Sign of Ignorance — The conclusion, sort of

Sometime last week The Oregon Department of Transportation sorted out its recent contribution to the sign clutter at the intersection of Capitol Highway and Barbur Boulevard in Hillsdale.

In my March 2nd post, I had encouraged neighbors to contact the ODOT "citizen representative" about the placement of a new bicycle warning sign, and several did.

But as you see in the photo I took yesterday, we have another problem. The TriMet bus stop sign obscures the "H" (for the OHSU hospital) directional sign. I wonder what it would take for TriMet to move its sign ever so slightly? Doing so might just save a life.

In any case, To the left is the "before" photo of the clutter....and below it is the way things are now. (Note that you can't see the "H" in either photo.)

White Stag worthy words

Randy's right. That would be Portland city commissioner Randy Leonard.

Plastering “The University of Oregon” on the “White Stag” sign is a condemnable waste of public space. Provincial, provincial, provincial!

(And these university people are supposed to be smart and creative....)

Here are some one-liner candidates to greet folks as they exit the Banfield Freeway. After reading each, imagine it on the sign.

“Weird forever!”




“You’ve Arrived, again!”




“The Time is always NOW!”




“Just how awake are you?
Yes, YOU!”




“Endings are beginnings”




“Oregon: A State of Mind”

"Peace is the Way"

Your turn.

A Sign of Ignorance — Part 3

On Wednesday, I e-mailed the Oregon Department of Transportation "citizen representative" about our continuing problem with the "sign of ignorance" at the corner of Barbur and Capitol Highway, just east of Hillsdale.

If you have read earlier posts (here and here), you'll know that ODOT has planted a bicycle warning sign squarely in front of a directional sign to Hillsdale. At the least, we have sign clutter. At the worst, we have confusion and even possible death (as in traffic fatality resulting from confusion, inattention and disorientation). I might add that the Hillsdale directional sign, does contribute to commerce in Hillsdale. In these times, the local economy needs all the help it can get.

In any case, on Thursday, in response to my e-mail, I received the following e-mail. It is an indication signs of life at ODOT. Here it is:

Hi Rick,

Thank you for contacting "Ask ODOT." I searched our database for record of
your previous contact, but could not find your name, email address or
phone number in our system.

[Note: The person I talked to on the phone never sought any "data" from me. Computer rule #1: No data, no data base. Back to the response... .]

I wanted you to know that we have received
other complaints about the placement of the new bike warning sign on
Barbur Blvd near the Capitol Highway turn-off. We are determining the
best solution for moving it and/or other signs in the area so they will
all be visible. I understand - three weeks seems like a long time. Our
maintenance crews must work this project in with all the other highway
maintenance tasks they do. It may take a few more weeks, but we will get
it done.

Thank you again for writing to the Oregon Department of Transportation.
Please contact us again if we can provide additional information.

Kim Jordan
Oregon Dept. of Transportation
Citizens' & ODOT Representative
e-mail "Ask ODOT"
888-275-6368 Toll Free
503-986-3434 Phone

I fear Kim's e-mail isn't all that reassuring. How much "determining" does it take to move a sign five feet? With Kim's approval, we could do the "project" ourselves. ODOT could contribute the savings to our Hillsdale Community Foundation or put it into a Hillsdale/Capitol Highway sidewalk account.

I hope you are among the "citizens" who have contacted the "representative." I say, keep those cards, letters, phone calls and e-mails flowing to Kim.

The clock is still running on this one. Three weeks and counting.

A Sign of Ignorance

This should test the systems.

A few days ago a state sign crew planted a bicycle warning sign at the entrance to the off-ramp from Barbur Boulevard to SW Capitol Highway. The location they chose clearly obscures the decades’ old sign that has directed motorists to Hillsdale and Beaverton. A sign indicating the way to OHSU hospital is barely visible.

What could the workers have been thinking? Were they thinking?

Whatever.

I’ll place a complaint today. Let’s see how long it takes ODOT to solve the problem.

Saving 1-800-Got-Junk

It’s time again for me to save the 1-800-GOT-JUNK people from themselves by removing their signs.

Another way I'll help is by using the 1-800-GOT-JUNK name a lot in this post.

They'll like that, I know because the company likes having the 1-800-GOT-JUNK name everywhere.

That's the problem.

1-800-GOT-JUNK signs are going up AGAIN all over the neighborhood.

I really should invoice 1-800-GOT-JUNK for my sign removal work. Then again, I do get paid off in their 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs, which I keep after removal from the shoulders of our streets.

I’ve probably collected four or five dozen 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs over the years. I’ve even found 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs on Terwilliger Parkway. Who knows, 1-800-GOT-JUNK may plant its signs in our parks and cemeteries.

To 1-800-GOT-JUNK, the entire city is a billboard.

The 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs are moderately useful to me because they usually have a blank side where I can write with my medium-point Sharpie. When my wife has her annual pottery sale, I write stuff like “Pottery Sale today!” on the blank sides and put the signs up early in the morning.

