuts because newts are lacking hair.
But the newt called Gingrich drives all true newts to despair.

Gingrich the Newt's a disgrace to the name:
When true newts see him they feel so ashamed.
He's the black sheep of the newt family:
The one rotten fruit on the newt family tree.

Newts don't prey on other newts; in that they don't believe.
And you will never catch a newt with something up his sleeve.
They're tolerant to different environments and so
They don't send little newties to the orphanage to grow.

What kind of newt wears a suit and a tie?
And frightens small children as he rushes by?
But we admit that his suit suits him good...
Much more discreet than a sheet and a hood.

A newt may be cold-blooded but he won't go to extremes.
And you can trust a newt to be exactly what he seems.
Newts are sorry if you're sad; they're happy if you're gay!
But Gingrich is perverse, and worse,
He's proud to be that way.

Gingrich the Newt is puffed up like a toad.
So full of himself that he's bound to explode.
And then we will raise up our tails in salute...
A fitting tribute
To that horse's patoot:
Gingrich the Newt.

SF/Berkeley

2012-01-23T09:01:00.000-08:00

Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

Signs posted Jan. 18th by Freewayblogger.

Definitions from The Devil's Dictionary.

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

Liberty: One of imagination's most precious possessions.

Education: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

Christian: One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.

Patience: A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

Religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

Once: Enough.

Sacramento, California

2012-01-20T08:08:00.000-08:00

“That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.” -Raymond Carver

Signs placed over and next to Sacramento Freeways.

Quotations by residents of Sacramento.

Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things." -Ronald Reagan

"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." -Mark Twain

“The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.” -Herb Caen

(The signs above and below were posted by simply squeezing the cardboard in between the fencing and the rail: takes about four seconds.

And they're practically invisible from the walkway.)

“California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things better work here, because here, beneath the immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent.” -Joan Didion

"We are not disorganized. We have a campaign that transcends organization" -Jerry Brown

Guantanamo Plus Ten

2012-01-14T21:11:00.000-08:00

Guantanamo Plus Ten

a film by Robert Corsini

Signposting In Seattle

2012-01-12T18:19:00.000-08:00

These signs were posted next to freeways in Seattle on January 11th and 12th. If you want to express yourself to a whole lot of people cheaply and easily, it's hard to beat signposting on freeways.

The best place in Seattle to hang signs is on this fence behind Kobe Terrace Park. It's a very quiet and discreet spot with convenient parking, overlooking about a dozen lanes of heavy, heavy traffic. The sign above has been up for two days now, and has probably been read over a hundred thousand times. Seriously.

Although large signs are more dramatic, smaller signs stay up much longer - days and weeks as opposed to minutes or hours. If you really want to get a message out to a whole lot of traffic, small signs along the peripheries are the way to do it.

The signs are made by painting cardboard white and lettered by tracing with an overhead projector. I use a one inch foam brush and cheap black paint to fill them in and you wouldn't believe how quickly it goes once you get the hang of it.

These signs took about three hours to make and cost less than two dollars in materials. Placed alongside freeways up and down the west coast, they've been seen over a million times. Well over a million times.

Anything you can see while driving is a place you can put a sign and it'll be read.

The way to attach cardboard signs to fencing is with bungee cords and duct tape. Place sign against fence, stretch bungee across sign, tape the corners to the fencing, walk away. The whole process takes about fifteen seconds: eight or nine once you get good at it.

Next time you're on the freeway, take note of the fencing. Every piece of fence you see is a potential billboard. The more difficult it is to reach, the longer it'll stay up.

The question I get asked the most is "Is it legal?" and my answer is "So far." I've been doing this for over ten years now, posting over four thousand signs and have never been arrested. The half dozen or so times I've been stopped by cops resulted in little more than having to take the sign down.

My theory is that this is precisely the sort of thing that the First Amendment was intended to protect. If I'm wrong about that, then I'm sure it'll get hashed out in court.

Someday.

For more information go to Freewayblogger.com

Portland OR, Day 2

2012-01-10T23:58:00.000-08:00

"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." -Benjamin Franklin

(All signs posted in Portland, January 10th)

"The Americans will always do the right thing... After they've exhausted all the alternatives." -Winston Churchill

"Behind every great fortune there is a crime." -Honore de Balzac

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right." -Thomas Paine

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress." -Mark Twain

"Just be thankful you're not getting all the government you're paying for. " -Will Rogers

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." -Martin Luther King Jr.

"Freedom is from within." -Frank Lloyd Wright

"The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it."

-Abbie Hoffman

Portland OR

2012-01-09T20:32:00.000-08:00

"It is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way not his way." -Mark Rothko

All signs posted in Portland on January 9th.

Quotations by Portlanders.

"The only sane policy for the world is that of abolishing war."

-Linus Pauling

"Getting fired is the best thing that could happen to any of us. That way, we'd quit treading water and do something with our lives."

-Chuck Palahniuk

"The only reason they come to see me is that I know that life is great — and they know I know it." -Clark Gable

"When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities." -Matt Groening

"A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over." -Joe Hill

"What's to gain by silence?" -Ursula K. Le Guin

"That's All Folks!" -Mel Blanc (epitaph)

Bay Area/George Bernard Shaw

2012-01-07T21:14:00.000-08:00

"You see things as they are and ask Why? I dream things as they never were and ask, Why not?"

(Signs placed on I-80 and US 101 in Alameda, Marin and Sonoma counties.

Quotations by George Bernard Shaw )

"If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for us to do."

"There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it."

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."

"The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier."

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."

"In heaven an angel is nobody in particular."

"Do not try to live for ever. You will not succeed."

LA/Road Trip

2012-01-06T23:43:00.000-08:00

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

Ventura Freeway Eastbound

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

Corporations Are Not People/Orange County

2012-01-06T08:55:00.000-08:00

These signs, and a lot more, have become almost permanent fixtures along the 5/405 corridor in Orange County, California - a hotbed, to paraphrase Abbie Hoffman - of social rest.

Maintaining at least five lanes of heavy traffic in each direction, Interstates 5 and 405 host hundreds of thousands of drivers per day in Orange County. Of course there's no telling how many of them keep up with Supreme Court rulings or know about the Citizen's United decision, but I figure that those who don't simply have their commutes made a little more surreal, or assume that someone's merely stating the obvious. In this respect, even the most uninformed drivers have a clearer sense of jurisprudence than Scalia, Thomas, etc.

I paint my messages in different sizes to adapt to a variety of posting spots. The signs above took about two and a half hours to make and cost... practically nothing. The cardboard was free out of dumpsters and I used probably no more than 47 cents worth of paint and duct tape for the lot. The bicycle on the far left will give you an idea of the scale.

