NYC to Illegal Ads: Drop Dead

Often when discussing that perhaps ads don’t belong on every surface of our city there are usually folks who say that Toronto needs ads-a-plenty and are strangely insistent that our World-Class-Ness is connected to the amount of ads we’ve got in public. So, it’s nice to see a cover story this week in the New York Press about the illegal ads plaguing that city. Lindsay Beyerstein writes:

Vinyl construction wraps loom over sidewalks all over the city—from the towering blue Infiniti ad wrapped around a vacant lot in Soho to the new Equinox Fitness wrap on the Flatiron Building. As soon as a construction site wall goes up, it gets plastered with brightly colored posters for records, movies, concerts and gadgets, usually as part of a corporate sniping campaign known in the trade as “wild posting.”

These ads are so brazen and so ubiquitous that most would find it hard to believe that most of them are, in fact, totally illegal. Construction site ads run afoul of the New York City law stating that, “there shall be no information, pictorial representations or any business or advertising messages posted on such protective structures at demolition or construction sites.”
…
The rules are crystal clear, but New York is facing an epidemic of illegal advertising. In the summer 2006, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer mounted a vigorous campaign of press conferences, official statements and media appearances to pressure the Department of Buildings to crack down on illegal ads by enforcing the existing laws.

In a press release issued Aug. 20, 2006, Stringer stated, “More than an eyesore for our neighborhoods, these advertisements are illegal and inappropriate. We cannot allow corporate branding to determine the look of our streets and neighborhoods. We have laws in place to avoid these situations and clearly they are not being enforced.”

So, insecure Toronto ad-objectors can rest easy, there are Americans validating their feelings. Most interesting about the debate surrounding ads in public, and especially Dundas Square, is supporters give the impression, perhaps not always explicitly, that Toronto’s coolness has to complete directly with a place like Times Square — so any ad in the city makes us more New Yorkish, and thus “good,” and that opinion is often spread to places outside of the Square. Personally, I sort of like that one part of Toronto is given over to a mad expression of electric vulgarity, but I’d never connect my (secret) approval of Dundas Square with some weird notion of Toronto being a World Class City or not. It’s just a very colourful place that doesn’t have a lot in common with the rest of the city — a giant public movie theater, transporting us to some multi-national un-local imaginary place while we’re passing through, eventually returning to whatever version of the “real” Toronto each of us inhabit.

(Discovered this item via Vanity Fair columnist James Wolcott’s excellent blog about American things. Author Beyerstein writes a nice blog herself — a street level view of NYC, an antidote to the creepy and mean Gawker.com version of that city.)