The Nordeast Sign Shark

More signs, more cities, more codes

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 11:41:52 -0400

When this blog goes quiet, it is only because I am keeping busy. As I’ve mentioned in my About page, this is something I do in the crevices of my already busy life. Which is very ironic, considering a common detraction of sign sharking is “those people need to get a life”, as if we pull down illegal advertising because we have nothing better to do, and our idle hands are interested in destroying local business.

We are interested in supporting local business. That is why, when a business spends money and effort to advertise legally, we believe they deserve the fair share of your attention. Putting a neon sign for your lawn service outside of a new local restaurant is deplorable. A business can spend thousands of dollars to improve the aesthetic of their 20 feet of sidewalk space, and snipers dirty it up with a 20 cent sign. How does that not compute for some people?

I’ve updated the City Codes page with Maplewood and North Saint Paul, where I’ve taken down a fair number of signs. Maplewood is pretty rough.

One Sign, Two Sign...

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 10:33:59 -0400

I’ve been radio silent for a week, but the sharking continues. Here’s some activity from snipedinner:

One sign, I’ll let you slide. Two signs, a few towns apart, and you’re definitely getting pulled up.

Snow Removal in July

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:22:37 -0400

snipedinner:

Sundance Construction thinks you need snow removed in July. Are you having trouble with your snow? If so, I apologize for taking down these signs.

Hot Summer Sign Cleanup

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:47:00 -0400

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.

Why I do what I do.

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:04:00 -0400

I’m not going to bore you with a step by step account of Sunday’s sharking run. It was a success, and I had a fellow sharker with me to lend a hand. You can look at the gallery and map and get an idea of the route we ran if you’d like. Let’s instead talk about sharking and why I do it, using my latest run as an illustration.

Have you ever been down Marshall St? I have, many times. It’s a road full of history. Close enough to the river to encapsulate the life of Minneapolis from all angles, industrial to residential. It has shops and bars and schools and churches, houses on all ends of the financial spectrum, from nice condos down by St. Anthony to the ramblers of upper Nordeast. If you drive this road on a summer day, you see local traffic of a most specific nature, the Minneapolis that tourists wish they could experience but often never find.

And then I see some crappy sign on a post, a leech hoping to make a quick buck off some down-on-their-luck local. This is the principle matter, people. These gaudy, obtuse signs don’t belong here. They prey on the uninformed, and to some degree, they are effective; else there wouldn’t be an economic drive to do this.

The city of Minneapolis knows this. Most cities know this. That’s why they’re illegal. They’re listed under nuisance laws most of the time. We all tolerate nuisances to a degree. But while I can’t kill every mosquito in Nordeast, I can at least whack down a few god-awful signs.

I don’t have illusions of grandeur. I know I’m not stopping drug trafficking or preventing assaults. That’s actually the whole point of doing this, because it’s something our City doesn’t have the resources to combat. It’s how these sign spammers thrive, on the thin budgets of municipalities and the complacency of the neighborhood.

But Nordeast isn’t complacent, if fellers like me rise out of the woodwork. The way I see it, it’s either your tax dollars or my free time, and I don’t mind the task. Just one more antibody keeping our city a little bit cleaner. I’m nothing more than a tendril of the community, a hair on the bull’s tail swatting at another fly. Okay, that metaphor ran away from me. The point being, it’s part of our civil responsibility to keep our neighborhoods clean. You don’t tolerate litter, why tolerate spam?

Since I need to throw it in, I’m all for promoting local business. I see roofing signs in lawns of the homes that these roofers helped improve. Bravo. I see signs that point to new restaurants or new apartment complexes. This is great, as long as it keeps to the locality of your business. I’ll make another post in the future to help define how I use judgement when taking down snipe signs. See you next time, and keep Nordeast looking great.

Hitting some stragglers.

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 20:22:36 -0400

I was trekking through Fridley today, and spotted a snipe sign on the frontage road. So, I zipped over, tagged and bagged it. Then, heading back into Nordeast, I saw a neon yellow corrugated plastic sign. I yanked this one down with my bare hands.