Montana (Yes, Montana) Fights Back

Because of the layout and infrastructure, OC postings are best kept to the sides of the freeways, a vast and easily accessible no-man's-land of fencing and iceplant. This rule holds true pretty much across the board: the signs that are read the most are the ones that stay up the longest. Smaller signs placed along the peripheries of freeways will stay up for days, weeks or even months compared to overpass postings.

"I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one of them." -Sign at Occupy Wall Street

Wisconsin's Overpass Light Brigade

2012-01-05T20:05:00.000-08:00

Overpass Light Brigade

Final Push for Recall Signatures

Very cool pictures from Madison and Racine from the Overpass Light Brigade, using pedestrian bridges to spread the word and gather signatures.

How to make an LED lightboard, and here's how to make traditional cardboard and paint glow in the dark.

Short video from OLB

LA 12/31

2012-01-02T21:21:00.001-08:00

"Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph." ~ Haile Selassie

"Throughout American history, there have been moments that call on us to meet the challenges of an uncertain world, and pay whatever price is required to secure our freedom." -Barack Obama

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

"Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace." ~James Baldwin

"Saying that cultural objects have value is like saying that telephones have conversations." -Brian Eno

Berkeley/Oakland

2011-12-30T09:07:00.000-08:00

"That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed." -Algernon Sydney

"Man's inhumanity to man is not the last word. The truth lies deeper. It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep." -Alexander Berkman

"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick.'" -Mikhail Bakunin

"Courage is not the absence of fear but the awareness that something else is more important." -Stephan Covey

"I may not be able to say all I think; but I am not going to say anything that I do not think. I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets." -Eugene V. Debs

"If you don't have enemies, you don't have character." -Paul Newman

"I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do."
-Edward Everett Hale

"Not living in fear is a great gift, because certainly these days we do it so much. And do you know what I like about comedy? You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time — of anything. If you're laughing, I defy you to be afraid." -Stephan Colbert

"You know, 'power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely'? It's the same with powerlessness. Absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely." -Studs Terkel

San Luis Obispo/Sonoma County

2011-12-28T19:20:00.001-08:00

(Signs posted on Highway 101 in San Luis Obispo and Sonoma counties.)

Of course, we’ve all seen signs on the freeways before: usually hand- or spray-painted bed sheets or butcher paper, hastily scrawled with messages like “Stop the War!” or “No Blood for Oil!” hung loosely or held by protesters on top of overpasses.

The difference between this and freewayblogging is simple: with freewayblogging you use a stiff medium, either cardboard or wood, painted white, and lettered in black with an overhead projector so it can actually be read. You don’t just make one sign and hold it, you make lots of signs and post them everywhere, covering as much traffic on as many freeways as you can with the least amount of effort.

Freewayblogging means you’re fighting an information war - a battle of ideas - and that the only way to win that war is to state one’s case as well and succinctly as they can in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

The warrior’s creed is to do as much as you can with as little as possible, to avoid being captured or killed and to always try to preserve one’s strength - physically, mentally and emotionally - for the long battle ahead.

The true warrior understands that they’re in it for the long run - win or lose – and they don’t stop fighting until the war is over. It’s not enough to just participate.

The Pasadena Freeway Is A Hotbed Of Social Unrest

2011-12-26T18:40:00.000-08:00

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.

East Bay/Jack London

2011-12-22T17:01:00.000-08:00

"Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do."

"Age is never so old as youth would measure it."

"Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it."

"Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well."

"The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."

San Francisco Postings

2011-12-20T19:04:00.000-08:00

(Signs placed over the weekend on the 280 and 101.

All quotes by Mark Twain.)

"I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever."

"Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any."

"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."

"I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."

"Heaven for climate, Hell for companionship."

"We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter."

"The only reason why God created man is because he was disappointed with the monkey."

Vaclav Havel Quotes

2011-12-19T09:57:00.001-08:00

"The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less."

"I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions."

"There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them."

"There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side."

"The only lost cause is one we give up on before we enter the struggle."

"Many people hardly ever see a politician as a person anymore. Instead, a politician is a shadow they watch on television, not knowing whether he is speaking impromptu or reading a text written for him by anonymous advisers or experts from a screen hidden behind the cameras."

"We live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain."

(Signs placed on Highways 1, 17 and 101 in Santa Cruz and Marin counties.)

100 Reasons Why You Should Start Putting Signs On Freeways

2011-12-15T21:43:00.001-08:00

(These signs were placed yesterday over and alongside the 5, 405, 101, 10 & 110 freeways in and around Los Angeles.)

1) You can say whatever you want.

2) It costs almost nothing.

3) It reaches thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people.

4) Done right, it can even reach millions.

5) Finally get rid of that old paint in the garage.

6) Payback for all the political propaganda you've been subjected to.

7) Get some use out of those graphic design classes.

8) An excuse to think up new messages or slogans, or simply repeat those you feel need repeating.

9) Two words: Citizens United.

10) Instantly makes you Time's Man of the Year.

11) If just a few OWS evictees start hitting the freeways, the authorities will immediately wish they'd just left them in their tents

12) Entirely Non-Violent.

13) Utilizes all the coolest strategies and tactics of guerrilla warfare with absolutely none of the dangers.

14) You can do it alone.

15) You can do it with others.

16) Day or Night, 24/7.

17) You can get some great photos.

18) No camping required.

19) No annoying pepper-spray.

20) Does not require leaders, committees, organization or meetings.

21) Self-broadcasting: requires no media presence or participation.

22) Says just what you want it to say: no press or media filtration between you and your audience.

23) Practically zero chance of retribution. (Since 2001 I've done it over five thousand times and been stopped by law enforcement maybe six or seven times with no punishment besides having to act contrite and take down the sign.)

24) Demonstrates to foreign visitors that America is truly a land of free speech.

25) Demonstrates to Americans what free speech actually looks like.

26) Can be done on any high traffic highway or interstate - tens of thousands of miles of roadsides and infrastructure to work with.

27) Can be done with absolute anonymity.

28) Provides a needed tonic for drivers who agree with you.

29) A thorn in the side of drivers who don't.

30) When the Founding Fathers gave us the right to free speech, they probably meant for us to use it.

31) Eliminates the appearance of normalcy in a society that can no longer afford such appearances.

32) Gives drivers something to look at besides advertising and graffiti.

33) Makes your own drives more interesting as you check the status of your signs.

34) Sometimes requires you to hop fences, climb hills, take long walks and apply problem-solving skills utilizing terrain, traffic conditions and line-of-sight dynamics.

35) Gets you the hell out of your comfort zone.

36) Road Trip! A perfect excuse to visit friends and family in other cities.

37) Great cardio-vascular workout: provides an adrenaline rush even after years of doing it.

