The Nordeast Sign Shark

Again, I think I’ll let the photos speak for themselves, while I talk more about this whole sign sharking thing in general. Today’s trip takes us through South Minneapolis, since Nordeast looked pretty clean. I don’t have any set routes I take; I figure I should be just as unpredictable as the people sneaking their signs up in the first place.

I wear a hardhat when I pull down signs, as seen in some earlier photos. There are times where I debate wearing it, as it seems excessive for popping plastic signs off of phone poles. But now on more than one occasion have I popped a sign off, and it drops like a rock. Not to mention some of these signs are wood, not plastic. I don’t know what a wood sign with nails dropped a few feet on my head feels like, but I’m not too interested in finding out.

I also have a reflective vest now, which is pretty important because some of the streets I’ve traversed have some fast traffic. It’s also not just for cars, Minneapolis is a haven for bicyclists. If I’m working under a phone pole, it’s both a caution for me and a warning for them that hey, something’s going on here. 

As I was geotagging my images and looking through Google Maps Street View, I noticed some bandit signs in the street view images, which are likely five years old at this point. It reminded me that snipe advertising isn’t a new problem, signs will always be snuck up and torn down, and I can’t expect to “win” this battle. That sort of thinking would drive anyone to madness. The best I can hope for is to do a good job keeping the city clean, and at most send a message of resistance to some of these businesses that think they have a viable, albeit illicit advertising strategy.

Oh. And here’s some of the Nordeast riff-raff. If you live near Johnson Street, you’ve seen these bad boys around.