Sunday, August 1, 2010

crowded pavement

There's nothing I like better than dobbing in corporates - corporates, mind, not cute little furtive rebels - who graffiti. Our shop walls are poster-busy and I like that, but when they vandalise our eye-restful, bland pavements, I'm as gleeful as the next old codger, ringing up the council on 379-2020 to ensure that beer ad, that movie ad, that weight loss group ad, is removed from beneath my feet.
"Is it offensive?" the helpful council call centre often asks. Yes it is - much more so than some naughty word tag or throw-up. Cluttering up the footpath so the company doesn't have to buy advertising space is cheap and nasty and deserves to be spat on.
Voila an example:
Neil - shame on your undies! It's even made to look like a waterworks marking, so that it's less likely to be spotted as vandalism (although surely that's less eye-catching for the fans too?). Whatever - it's STILL on my pavement four months after the fact.
I wish that the council would make the company CEOs (like Neil) and their ad persons scrub away at their footpath logos and slogans with a toothbrush and some icy water until they're gone - that fits in with the council's zero tolerance graffiti policy after all. If spray-painting public space and public property isn't beneath them, then punishment, in kind, isn't either.

2 comments:

  1. It's a little known fact that Neil has taken decades to perfect this form of guerilla marketing. Back in 1991 he spent six weeks carving "Woodface 2/7/1991" on 1,991 trees in Woodhill Forest, a message that reached only a handful of cuckolded husbands who were busy burying their wives in shallow graves.

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  2. Interesting and important context you've contributed there, Dr Edit. Thanks for the illumination!

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