38) Instantly raises awareness of a specific issue or problem. (For example: if you want a lot of people to think about Darfur, go to a large city and put up signs that simply say "Darfur.")

39) In the unlikely event there's an eternal and omniscient afterlife, will provide the Founding Fathers a badly needed morale boost.

40) In the event said afterlife is based on merit, may help you out too.

41) A slap in the face of right-wing corporate media.

42) A slap in the face of liberally-biased media.

43) Helps undercut the influence of money in politics.

44) Great civics lesson for the kids.

45) Makes up for that time you tried to do it using a bedsheet which didn't attach very well, immediately came loose and was practically unreadable anyway.

46) Requires tools that cost almost nothing, most of which are probably lying around the house.

47) Done properly, can reach more people in an afternoon than you'll meet in your lifetime.

48) Sharpens and makes relevant otherwise dormant rhetorical and sloganeering skills.

49) Finally an opportunity to use that old overhead or laptop projector. If you don't have one, gives you a good reason to get one. Used in conjunction with cardboard and paint, a projector becomes practically a printing press for billboards.

50) Recycles cardboard.

51) Makes up for not doing it during the Bush administration.

52) Gives an immediate sense of political empowerment.

53) Practically every stage of the operation can be done while listening to music.

54) Does not require shouting, chanting, getting clubbed or arrested.

55) Can be accomplished, start to finish, in a single afternoon.

56) Contrary to popular belief, does not require getting up at three in the morning and sneaking around in the wee hours.

57) Share poetry, lyrics or favorite quotations!

58) Offers complete editorial control.

59) Forces you to employ stricter reductionism in your rhetoric.

60) Brightens up the place.

61) Utilizes all sorts of zen philosophy, jiu-jitsu and game theory.

62) Good to practice now for when things get really, really bad later.

63) Undercuts corporate control of existing media and information sources.

64) Absolutely non-discriminatory: Open to all races, genders, parties, classes and age groups (infants and toddlers excepted.)

65) Very quick and steep learning curve: requires only a couple of dozen signs to become an expert.

66) May inspire others to give it a try.

67) Gives one an immediate and definitive sense of mission.

68) Can be used to launch new words and memes into societal and political discourse. (Like "Quagmire Accomplished" and "Nobody Died When Clinton Lied.")

69) It's a Hell of a Lot of Fun. Really.

70) Adds a new and exciting dimension to otherwise dull and generally uneventful commutes.

71) Reaches practically all classes and strata of society - not prone to to the ghettoization of left and right blogospheres.

72) Signs taken down can usually be used again, particularly ones that are too large and cumbersome for easy removal or destruction.

73) Signs that are torn up can usually be put back together using nothing more than duct tape.

74) You've always wanted to do it.

75) You've never wanted to do it, but now that you've read this far you're beginning to think it's a pretty good idea.

76) You've begun to realize that simply voting once or twice every four years isn't enough.

77) Your OWS encampment got dismantled before any level of economic justice, or even policies in that direction had taken place.

78) You miss the sixties.

79) You missed the sixties.

80) In some countries people die every day for the right to speak out.

81) Signs can be made in any size, shape or color.

82) Utilizes the freeways for something besides transportation, advertising and global warming.

83) Finally get some use out of art school.

84) Far more satisfying than forwarding another e-mail petition.

85) An opportunity to explore urban environments and pathways few people know about.

86) A chance to do something different.

87) As a textbook example of pure semiotics in action, it allows you to use the term "semiotics" in conversations afterwards.

88) Gets you out of the house.

89) A chance to have photos of your work posted on the highly prestigious "Tales of the Freewayblogger" weblog.

90) Speaks truth to power. Horsepower anyway.

91) Gives you a chance to radically change the current socio-political paradigms of greed, fear and tribalism to a world of peace, harmony and mutual respect among all races, creeds and religions. (Note: You'll need some really, really good messaging skills to pull this off.)

92) Conversation fodder for those rare vehicles with more than one occupant.

93) May make people think.

94) Practically guaranteed to make you feel younger.

95) Can be done year-round under practically any sort of weather conditions short of hurricanes, blizzards or blinding dust storms.

96) Demonstrates to others that someone cared enough about something to speak out about it.

97) Instantly earns you credentials as a pundit.

98) Forces you to face up to your fears enough to realize that ultimately all you're really afraid of is looking foolish.

99) Allows you to drive around for a bit with no schedule, destination, or purpose beyond looking for places to hang your signs. Compared to the usual stresses of commuting, running errands, etc. you'll experience driving for the pure sport of it, which is a real joy, and best experienced before the permafrost starts melting.

100) Why not?

Around LA

2011-12-11T19:00:00.000-08:00

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."
-Napolean Bonapart

"Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy." -Theodore Roosevelt

"A simple way to determine whether the right to dissent in a particular society is being upheld is to apply the town square test: Can a person walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm? If he can, then that person is living in a free society. If not, it's a fear society." -Natan Sharansky

"Right knows no boundaries and justice no frontiers;
the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution." -Learned Hand

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." -Thomas Jefferson

SF Bay Area

2011-12-08T09:15:00.001-08:00

Petaluma

Marin County, Hwy 101 north of the Golden Gate Bridge

San Francisco

Santa Cruz

Soledad

Aptos

San Francisco:101/280 Split

Scrapitalism

2011-12-05T09:42:00.001-08:00

San Francisco (Three days @ 90,000+ viewers per day)

Berkeley (Five days @ 110,000+ viewers per day)

Statistic courtesy of Communist Agitprop Forbes Magazine

Actual number is 21.9%

Los Angeles (duration unknown)

These signs are made quickly, easily and cheaply using scrap cardboard, paint and an overhead projector. I place them by driving around and determining which spots are easiest to see and most difficult to get to from the road. I can attach them to fencing within seconds using bungee cords and duct tape. By attaching them to the inside of the fencing there is no danger whatsoever of their falling into traffic.

These two signs (above and below) were placed in not-very-well-sealed overpasses over the Santa Monica and San Diego Freeways. Each has stayed up for over a month, passed by over 110,000 and 120,000 drivers per day respectively.

Novato and Larkspur, California (Three and five days+ at 80,000 drivers per day.)

For more information go to Freewayblogger.com

Sacramento

2011-12-04T09:30:00.001-08:00

Occupying the Bay Area

2011-11-30T09:32:00.000-08:00

Berkeley

Larkspur

Novato

San Rafael

Pt. Richmond

San Francisco

Oakland

Banners made for Occupy San Francisco measuring 16' x 4'.

They were made by duct-taping two 8' x 4' cardboard panels together and painting them white. Messages were traced using an overhead projector and filled in with black paint and a 1" foam brush. The whole process took about 90 minutes and cost less than a dollar.