Pinball machines wanted, junk cars wanted… I guess we all want things. I want my neighborhood to be free of garbage illegal ads.

The spoils from July 5th.

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 12:05:51 -0400

The spoils from July 5th.

Every story has it's beginning.

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 11:57:00 -0400

It was the perfect evening to start sharking. I knew what I needed, and I knew where I was going. There was a sign on 37th and Polk that has been there for months. A “cheap homes” sign on a phone pole outside a church. Half a year ago I wouldn’t have even known that sign was illegal, it’s so subtle and ambiguous. But that’s how these illegal advertisers survive.

I parked, put on my gear and checked out the sign. Higher than I can reach, good thing I brought my Sharkstick - a garden tool pole with a razor blade attached. This sign had rubber washers holding it in place, but the washers and corrugated plastic are just no match for a sharp blade. I made a V-shaped incision around the top nail, and cut the sign clear down the middle. It came down with no problem.

It was invigorating. I was filled with adrenaline. There was another sign across the street, at the busy intersection of Central and 37th. I got to work on that one, too.

I did my best, but the nails had that thing in hard. I had to leave a strip in place. The perfectionist in me wanted to clean it all up, but they used too many nails and I didn’t want to be careless (I was standing on a berm at this point, about a foot and a half above the sidewalk). I chalked it up as a win.

I thought I was done for the day. But I was buzzing. One more I said, I knew of an ICE DAMS sign in New Brighton that had been there since at least winter. It’s July - shows how little the municipalities can do about this plight, and why I feel the need to help out.

This was the hardest one to get down. As you can see in the picture, I brought in my heavy hitter - the Sharkbar. It’s a pry bar duct taped to a 7 foot plumbing pipe. It’s heavy, and very little can resist it. It’s not very portable, but it does the serious work.

Now I realize I’m far from done, and I go back to Nordeast Minneapolis. I take Johnson St. south, and, well. I find signs on the first three intersections.

I documented locations and got to work. Most of these were low enough to reach and didn’t have washers - anyone could have yanked them down. Well, not anyone. But I did. One sign I felt bad about removing was a hand painted lawn care sign that was nailed in place. But it had been there for awhile, and I’m afraid to say, crossed my line. That sign was illegal by Minneapolis law, and I had the tools to remove it. I did leave the garage sale signs, of course.

Then, I discovered a sign about a half a block off Johnson St., that I saw while pulling these guys down. It was up high, and by a church and alleyway. Surely someone didn’t think that was a good idea.

These College Pro Painters are a real piece of work, my first nemesis with a name. A little online research pulls up their deplorable business practices and general consumer unrest. Right now, I just care about removing their sign spam. Took down the one by the church, and one outside Columbia Park. After talking with a fellow sign shark, these guys are apparently everywhere. Now I know to show no mercy.

The last grab was a good trophy. I almost missed it. Along Central by Columbia Park, on a divided road with nowhere to park, was a Need a Job sign by a bus stop. If I wasn’t already aware of this particular spammer, I might have passed it by or disregarded it. See, “Leah” prints her signs to look hand written in marker. Don’t be fooled. This is a professionally printed corrugated sign, and she has a few variants that are all over town. See some fellow sharkers for more examples.

The sign wasn’t on very well, but I still needed the Sharkstick to cut around the nails. The wind was picking up really bad, with some scattered rain. I feared the sign would blow into traffic, but it dropped right in front of me. This is also why I wear protective gear while I work.

With the weather turning awful and my route coming full circle, I called it quits. I took a picture of my final haul before disposing of the garbage.

For all the pictures, be sure to check out the gallery. I’ll be out again before long, checking the side streets for the sneakier signs. I suspect the more clever spammers have found high traffic areas in the residential corridors, and I plan to learn all their tricks. Nordeast is getting cleaned up, and this shark is hungry for more.

Om nom nom.