Anti-car graffiti on Oregonian billboard

Spotted a funny billboard on N. Vancouver (near Legacy Hospital) this morning.

Billboard for Oregonian classifieds spotted on N. Vancouver.
File photo: 5/11/07

It’s an ad for the Oregonian’s classified section. I also saw one in the paper that shows a just-married couple dragging cans behind them with despondent facial expressions and the same “Need a car?” tag line.

Jonathan Maus (Publisher/Editor)

Jonathan Maus (Publisher/Editor)

Founder of BikePortland (in 2005). Father of three. North Portlander. Basketball lover. Car driver. If you have questions or feedback about this site or my work, contact me via email at maus.jonathan@gmail.com, or phone/text at 503-706-8804. Also, if you read and appreciate this site, please become a paying subscriber.

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Joe
Joe
17 years ago

Funny they would put that on such a busy bike route… What a perfect response.

jami
17 years ago

the wedding couple with the cans don’t need a car, either. the fiance and i are planning on riding a “bicycle built for two” away from our eventual nuptials. hopefully with cans attached.

Dabby
Dabby
17 years ago

Graffiti is bad, no matter how funny….

chelsea
chelsea
17 years ago

i just saw one on my way into work this morning. it was tag free. but i automatically thought “umm..no.”

peejay
peejay
17 years ago

We need a little banksy in this town.

http://www.banksy.co.uk/outdoors/horizontal_1.htm

Carl
Carl
17 years ago

Defacing private property is illegal and those people aren’t wearing helmets.

Lazlo
Lazlo
17 years ago

Ha Ha. Tagging billboards is juvenile and stupid. Either ignore the billboard or buy your own.

Mike
Mike
17 years ago

Billboards are juvenile, stupid, and bad…more tagging please.

tonyt
tonyt
17 years ago

You know Carl, on a certain level I agree, they are private property and it is illegal and all that, but sometimes some of the billboards out there just ask for it.

Those forest “management” PR billboards a while back? Loved it when those got nailed.

And those Clear Channel ones that claimed that CC “gave a voice” to locals? What the bleep ever.

And all those jingoistic ones that were omnipresent in the run-up to the war?

Propaganda begs for redress.

http://antiadvertisingagency.com/projects/light-criticism/

Carl
Carl
17 years ago

Um…I was kidding.
I have no problem with cleverly bombing billboards (and freights, and warehouses, and retaining walls, and bridge pylons…). I should also note that I have no problem with the fact that the people in the picture were not wearing helmets. I was kidding about that, too.

Helen Wheels
Helen Wheels
17 years ago

Remember Focus on the Family’s billboard (The right-wing, anti-gay religious group from Colorado Springs) at SE 21st & Belmont?

It said “Focus on the Family” and a picture of a hetero family. Someone inserted “your own” before “Family.”

I think civil disobedience of this sort is essential. Can you imagine what Portland would be like without it? A city of lemmings, like everywhere else?

P Finn
17 years ago

Billboards, I have long felt, are the pissnpoop of the cityscape; architectural masturbation, no, rape. I make a point of not buying products/services so advertised. And Clear Channel can s### my b###s.

tonyt
tonyt
17 years ago

Sorry Carl, I figured you were kidding about the helmets.

Brad
Brad
17 years ago

Helen – Portland is a city of lemmings like everywhere else. Just because we have a few more cyclists, a few more lefty pols and a lot of strip clubs doesn’t make us different. In fact, if people from elsewhere keep moving to Stumptown, we’ll just be another cookie cutter American city with teeming with congested roads, big box stores, chain restaurants, and…oops! That’s already happened. I guess our civil disobedience wasn’t enough to scare off Pottery Barn and Hooter’s.

Portland is nice enough but get a few miles away from close-in hipster neighborhoods and it could be Columbus, OH or Kansas City, MO. Only the hills and fir trees make it different. The Wal-Mart on SE 82nd is just like the Wal-Mart in Little Rock, AR and that represents 80% of Portland’s metro population and social demographic.

ME
ME
17 years ago

What’s the talk of wearing helmets?…they’re in a carwash w/o a car…that’s the tag…they need a car to go through a carwash…not helmets. It’s not a bike ad. It could be one day if the bicycling community gets it together.

tonyt
tonyt
17 years ago

mmm, as Carl said, he was kidding about the helmets too.

Garlynn - http://undergroundscience.blogspot.com

Eh, Brad? Are you advocating that the rest of us should just give up to the lemming majority and go over the cliff already?

If so, I say… “Cannonball!”

No, wait.