San Francisco

Vallejo

Road Trip/LA Postings

2011-11-28T18:37:00.000-08:00

Abolish Corporate Personhood: LA

2011-11-27T20:55:00.000-08:00

This went up over the Santa Monica Freeway around noon today. The cardboard to the left is a sign I put up four days ago (below).

"The function of the law is not to provide justice or to preserve freedom. The function of the law is to keep those who hold power, in power." -Gerry Spence

"Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth." -Mark Twain

"I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one of them." -Sign at OWS

"The Rich aren't like us—they pay less taxes." –Peter De Vries

"It's not so much a living hell, it's just a dying fiction." -Brian Eno

November 17th Pictures

2011-11-18T09:18:00.000-08:00

The Visibility Award goes to this sign, which, thanks to an (almost) entirely sealed overpass, has been up over the Santa Monica Freeway for three weeks now.

This sign went up yesterday around noon over the northbound 405 by LAX. Also in an

almost-but-not-quite-entirely-sealed overpass, it'll be seen by close to 100,000 people a day until it comes down.

Hollywood Freeway near Silverlake. Sign placed in between the railing and fence with about the same time and effort as it takes to put toast in a toaster.

Visibility Award Runner-Up: This Bad for America sign's been up next to the Hollywood Freeway at Sunset for two weeks now.

Pasadena Freeway: attached behind guardrail with a binder clip and a nail.

Another favorite spot over the Pasadena Freeway. You can drop a sign in here just walking by without even having to slow down.

Pasadena Freeway by Dodger Stadium.

Yukon Ave. on the 405 North

My garage.

For more information on how to make and post signs, go to Freewayblogger.com

How To Reach A Million People Tomorrow

2011-11-13T17:18:00.000-08:00

How To Reach A Million People Tomorrow: Paint up a bunch of signs and hang them next to freeways. 13 or 14 of them hung next to five or six large freeways should just about do the trick.

Freeway signposting is a great alternative for people who'd like to make a political statement to a very large number of people without getting clubbed, tear-gassed or arrested.

Along with duct tape and bungee cords, you should bring along a hammer, nails and a couple of spring clamps: this is pretty much all you need to hang signs just about anywhere.

I put these up last week over or next to the 80, 280, 101, 85 and 99 in San Francisco, San Jose, Berkeley, Marin, Sonoma, Stockton and Sacramento.

With very few exceptions, each of these signs stayed up for at least 48 hours, easily visible to between 60 and 100 thousand people per day.

So long as a sign is placed within sight of freeway traffic, it'll get seen. A lot. If you're the least bit clever about how and where you place it, it'll stay up.

When a sign comes down, you put up another one.

Any place you can see while driving is a place you can put up a sign that'll be seen by other drivers.

Using cardboard, paint and an overhead projector, I can make dozens of these things for pennies apiece - just about any size - in just a few hours.

Bungee cords and duct tape are the quickest, easiest way to mount a sign to fencing. So long as the sign is mounted to the inside of the fencing, it's perfectly safe. And perfectly legible.

So long as it's political and not commercial speech, your sign is protected by the First Amendment. If a policeman or highway patrolman sees you putting one up, however, they'll probably ask you to take it down. I always comply with such requests. During the Bush administration I put up over four thousand signs. Police made me take down seven of them.

On my way back from the Bay Area I saw that more than half the signs I'd put up in LA (here and here) were still standing, so for this week, a million people a day is probably an understatement. Apart from gas, the total cost came to about fifteen dollars. If that.

And it's a hell of a lot of fun.

More information at Freewayblogger.com
(Attention California Occupiers: if you'd like me to make you some Really Large Signs for your encampment, free, contact me at freewayblogger-at-yahoo-dot-com)

Bank Transfer Day

2011-11-06T08:42:00.001-08:00

I painted up some signs and hit the road again, visiting some old spots in LA.

Driving down the Santa Monica Freeway I saw that this sign, put up last Friday, was still standing and in fine shape over the eastbound lanes. According to Caltrans, this spot is passed by 277,000 cars every day (Route 10 - Crenshaw) Cut that in two, since it's only visible in one direction, and subtract those travelling at night and you still get a hell of a lot of people. Times eight.

Signs are quickly and easily attached to fencing using bungee cords and a bit of duct tape.

How long signs stay up generally depends on their size, where they're placed and what they say. Smaller signs with relatively apolitical messages like "Support Your Local Credit Union" tend to last longer than their larger more in-your-face counterparts.

Signs are made with scrap cardboard painted white and tracing the text using transparencies and an overhead projector. They cost pennies and take minutes to make.

Occupying Overpasses

2011-10-31T11:13:00.001-07:00

(Click on picture for better view)

These signs went up in Los Angeles during rush hour on Friday, with at least three of them staying up through the weekend. By the time they all come down they'll have been seen by at least a half a million people - probably more.

The signs were made using cardboard, paint, duct tape and an overhead projector. They took about two hours to make and cost practically nothing. in fact the whole operation was pulled off, start to finish, by one person in one afternoon, for a total cost of about thirteen dollars.

As winter moves in and physical occupation becomes more difficult and less fun, I urge you to consider freeway signposting as a means of keeping your message alive and in the public eye. Cardboard doesn't care if it's freezing.

Next time you're driving down the freeway (or highway/Interstate,) look for places that are easily seen from traffic but not so easily reached. Then paint up some signs, go to those places and post them. It really is that simple. If you want to get a message out to A Whole Lot Of People, that's the way to do it - in terms of sheer numbers, no other form of protest even comes close.

For more information go to Freewayblogger.com

Occupy Los Angeles

2011-10-03T20:02:00.001-07:00

Sign placed October 3rd over Pasadena Freeway by the Tribunes of the People,
Remained for just under four hours.

Occupy Los Angeles

Placed October 14th, duration unknown. This particular overcrossing allows you to simply drop your sign into the space between the ironwork and chain link fence with no more time or effort than it takes to put toast into a toaster.

Los Angeles

2011-01-19T20:24:00.000-08:00

The Tribunes of the People, being strong believers in the people's right to know, applaud recent document releases by Wikileaks. While Julian Assange is ensconced in a baronial hall somewhere in the English countryside, though, PFC Bradley Manning, who is alleged to have leaked the documents to him, is being held in the brig at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia under conditions of solitary confinement that are tantamount to torture. The Tribunes strongly support Bradley Manning.

Here is his entry on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning

And here is a nifty way to access the documents contained in the Wikileaks release:

http://www.elpais.com/documentossecretos/mapa-cables-wikileaks/

Sailing Across America

2010-12-21T08:42:00.000-08:00

Lately I’ve been messing around with bicycles and sails, trying to combine the two technologies into a more perfect machine. Although it’s been done before, previous bike/sail designs were built around the sailboat model, with a large mast and triangular sail: excellent for harnessing the wind, but practically useless on roads. I’ve been working with smaller, more discreet sails that can be folded out when there’s a tailwind and back when there isn’t. Bike sails are cheap and easy to make, requiring little more than a beach chair, yard sign and duct tape.

