Rebuttal
to "Illegal
Advertising Cluttering
Community" by
Illegal
advertising cluttering community by Jeremy Schwab
appeared in 9/8/2005 Vol. 41, No. 4
of Bay State Banners. (www.baystatebanner.com)Schwab's
comments appear in yellow,
our rebuttal is in white...
"Joyce Stanley gets hot when she
sees stickers advertising new rap albums or signs advertising political
candidates illegally plastered on utility polls and other public
property in Dudley Square."
We rappers
get hot when we can't afford a Clear-Channel billboard to advertise our
albums, or when the city attempts to intimidate and extort our money
instead of providing a legal venue in which to publicly
advertise. Being that rap's core audience lives in or hails from
the historic black music center of Roxbury, MA and sells or buys its
products at Nubian Notion and Funky Fresh Records, we believe our body
temperature is of equal concern to that of Ms. Stanley. It may be
of greater concern since we are more numerous than the business owners
of Dudley Square. (We are even business owners ourselves.)
"Stanley,
the director of the business and community improvement group Dudley
Square Main Streets, said the postings contribute to the unkempt look
of the square."
As do the
potholes, traffic, unshovelled sidewalks, excessive construction,
zooming buses, unkempt businesses, and the Boston Police Battlestation.
“It pisses
me off that we have all these nice poles and everything and they put
those things there that don’t come off and ruin the poles,” she said."
While we may
not appreciate a nice pole as much as the next businesswoman, we
appreciate their dual function. Is this what environmentalism has
come down to? Save the poles?
Record
companies often hire people to post as many stickers or flyers as they
can, wherever they can.
Compare this
with the statement: "Record companies hire people to post as few
stickers or flyers as they can." Where is the effectiveness in
that? This could be why very few people have heard of Dudley
Square Main Streets.
“They put
them up mostly at night,” said Stanley. “Sometimes I’ll be taking it
down from a building and they’ll be fighting with me because they get
paid by how much they put up.”
That is
right. Since we are not allowed to disseminate our speech by day,
we do so at night.
Other
activists in Boston’s communities of color echoed Stanley’s sentiments.
This is a
weak attempt to insinuate that black people are of a single mind on the
posting of rap stickers. How craven and preposterous! This
type of insinuation is epidemic in the astroturf activist industry.
“Illegal
advertisements on telephone poles are a big problem,” said community
organizer Michael Kozu of Grove Hall-based Project RIGHT. “It’s very
destructive. Usually the worst offenders are vendors from out of town
who have no accountability and have people to slap them up. [The
stickers] are pasted and very hard to take down.”
Stickers
were made to stick. The people of Grove Hall are far more
destructive than illegal advertisements are. Why not remedy a
real problem?
Shelly
Goehring, who heads Four Corners Main Streets, said illegal postings
are also a problem in her neighborhood.
“The
frustrating thing is our poles are pretty new and with the humidity and
rain it sticks and the polls look gross,” she said. “A week or two ago,
there were so many posters on Washington and Bowden streets. After I
called, the Inspectional Services Department took them down within a
day. It happens all the time.”
Another pole
enthusiast.
The problem
of illegal postings in Boston is growing, however, according to Sal
Lamattina, director of operations for the Boston Transportation
Department.
According to
any alarmist, his particular concern is a growing problem. That
is the way media hype is generated.
“Now it’s
happening everywhere, on street signs, control boxes, [traffic]
signals,” he said.
One can only
hope that one day the mayor himself will be plastered with
stickers. Now there's a HUGE adspace.
The
Transportation Department launched a campaign at the beginning of the
summer to locate and remove the postings. In their patrols through
Mattapan Square, Dorchester, Roxbury, downtown areas and other
neighborhoods, department staff have discovered two groups in
particular who have plastered their stickers far and wide.
We are not
particularly thrilled with the Transportation Department, most of which
operates outside any recognized democratically elected governmental
jurisdiction. That laughable agency which does nothing to
mitigate Boston's potholes and universal 10 mph speed limit. Not
to mention the MBTA which makes millions on paid adversement, none of
which is for us, and all of which is obnoxious.