I think it’s up to the rest of us to resist the lemming tide, to express our disagreement with Clear Channel’s mass marketing when appropriate — and this sort of tagging is certainly an appropriate use of a little bit of white paint to get the message across. It’s a bit of positive reinforcement to everybody riding by on that bicycle route that, yes, we are not alone. Walmart may OWN everything east of 82nd Ave, but in Central P-town, it should be abundantly clear which way the wind blows.

It’s up to all of us to do our best to express that.

Morgan
Morgan
17 years ago

I like the one about how Vegetarians taste good too.

weastsider
weastsider
17 years ago

Need a Car?

Need a Planet?

PPS Educator
PPS Educator
17 years ago

Read a semi-related piece in the snoreagonian – perhaps we should send letters of thanks to Judge Michael H. Marcus regarding this one…

Repost:
Clear Channel rebuffed over size of billboards

A Multnomah County Circuit judge struck down Clear Channel Outdoor’s quest to add to its position as the most prolific billboard company in Portland. Clear Channel is in the midst of a nine-year court battle to add or replace more than 60 of its 500 billboards in the city. All 60 signs would exceed the city’s 200-square-foot sign limit that effectively outlaws new billboards.

Judge Michael H. Marcus on Tuesday rejected the company’s request in a 37-page ruling. He also overturned a previous ruling that granted Clear Channel nearly $1 million in damages and attorneys fees from the city.

Marcus upheld his previous ruling that Portland’s 1990s sign code was unconstitutional because it regulated art murals and billboards differently. (The city eventually changed the code to treat the two equally.)

Clear Channel argued that the separate treatment should make the entire sign code void. But Marcus said Clear Channel wasn’t entitled to damages or new signs because the code has always prohibited signs larger than 200 square feet, a restriction he said is legal.

— Ryan Frank
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/business/1178763913314420.xml&coll=7

Brad
Brad
17 years ago

Garlynn – express your displeasure with The Oregonian. They bought and produced (or paid for production) of the ad. Clear Channel just owns the billboard and had space to sell.

If tagging signs we cyclists don’t like is mild civil disobedience then can car buffs can go tag a River City or Bike Gallery to express themselves? I assume they also have this right?

If neighborhoods can retain their unique charms then great. Cross the river. The westside is already homogenized and the inner east and north end of town are gentrifying (and homengenizing) as out-of-staters move because of our consistent “Best Place to Live” rankings and buy homes in the “unique” ‘hoods. That new blood and money will attract chain stores, coffee houses, etc. and they have the cash and patience to outlast legal and zoning challenges. In another ten years, Portland will be indistinguishable from other US cities. I travel for business a fair amount and am seeing less and less “different” in Portland. Nearly everyone else is doing new urbanism, lofts, arts districts, chain stores and restaurants building in local architectural styles, light rail or something similar, and celebrating being in the city.

I don’t advocate that you give in and become a lemming however, I think that many in Portland over estimate the strength and speed of the wind. The “storm” is beginning to weaken.

footwalker
matchu
17 years ago

Lazlo, could you finance my new art project? I need funds for a personal billboard since I just discovered that they’re not cheap enough to be budgeted into my income.

Toby
Toby
17 years ago

We’ve wandered away from the bike aspects of the story, but I can’t resist pointing out that Sao Paulo has outlawed all billboards. I’d love to see Portland follow suit… I don’t see how you can make any sort of argument in their favor – the ads in a magazine may make it cheaper for me to buy, and the ads before a movie may also lower the price I pay to see it. So as much as they make me grit my teeth, I can see that there’s some reason to put up with them. But the huge, inane Oregonian billboard helps to defray my cost of what? It is a sort of architectural mugging, an abuse of public space. I’d say it’s uglier and more detrimental than any graffiti.

Vespabelle
Vespabelle
17 years ago

Watch out Jonathon, Lars Larson is going to go after you on his show now as “promoting vandalism” like they did when Food Fight! posted an approving post about a defaced beef billboard.

just kidding. I have no problem with people defacing this visual pollution.

Cecil
Cecil
17 years ago

“We’ve wandered away from the bike aspects of the story, but I can’t resist pointing out that Sao Paulo has outlawed all billboards. I’d love to see Portland follow suit…”

Unless the Oregon Constitution is amended in the future, don’t count on that ever happening. For the same reason that Oregon had more strip clubs per capita, billboards are also protected. Personally, it is a price I am willing to pay for free expression, but I understand that not everyone feels the same.

Anonymous
Anonymous
17 years ago

You don’t have to go to Brazil to take a billboard vacation. They’re illegal in Vermont, too.

Les Pozdena
17 years ago

This made me laugh. http://tinyurl.com/2jt2eq