In the spring I took this bike out to the Great Plains to test it in big wind. Starting in Chadron, Nebraska, up by the Wyoming border, I set out to go literally whichever way the wind was blowing. Eight days later I was in Waterloo, Iowa: just shy of the Mississippi River. 850 miles on a fully loaded bike, and I was hardly even tired. It was incredible.

This was back in April, with winds averaging between 25 and 30 mph - with gusts up to 50 - coming straight out of the west. The wind on the plains is awesome: it comes whipping across the prairie, shrieking through the power lines and ripping at everything that isn’t nailed or bolted down. When I was stopped, or at low speeds, the wind almost tore the bike apart, so it was important to either quickly find shelter or get back up to speed.

When I was moving though… wow. All around me everything was chaos: an entire landscape of crops, grasses and trees bucking and heaving in the wind, while on the bike everything was still - sometimes almost perfectly still - enough to light a match and let it burn. It was a bizarre, otherworldly feeling, and one I’ll never forget.

With a cruising speed between 18 and 23 mph, I was able to do over 100 miles a day easily - almost lazily - crossing practically a third of the country sitting on my ass. Yes, I had to pedal, but I didn’t have to pedal much.

In September I decided to really put things to the test and see how long it’d take to go coast-to-coast. Starting at the mouth of the Columbia River I headed east, reaching Virginia Beach, Virginia 3,867 miles and two months later. Here’s what I learned along the way:

1.) The United States is much bigger than it looks on the map.

2.) You can’t count on the wind.

3.) Having a large American flag on the back of your bike will give you an extra two or three feet of room from passing traffic.

In general, bicycle sailing works best in the West, in the deserts and plains. East of the Mississippi there’s just too many trees. The sails work best in high winds, 15/20 mph and above, and for hill climbing, where even a slight wind assist feels almost magical.

I may try this again in the spring, using a standard road bike and thin tires. Until then, the coast-to-coast bikesailing record stands at an easily breakable 64 days.

St. Pete for Wikileaks

2010-12-16T07:12:00.000-08:00

The good folks at St. Pete for Peace employ the fiendishly clever Ladder Technology to speak out on Wikileaks around Tampa Bay. More Here.

"We were taken to war in Iraq on a lie. Hundreds of thousands are now dead. Just imagine if the men who planned this war crime back in 2002 had had a WikiLeaks to deal with..."

"Openness, transparency -- these are among the few weapons the citizenry has to protect itself from the powerful and the corrupt. What if within days of August 4th, 1964 -- after the Pentagon had made up the lie that our ship was attacked by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin -- there had been a WikiLeaks to tell the American people that the whole thing was made up? I guess 58,000 of our soldiers (and 2 million Vietnamese) might be alive today."

-Michael Moore from "Why I'm posting bail..."

Fair Game

2010-11-26T15:48:00.001-08:00

This sign was placed over the Pasadena Freeway near downtown LA on October 29th, timed to coincide with the opening of the film "Fair Game" about Ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. (My apologies for the photo quality, it was taken off a computer screen.) The sign itself stayed up for 22 hours, including that Friday's rush hour.

How To Make A Bicycle Sail

2010-10-08T07:42:00.000-07:00

What You'll Need:

An aluminum beach chair
Plastic yard sign with "H" shaped wire frame
Hacksaw, Duct Tape and Scissors
Broomstick

Step 1) Dismantle beach chair with hacksaw. Take "U" shaped tubing from seat and backrest and slowly bend them to desired shape.

Step 2) Cut yard sign in half, place inside the tubing and attach/fill in the gaps with duct tape.

For standard bikes simply tape the sails to the sides of the wire frame, using duct tape as the hinge. Bungee or tape the wire frame to the rack and seatback. Broomstick/crossbar should be bungeed/taped on the front of the rack just in front of the sail. Attach sail edges to crossbar with bungee cords or duct tape.

For Recumbents the proceedure is the same except the wire frame ends should be bent at right angles and then extended with ballpoint pen tubes or aluminum tent pole pieces to accomodate sail height. The end result should look something like this:

(recumbent style shown - standard bike sails should have a thinner gap)

Attach wire frame to seatback crossbars and backstays with duct tape. Sail crossbar should fit in between sail and seatback.

Obviously there will be differences in beach chairs, racks and bicycles, but the beauty of bikesail technology is that it can be designed, built, modified and repaired using little more than duct tape, tubing and wire. So long as you have panels that you can fold out when there's wind and fold back when there isn't, you're sailing.

Phoenix

2010-09-05T20:51:00.000-07:00

Voices from The Gulf

2010-08-30T11:56:00.001-07:00

Robert Corsini for Truthout

Logorama

2010-08-17T21:17:00.001-07:00

Academy Award for Best Animated Short

Worst Governor Ever

2010-08-10T12:15:00.000-07:00

Palinblogging in Alaska

Phoenix: At Least It's A Dry Hate

2010-07-06T09:36:00.000-07:00

Hey Scarlet, Greetings from Arizona:

We broke out the overhead projector to ridicule Sen. John McCain for running this advertisement. He looks so certain that the answer to Arizona’s problems is to “finish the dang fence.” I haven’t seen the ad for a while, but it is interesting to note that the anti-immigrant sheriff with whom he’s strolling along the ridiculously-easy-to-scale border wall comes from a non-border county. Seems there’s no depth too low for politicians to sink when it comes to pounding the immigrants in order to win the xenophobia vote.

Oh, wait, here’s a guy who went a little lower. Too bad there aren’t words that can be used to score a cheap pun using this candidate’s name: Barry Wong.

Next are a couple of signs that are posted in honor of the AZ governor who speaks with forked tongue. She has no way of knowing how many border crossers are out there, since no one knows the number who are there and don’t get caught, but she has assured her anti-immigrant base that most of them are smuggling drugs. Oh, and the rash of beheadings has to be a highlight in the “How to Win Elections Using Bullshit” manual. A journalist on a talk show actually told her that there were no reports of beheadings, but did that fact resonate with our Guv? Once your pointed your wagon down the fecal trail, there’s nothing left do to but plow ahead.

Atlanta

2010-06-22T16:21:00.001-07:00

from MichaelMoore.com

Pasadena Freeway

2010-06-21T08:02:00.000-07:00

Up for a few hours last week over the Pasadena Freeway, courtesy of the

Tribunes of the People.

Teaneck, New Jersey

2010-06-09T07:47:00.000-07:00

Story Here.

