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25 Comments

cityscape

Vandalist: Love It or Hate It

Are billboard takeovers good, bad, or irrelevant?

By

BY: Unknown
LOCATION: Dufferin Grove
PHOTO BY: Jeremy Gilbert
FIELD NOTES: Billboards: A harmless source of income for property owners or an eyesore and intrusion on public space? Billboard takeovers: vandalism that’s not necessarily well executed or a relief from the near-constant harangue of messages telling us to shop?

The funny thing about many of the billboards in Toronto is that they are as illegal as the graffiti that covers them, yet, because money has exchanged hands to erect them, they tend to be accepted, while the people who vandalize them are demonized. In the end, does anyone even pay attention to billboards? Or do we edit them out of our visual landscape along with other things we don’t care to see? In which case, what harm is there in their artistic transformations? Discuss!

Once a week, Vandalist features some of the most interesting street art and graffiti from around Toronto. Find something great? Email vandalist@torontoist.com.

Comments

  • Guesty

    First off, no not many of them are illegal….are you suggesting that media companies in Toronto knowingly engage in selling illegal billboard space? Please try again on that assertion. Second, companies in good faith spend money on the space and on that artwork…..no matter HOW you want to romanticize it, graffiti is vandalism and it costs companies money as well as potential damage to their brand (depending on what’s done of course)
    How well the billboard works or not is irrelevant, they have paid for the right to use it and providing they are following advertising law, you simply don’t have a right to damage their property (vote with your feet by not shopping there, telling your friends not to shop or buy with that brand…..fair game). AND we are making the BIG assumption here that the billboard is soemthing they are protesting in the first place……more often than not, it’s merely a convenient space for some grafitti.
    You wouldn’t condone someone randonly walking around throwing rocks in windows or slashing tires on cars and bikes if the house they lived in or the brand they rode/drove wasn’t to your liking……so why on earth the moral relativism for graffiti?

    • Anonymous

      “are you suggesting that media companies in Toronto knowingly engage in selling illegal billboard space?”
      The evidance is that they did. Rami Tabello documented numerous examples where billboards where errected in contrvention of the relevant by-laws. (Examples included errecting two billboards where onyl one was authorised, errecting bigger billboards than allowed, putting up boards for printed copy where only painted boards were allowed…)

    • Anonymous

      Well, here is a City staff report from 2008, showing the results of Municipal Licensing and Standard’s investigation into illegal signs. It is just for the Toronto and East York district, and it is just the signs they investigated based on complaints. It has about 400 billboards on it.

      http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2008/ls/bgrd/backgroundfile-11897.pdf

      Here is the original agenda item considered by Licensing and Standards, including a full staff report and a list of violations from every district: http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2008/ls/bgrd/backgroundfile-11897.pdf

      Some of those signs have since been brought into compliance with the by-law; many others have not.

      Which is to say, we are not “suggesting” that there are many illegal signs in Toronto; this has already been demonstrated by the City itself.

    • Guesty

      First off, I never said there weren’t illegal signs…..the fact is that there aren’t many…..yes there are some, but the implication of the peice is that there are more than we should be comfortable with…..there are several thousand billboard spaces in Toronto…..AND it’s still besides the point, an advertiser buys these spaces in good faith, and no matter what you think of billboards or their legality…..it still doesn’t excuse mindless vandalism….no matter what kind of icing you put on it by calling it social commentary, urban artwork and etc…..

      • http://twitter.com/consciousness justin（╯°□°）╯︵ ┻┻

        strong straw grasping.

      • Anonymous

        You said “First off, no not many of them are illegal”. The evidence is that many *are* illegal. Illegal billboards deface the public landscape just like graffiti does. If you deface an illegal billboard, there’s no net change.

    • Anonymous

      “…vote with your feet by not shopping there, telling your friends not to shop or buy with that brand…..fair game.”

      How is one side having loudspeakers and the other side restricted to whispering “fair”?