In Jamaica
Plain, the culprit is the local rap group 357 Phinelia which has
reportedly given youngsters piles of stickers advertising the group’s
new album. The youths dutifully post them on public benches, stop signs
and bus stops.
Artists have
a first amendment right to disseminate stickers. Also, this point
refutes the previous claim that the sticker culprits are evil
out-of-towners. Imagine the nerve of some people trying to take
stickers from children. What's next? And what Jamaica Plain
to do with Dudley Square? This smells like a gentrification
campaign.
The clothing
company Fish Scales, meanwhile has spread its illegal advertisements
downtown and in Mattapan, Roxbury, Dorchester and other neighborhoods.
This is the
age old tactic of criminalizing rival businesses.
“They’re
putting those stickers on public safety sings like stop signs and do
not enter signs, and I have to go out there and replace those signs if
I can’t get the stickers off,” said Lamattina. “So it’s a lot of money.
It’s manpower. It’s taking away from the other work I do.”
Lamattina is
still being paid to do his "work" in any event. Perhaps Boston
should have fewer stop signs. Why is Boston always trying to stop
everyone?
Sometimes it
is difficult to locate such companies to collect the $300 fine the city
charges for each illegal posting. Businesses get smart and do not
include phone numbers or addresses on their stickers. The Inspectional
Services Department has reportedly tracked down the website for 357
Phinelia and is still trying to reach them.
Boo
Hoo. Perhaps he should take a lesson from his own BTD parking
police which have no trouble capitalizing on the busted meters and the
deliberately maintained lack of parking. Who can take seriously a
member of the fine and penalty cottage industry when he says he can't
find enough people to punish? I don't remember voting for a Sal
Lamattina. (Mr. Lamattina, Mr. Sal Lamattina.)
The
Inspectional Services Department has issued over 300 tickets for
illegal postings in the city in the last month, according to ISD
spokeswoman Lisa Timberlake. Sixty-nine of those tickets were issued to
Fish Scales.
And how much
of the revenue generated is devoted to facilitating legal public
posting? None. We don't even get benches at the bus stop
unless Menino cuts a sweetheart deal with an advertising company.
Don't you think we are sick of having to buy and rent the commons, not
to mention the airwaves which belong to us by right?
“We’ve been
trying to get in touch with them so they can follow the rules and
regulations of the city of Boston,” said Timberlake. “Last I heard we
contacted someone who said it wasn’t them, so we are trying to track
down the company.”
We have been
trying to get in touch with the City of Boston to figure out why they
have improperly planned and maintained a micropolis as convoluted and
structurally unsound as its City Hall and its blue laws. As yet
we have no answer. (Nor could we afford the $50 to file the
question asking form.) To be quite blunt, we do not take the
rules and regulations of this city seriously, for if we did, we would
starve to death or else die in traffic and be eaten by the homeless.
Signs from
political candidates are a perennial problem in many neighborhoods, as
candidates often leave them behind when their race is run.
In Dudley
Square, candidates seeking the votes of Roxbury residents often send
their foot soldiers to tack signs to the sides of abandoned buildings
or onto utility polls.
I have an
idea: let people buy abandoned buildings and live in them. Ah,
but that would require a free market, not a heavily leveraged real
estate swindle and lots of city owned crack houses. People
historically do not sticker on occupied dwellings. Like most
local businesses they just cram unwanted crap into our mailboxes.
“The
longtime council people and state representatives come back and take
theirs down after the election,” said Stanley. “When we have statewide
and national elections, candidates come in and put up signs and never
take theirs down.
“They don’t
fine them unless there is a hotly contested race and then the mayor
goes around and collects them and sends them a bill,” she added.
It is a
courtesy amongst theives.
Disclaimer:
(Flipside is
a rapper, writer, and sticker maker from Boston MA. Pete Stidman
doesn't like him. At the insistance of BIMC, Haters Magazine
takes an adversarial stance to their publication. Haters Magazine thanks Pete for
hipping us to Bay State Banner. BIMC is courting the publication
in hopes of improving it's reputation by featuring stories by better
writers.)