Los Angeles

2010-05-10T09:25:00.000-07:00

Measuring 24 feet across, this stayed up over the Pasadena Freeway for 18 hours with an audience of roughly 8,000 cars per hour. This message brought to you courtesy of The Tribunes of the People.

Earth Day (Week, Month, Year, Life)

2010-04-23T05:50:00.000-07:00

Probably the most useful thing you can do right now to save this planet is to sit down and ask yourself what's the most useful thing you can do to save this planet.

Normally we're asked to consider this in our role as consumers, and although that's certainly a start, it hardly scratches the surface of our potential. I'm asking you to consider the question in your role as a unique individual: What are your talents, your arts, your pleasures, and how can you apply them in defense of Mother Earth?

Since my talents seem to lie in the field of mass-communications, I decided to have a couple of hundred posters printed up for use on the freeways: the ones shown here along with others I'll be introducing later. Like with the signs and slogans I put up during the Bush years, there's no assurance these will actually do any good, but I do like the way they look, especially from the road.

While it's easy to dismiss our efforts, either as individuals or collectively, as being far too little far too late, I think the stakes are way too high to afford the luxury of inaction. It isn't just the survival of the species homo sapien I'm talking about, or even the survival of life on earth: there's a good chance that it's much, much bigger than that.

After all, it's quite possible that life on earth is actually the only life there is: that everything else in the universe, throughout the entirety of time and space, is either blazing with fire or cold and dead, and that this little planet of ours is the only place where life of any sort exists or ever has. Until we get some definitive proof otherwise, I'm afraid those are the stakes.

Granted, saving life on earth may seem a bit daunting at first, and compounding it with the notion that you may be saving all life throughout the universe probably doesn't help much. Remember though that the first step is easy: sit down and spend some time figuring out how you're going to do it.

Indianapolis

2010-04-19T19:54:00.001-07:00

"Collateral Murder"

Sign Spotted Here

Obama Nominates Jew To Supreme Court

2010-04-12T19:36:00.000-07:00

(Illustration Courtesy of Texas Dept. of Education)

(from our Inbox) President Barack Obama has just nominated Jesus Christ, an immigrant originally born to a virgin mother in Bethlehem, to fill the new vacancy on the Supreme Court. Although Mr. Christ is over 2,000 years old, He is immortal, so Democrats and Republicans expect that He will serve on the high court forever or until He decides to start the End Times. Republicans are expected to fight the nomination on the grounds that Mr. Christ would radically move the Court to the left.

The GOP is also concerned that, despite decades of controversy and speculation, Mr. Christ has never revealed his position on abortion. Mr. Christ, according to many authorities, is expected to oppose the death penalty in all forms. Michael Steele, the head of the GOP national committee, issued a statement: "Christ is a complete mystery to us. He won't reveal His physical appearance and many of His positions are unknown or the subject of speculation. He is a stealth candidate. Why won't He reveal himself? Who does He think He is?"

Republicans are reportedly outraged that Mr. Obama even considered Mr. Christ, who has been widely quoted for his sentiments supporting the poor over the wealthy. In a Facebook post, former half-term Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin called for an investigation into the Bethlehem chapter of ACORN because of what she termed the "highly suspicious" coincidence that both President Obama and Mr. Christ had each spent three years as community organizers. In her post, Palin also wrote that "More and more of good God-fearing smalltime Americans from hardworking smalltime towns from great parts of this real America, West, South, East, North, are seeing more and more every day that Christ is a community organizer. We don't need another community organizer in the White House!"

Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) asked, "We're not even sure where He was born. Why is He afraid to show us his birth certificate?" Bachmann also announced that she would vote "no" when the Christ nomination came before the House of Representatives. Later, her congressional staff released a statement saying that the Congresswoman had forgotten that the House does not vote on judicial nominations.

According to Rush Limbaugh, "Christ doesn't know anything about free enterprise. This is part of the Obama conspiracy to drag us to socialism. If this guy is approved, I'm moving to the Dominican Republic." Sobbing, Glenn Beck attacked Christ's support for the separation of church and state, telling his audience "You know who else wanted a separation of church and state? Hitler."

Democrats are hopeful that Mr. Christ's past associations with prostitutes will earn him at least one Republican vote, that of Sen. David Vitter (R-LA).

More Thanks

2010-03-27T17:53:00.001-07:00

Thank You Mr. President

2010-03-24T08:40:00.000-07:00

After a year of bashing from the corporate media and their tea party stooges, President Obama managed to pass health care reform.

While I don't pretend to know every nuance of the bill, whom it helps or how it could be better, I do feel a bit of thanks is in order for the man who pushed it through.

These signs went up in Berkeley, San Francisco, Marin and Sonoma Counties and were seen by at least a hundred thousand motorists and, depending on how long they stay up, possibly a couple hundred thousand more.

Using cardboard, paint and an overhead projector, they took about four hours to make and cost practically nothing. (Buying a Prius really cuts down costs as well.)

Thanks to the Supreme Court, who apparently doesn't understand that most Americans can't afford to buy TV commercials, we can look forward to a political landscape where individual free speech is all but drowned out by corporate advertising, making this sort of low-cost/high-profile activism even more relevant in the future.

For some history, how-to and legal notes, visit

Freewayblogger.com

Granny D: 1910 - 2010

2010-03-13T08:28:00.000-08:00

"Where authority and power flow down from above, from heaven to the White House to husbands and ayatollahs, the free and joyful living of people can be quite the enemy ... When people begin to really live their lives, the black and white certainties do not turn to shades of gray, but to the million-jeweled hews of a morning's dew..."

The Orchard Hill Speech

Phoenix

2009-10-24T11:44:00.000-07:00

America Speeks!

2009-09-29T09:23:00.000-07:00

Tehran

2009-09-17T21:55:00.001-07:00

thirty second video

Story Here

Christian Scientists Enter Healthcare Debate

2009-09-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

Sail for Recumbent Bike (High Wind)

2009-08-21T10:21:00.000-07:00

I made this by taking the basic sail design and adding wings made from lawn chair tubing, vinyl and duct tape, attached to the backpack frame with baling wire. The crossbar was made from an old ski pole and the fairing comes courtesy of Windwrap and worth every penny. I tested it through the Salinas Valley with tailwinds averaging between 15 and 20 mph and for the most part, it rocked.

In general, a sail will be helpful up to windspeed but no faster, but really helped compensate for the weight of the bike, which was fully loaded with pack, camping gear etc. On uphills and in high winds it felt like magic.

Probably the most noticeable effect was in cities, where people of all ages and demographics would stop to stare, chat, give a thumbs-up or say "Cool Bike!" And let's face it, when a 12 year old says you've got a cool bike, you do.