  • Anonymous

    In the end, does anyone even pay attention to “your front door”? Or do we edit it out of our visual landscape along with other things we don’t care to see? In which case, what harm is there in their artistic transformations?

    • Guesty

      well, tell you what….give us your address, and I am sure someone will be happy to transform your front door for you, or your car or bike or etc……of course I am just pushing to the absurd to make a point. IF someone wants to transform a billboard…..they can buy the space for a month and go to town whenever they wanted with the spray can……and they can do it legally….tell me why they can’t do that?

      You can call it artistic transformations all you want, but to the person or campny that shelled out thousands for the spaces…..it’s vandalism.

      • Anonymous

        Yeah, it sucks for the companies that are being conned into paying for illegal advertising.

      • Anonymous

        I’d be happy to transform your forehead into advertising! Put your money where your mouth is, or STFU.

  • Gorsht

    I’m just so weary of being advertised at everywhere I go – Web pages, the highway, concerts that I pay gigantic amounts of money to attend. It hurts my eyes and saddens my brain far more than…erm…let’s say, “non-lucrative random alterations”.

  • Anonymous

    No one would mind a billboard takeover that was professionally done — i.e. cleanly photoshopped images properly applied. Have all the impish fun you want.

    But vandalism is vandalism is vandalism. Any messy, scrawling defacing of anything, for any reason, makes the city look like a third-world hellhole.

    This much should be obvious to anyone.

    • Anonymous

      I guess by your standard, every major city in the world looks “like a third-world hellhole”.

      Maybe what you’re looking for is a gated community?

      • Anonymous

        Please show me prominent graffiti in the major tourist and commercial parts of London or New York. Toronto has become so used to shabby appearances that its citizen now think it perfectly normal. Major cities keep up appearances, regardless of whatever graffiti might lurk at the fringes,

        • Anonymous

          Oh please. Graffiti is older than Ayers Rock. It is one sign a culture still has a pulse.

          • Anonymous

            Outdoor advertising is a newly formed concept in the history of major cosmopolitan cities? Or do you only recognize it only one way?

        • Anonymous

          Where are the major tourist and commercial parts of Toronto? Because I really don’t see much/any graffiti in or around Yorkville or around Queen and Bay or the Esplanade or SkyDome.

          We do have a shabbiness problem, but it doesn’t always manifest itself with spray paint. I’d much rather see random tags than hack-and-patch sidewalks covered in cigarette butts, decaying store fronts, drifting litter, and explosions of pigeon shit we find acceptable.

      • Anonymous

        The graffiti here is nasty… What does having standards for what is deemed “nice to look at” have anything to do with living in a “gated community”? The same could be said right back at you. Don’t like outdoor ads? Maybe you’re looking at living somewhere like Timmins?

        Welcome to the city.

        • Anonymous

          Why do you keep directing your comments validating “outdoor advertising” to me in particular, when I haven’t mentioned it?

          • Anonymous

            Woosh!

          • Anonymous

            It’s spelled “Whoops!”.

          • Anonymous

            Only if you have a comprehension problem. Which clearly you do.

            I’m replying to your comment(s). I’m not sure how you don’t understand that.

            “I guess by your standard, every major city in the world looks “like a third-world hellhole”.

            Maybe what you’re looking for is a gated community?”

            “The graffiti here is nasty… What does having standards for what is deemed “nice to look at” have anything to do with living in a “gated community”? The same could be said right back at you. Don’t like outdoor ads? Maybe you’re looking at living somewhere like Timmins?

            Welcome to the city.”

  • Anonymous

    Billboard graffiti
    like the weather, sometimes bad.
    Better things to do.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_R36DSEBLSINKGD7IUYJQYFH7JA KLW

    Can we figure out how to damage the big offensive LCD screens which are taking over from print billboards? I am offended that these ads are in my face. Are any of these illegal, because they are hugely ugly and distracting to drivers. I’ll take original street art over corporate ads any day.