(Wings folded back)

Despite the aesthetics, the design and materials are much heavier and more unwieldy than necessary - nice and strong for high winds, but fairly impractical otherwise - so I'll probably try working with nylon and tent materials next. Awfully tempting though to take this up to the high desert and see what it does in a really big wind.

New Jersey

2009-08-10T08:52:00.001-07:00

Radical Thinking

2009-07-21T09:39:00.000-07:00

Corporations and politicians are fond of telling us that “Children are the Future.” They’re not: they’re the present. (Look down, or check in front of the TV.) The future is a little bit more abstract than that. It will be populated by our children’s grandchildren and their children and grandchildren and very few people are asking us to think about them, least of all politicians and corporations.

One organization that actually is dedicated to this sort of long-term thinking is the Long Now Foundation, described here by Michael Chabon. Although trying to project an arc for the next 10,000 years is probably a bit heady for most, it’s good to know that someone’s doing it. For me, just getting people to think a couple of generations ahead is radical enough.

This sign measures about twelve feet across and was placed over the eastbound lanes of the Santa Monica Freeway between La Brea and Crenshaw at 1:00 p.m. yesterday and was still up four hours later. Let me know if you see it.

The Elicit Thought Project

2009-07-14T22:26:00.000-07:00

The Elicit Thought Project is a startup group that's done installations in San Antonio TX, Duluth MN and Superior WI and is looking for volunteers to help with music, webwork and making people think using the time honored tradition of putting words in front of eyeballs. By using plywood, chains and padlocks, however, they've run afoul of local ordinances, which tend to be fairly specific about the manner in which speech can be affixed.

In time they'll discover, as I did, that it's not so much how the sign is attached, but where it's attached that keeps it up. (and keeps the law off your back...) And while plywood is nice and sturdy and good for a couple of signs, it's cardboard that will truly set you free...

Making a Sail for Recumbent Bicycles (Easy)

2009-07-03T10:50:00.000-07:00

What You’ll Need:
1 Backpack Frame
2 2” Spring Clamps
Duct Tape/Scissors
Some vinyl or plastic sheeting

Directions:
1. Cut vinyl to fit inside backpack frame, attach with duct tape.
2. Attach sail behind backrest with spring clamps like so:

A standard 2" spring clamp costs about a dollar and fits perfectly around the seat strut and sail frame. (Use duct tape to reinforce the seat so as not to tear up the webbing.) You can use tape or a bungee cord to make a third anchorpoint on the crossbars, but the springclamps hold so well it's not necessary.

I used a standard Bike E recumbent extended with a 2” x 3” hammered directly into the frame (the fit is so perfect it’s hard to imagine it wasn’t designed that way). My son and I road-tested this along with a touring bike from Monterey to San Luis Obispo through the Salinas Valley, approximately 200 miles of relatively flat, straight backcountry roads paralleling the 101. Winds are generally light or non-existent in the mornings, but as the valley floor begins to heat up the air rises and starts pulling in the cooler air from the coast, so by 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon the entire valley turns into a wind tunnel heading south.

With its lower profile and center of gravity, the recumbent was able to keep up fairly well in low wind conditions, but once the wind kicked in and we put the sail up, the recumbent was definitely faster. Particularly going uphill, which is something recumbents aren't supposed to be.

Torture Accountability Protests

2009-06-27T16:05:00.001-07:00

Protests Against Torture in Pasadena and Los Angeles

from Aboriginalmedia

Biggest Losers in the World Awards

2009-06-25T22:14:00.000-07:00

Well folks, it looks like we've got a two way tie between Governor Mark Sanford (for not staying in Argentina for an extra day or two,) and this guy, who went to all the trouble of setting up and maintaining fake facebook and twitter accounts for Yours Truly.

Breathtaking.

Tribunes

2009-06-22T09:54:00.001-07:00

International Herald Tribune from Greenpeace and the Yes Men.

Another from Tribunes of the People in LA. Story here.

The California Bike Road

2009-06-09T08:24:00.000-07:00

The above is a quote from Frank Barron, my psychology professor who said it in class over 25 years ago and it’s stuck in my head since. One of the reasons it’s stayed with me all this time is, quite simply, it’s right. There’s really almost no downside to bicycling, and its swift adoption as an alternative to cars would combat not just pollution, global warming and dependence on foreign oil, but obesity and diabetes as well.

The downside to bicycles is of course their relative lack of speed and cargo capacity, and that they require physical effort. Not to mention the chance of getting instantly killed or permanently disfigured by a car. As it is, the biggest drawbacks to bicycling are that it takes place right next to automobiles, and if we want people to start using bikes to any meaningful extent, we have to separate them from automobiles. One of the best things we could do as a society right now would be to start building bike roads between all our major cities. Not lanes, not paths. Roads. Roads built specifically for bicycles, and designed to take fullest advantage of prevailing winds, terrain and gravity. Imagine if we built wind tunnels for bicycles alongside urban freeways, or gondolas up to mountaintops with perfectly graded downhills running along the ranges and foothills. Imagine if those gondolas, or simple tow ropes, were powered by windmills. Imagine the things we could do if we put our minds to it.

Since the election I’ve found myself with a lot of free time, much of which I’ve spent biking between San Francisco and Los Angeles, trying to find the quickest and overall safest route. This is what I’ve come up with:

Following the 101 inland instead of the coast cuts out a lot of traffic and unnecessary climbs and takes fullest advantage of the prevailing winds through the Salinas and Santa Maria Valleys, which are considerable. Although not quite as scenic as the coast it’s a hell of a lot quicker, less strenuous and less dangerous, and if we ever do build a bike road between SF and LA, I can just about promise it’ll follow this route. (which I’ll detail in later posts) Though most of it takes place on quiet country roads, there are a few hellish sections where you have to go on the freeway, and those are the parts I’d like to fix up first. My goal is that one day parents will be able to take their children on this ride in relative safety, without having to deal with cars.

I’m not sure how I’m going to pull this off just yet, but I figure the best way to start is to get other people thinking about it too, so you can expect to see more signs like this appearing here in California.

Los Angeles

2009-05-30T06:59:00.001-07:00

A friendly reminder to the Pasadena Freeway

from the Tribunes of the People.

Update: This sign stayed up for six days over an average of 82,000 cars per day (110 @ Stadium Way, divide by two.) It was eighteen feet long and took less than a minute to post.

Memorial Day, Tampa

2009-05-27T23:26:00.000-07:00

More Here.

Freewayblogging Republican Style

2009-05-26T11:18:00.000-07:00

Scarlet, You should put up some signs like these.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=98724

-El_Khem

Dear El_Khem, Thanks for the tip. I mailed a link to freewayblogger.com to Mr. Farah so if he really wants to get the message out, he'll know what to do.

Unfortunately, like most of the controversies surrounding Barack Hussein Obama, his lack of a valid U.S. birth certificate didn't seem to gain much traction among voters, proving that Americans would rather have a Foreign-Born Black Muslim Terrorist Sympathizer as their President than another Republican. For the time being I'm afraid you'll just have to add "Americans" to "Republicans" and "White People" on the list of groups that the Bush presidency has politically destroyed.

Thanks for keeping me posted on this billboard campaign: I love the thought of y'all having to pony up 25,000 dollars for something a single patriot could accomplish on a slow afternoon.
Yours, Scarlet

San Rafael, LA, Tampa

2009-05-17T20:49:00.000-07:00

Marin Independent Journal

100 Days

2009-04-29T07:29:00.000-07:00

(Picture Photoshopped)
Although I'm taking heat for it, I'm calling it at 100 days: Best. President. Ever. Here's why: I wasn't around for the first 35 or so, and while I've heard great things about Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln etc, it's all been pretty much passed along through middlemen such as history books, documentaries and the like, and none of them have really offered the kind of real time as-it-happens accounting I've gotten from the presidencies that have occurred during my lifetime. I was too young to appreciate Kennedy while he was around, and as for Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, the Bushes and Clinton, well, I'm sticking with Obama. So far everything he's said, done and, most important, the style with which he's said and done them has earned my unwavering political allegiance and vote for Best President Ever.

Friends on both the right and left have pointed out that this is a radical departure from the sort of high-minded critical thinking we've all come to expect from the Freewayblogger brain trust, and to them I say "Damn Right." I look at Obama as being a sort of Reagan for Liberals. It doesn't matter what he says or does or what mistakes he makes along the way, I'm standing behind him 100%. Just like Reagan created huge deficeits, sold anti-aircraft missiles to the Iranians, supported apartheid and helped the rivers of Central America run red with the blood of the campesinos without his supporters so much as blinking an eye, I'm prepared to offer the same to Obama: reason, common sense or even outcome be damned. To my friends on the right it's called "Your Own Medecine" Let me know how it tastes.

(Note, this stance becomes null and void at such a time it can be reasonably determined that Obama has baked a cake for the Ayatollah of Iran: that's where I draw the line.)

Melbourne Australia

2009-04-25T08:49:00.000-07:00

1.6 Mile Wallblogging

2009-04-18T08:49:00.001-07:00

This letter is currently being painted by Palestinian activists along the dividing wall in the West Bank. When finished it's expected to be 1.6 miles long, a record for political semiotics.

Full Story Here.

It should be noted that Israel was one of the major arms suppliers to Apartheid South Africa

San Diego, Phoenix

2009-03-21T19:37:00.001-07:00

Powdered Mengele

2009-02-26T09:32:00.000-08:00

Dear Freewayblogger,

I saw a video on Crooks and Liars of white phosphorus being used on Gaza so I printed these up and tagged a couple blocks around the Israeli Consulate in SF. I wore an overcoat with a small can of spray adhesive tucked into one sleeve so it was pretty easy to be discreet. Besides, if they can drop that shit out of airplanes onto people and get away with it I'll be damned if I'm gonna worry too much about sticking up pieces of paper.

When I was a kid I saw a picture in a book about the Holocaust that showed a Nazi scientist standing beside a body on a gurney. The body was covered by a sheet except for the legs that had been burned away to the bones. The caption said they'd been burned off with a blowtorch to see how much pain a human being could endure. I was something like ten years old when I saw that picture and I never forgot it.

I'm Jewish and when I was growing up believe me the Israelis were the good guys... I mean they were the really really good guys, and I just can't believe this shit's happening. I know it's not quite putting signs on the freeways, but it felt good to do something. Thanks for the inspiration. -Pissed Off Jew in SF

P.S. : Your "Peace on Earth" sign at the 280/101 split's been up for something like a year now.

From Amnesty International

Phoenix, LA, San Diego, Santa Cruz

2009-02-14T07:53:00.000-08:00

PT Cruiser Spells it Out
"The concept that a person who has a lot holds his hand out to someone who has less, or someone who isn't hurting holds his hand out to someone who is, is simply a human trait that has nothing to do with celebrity. I am confounded at the stinginess of some institutions and some people. I'm bewildered by it. You can only put away so much stuff in your closet. In 1987, the average CEO against someone who was working in his factory was 70 times. It's now 410 times."

-Paul Newman

"Civil disobedience, that’s not our problem. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem." ~ Howard Zinn
"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican." - H. L. Mencken

Best. Posters. Ever.

2009-02-05T10:22:00.000-08:00

California

U.S.A.

Details Here.

From Around California

2009-01-26T10:37:00.001-08:00

"Though the mills of God grind slowly,
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting,
With exactness grinds he all."
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Democracy is coming to the U.S.A." –Leonard Cohen

"Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold." –Helen Keller

"Divorce isn't caused because 50% of marriages end in gayness." -Jon Stewart

"When the pupil is ready to learn, a teacher will appear." – Zen Proverb

Praise Song For The Day

2009-01-24T09:35:00.000-08:00

"Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.

Praise song for every hand-lettered sign..."

Reading at the Inauguration

Full Text

St. Petersburg, FL

2009-01-22T18:43:00.001-08:00

"Once again we hear the word 'precision' from people who think bombs can be precise..." - Prince Myshkins

More here from St. Pete For Peace

Best. Website. Update. Ever.

2009-01-20T17:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.whitehouse.gov

From San Diego

2009-01-19T08:59:00.001-08:00

"We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it "bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East."
-- Harold Pinter

"What kind of message is this sending to the world, and to the citizens of the United States? If you commit a crime and you are important enough, it's not prosecutable in America? That no one is above the law, except for presidents, vice presidents and their top staffs?" -David Lindorff

"President Bush and Vice President Cheney are guilty of war crimes, especially for their authorization, condoning, encouraging, protecting, and failure to halt and to punish the practice of torture by American forces under their control." - David Lindorff

"On its face, I would submit that if as president Obama blocks prosecution of Bush/Cheney administration war criminals, it will be the wounded American soldiers and their relatives, and the relatives of Americans who died in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hands of fighters in those countries who were recruited into battle by the images of the torture and abuse who will make his decision "politically fraught." -David Lindorff

Former Chief of the UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, in Iraq told Aljazeera that he and the Head of the IAEA, Mohamed Al-Baradei, were subjected to direct threats from Vice President Cheney before the war.

Blix said that Cheney threatened to defame both men's reputations if they didn't come up with the "required" answers. Blix also added that he is ready to be a witness on the United States' false allegations before an International tribunal.

Bush and Cheney demanded pro-war lies under one threat or another - being defamed, getting fired, and even outing covert CIA operatives. The Bush Administration was nothing more than a mafia operation. -Bob Fertik

The full impeachment articles and their supporting documentation can be read here.