I’ve also written “Impeach Bush” and “Peace Now!” on 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs.

Of course I mask out the “1-800-GOT-JUNK” on the other side.

Besides getting free signs to write on, why am I doing 1-800-GOT-JUNK a favor?

Well, it’s clear that 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs, which are not intended to come down after a day’s exposure on our streets, are littering the public right-of-way. You’ll notice that, with the exception of Realtors (who, alas, are a special case), 1-800-GOT-JUNK is the only company (except, until recently, Jobdango) to put up signs in the neighborhood. Oh, a few gutter cleaners and painters post on utility poles, but they are fairly cooperative when I tell them they are breaking the law.

Obsessed as I am, I carry a long metal rod in my car for knocking down such signs.

But 1-800-GOT-JUNK doesn’t seem to care that it is breaking the law by putting up the signs. 1-800-GOT-JUNK knows the city has better things for its police to do than bust 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

Still, what company in its right corporate mind actually wants to be known for so blatantly and visibly violating the law?

And the answer is … 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

Not smart. So I’ve taken to making 1-800-GOT-JUNK folks look smarter than they are.

Right now I have five newly removed 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs in my garage (see photo). I happen to know that each costs about $10, which I suppose is pretty cheap publicity. In this case it is cheap BAD publicity. And it junks up the neighborhood. Got Junk indeed.

In the past, I have called the owner of our local franchise to inform him about the problem with 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs. His name is Tom. His number is not 1-800-GOT-JUNK (which gets you an operator in Peoria or some distant American burg where they now actually pay people less than folks in phone call centers in Bangkok or Mumbai).

Tom’s number is — should you ever be so moved to call (hint, hint) — 503-209-9253. Tom is actually a very nice guy. After listening to me politely but firmly inform him of the downside of his sign advertising, Tom always assures me that he never. EVER, will put up 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs in Hillsdale again.

A few months go by and, as sure as the daffodils sprout in the March and local coyotes munch on neighborhood cats, out come his 1-800-GOT-JUNK signs.

Tom clearly has a recall problem. I’ve come to think of it as an occupational hazard resulting from years in the 1-800-GOT-JUNK business.

So I’ve given up on Tom’s getting the message that he’s breaking the law and alienating a lot of people like me. I also tell him, as an extra incentive, that I will publicize what 1-800-GOT-JUNK is doing, but he just doesn’t care.

A likely possibility is that Tom is getting his orders from 1-800-GOT-JUNK corporate headquarters in someplace like New Jersey, the Cayman Islands or Southern California where breaking the law in places like Oregon is written into franchise agreements. (Okay, okay, my on-line research tells me the 1-800-GOT-JUNK headquarters is in Vancouver, B.C. where they ought to know better.)

I sometimes dream that when the world is a much better place, the CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, who turns out to be one Brian Scudamore, will call to thank me for my years of service on behalf of the 1-800-GOT-JUNK company.

Until then, I’ll keep busy helping 1-800-GOT-JUNK in my own unassuming way.

City needs to crackdown harder on jobdango

So the City of Portland, invoking its anti-graffiti ordinance, is suing Jobdango, the job placement outfit, for its chalk scrawlings on downtown sidewalks.

Why doesn’t the city also file suit for the company’s illegally putting its signs on utility poles and planting them along the public right-of-way?

Jobdango also has strewn I-5 with its signs between here and Salem.

As I found out, complaining to the Jobdango about its corporate litter, earns you only insults. The CEO told me, “Don’t you have better things to do? Like get a job” and then hung up.

Jobdango and 1-800-GOT-JUNK are two of the worst offenders and should be fined for all their repeated infractions. Illegal signage is clearly part of their marketing strategies.

Interestingly enough, if you go to the Jobdango web site page describing their signage, the company says not one word about its illegal signs. They must know they are indefensible — and illegal.

I urge readers to join me and a few others in taking these signs down wherever they appear. (I have probably gathered 100 in the past three or four years).

And of course, refuse to do business with these renegade firms, and spread the word.

Sam, Sam, Sam!

If the headline on this entry sounds like scolding, it is.

On this day, when I took down two commercial signs illegally placed in the public right of way (one from the notorious Jobdango), I find it ironic that City Commissioner Sam Adam's Portland Department of Transportation is relying on intrusive signage in the public right of way to get its message out about public meetings.

What next? Signs scattered throughout our neighborhood for planning commission hearings, City Council meetings, PTA meetings? Where does it end?

At last count, this community was served by three (count'em THREE!) community newspapers plus an on-line newsletter (which I happen to edit and publish). You'd think that would be enough to inform an interested public about a Portland Department of Transportation meeting.

Interestingly enough, Adams and his transportation staff never even notified me, as Hillsdale News' editor, of the meeting he is publicizing so widely and flagrantly on utility poles throughout Hillsdale. (By the way, the last time they did this, the signs stayed up a full week after the meeting had taken place.)

All this from a man who wants to be, and likely will be, our next mayor.

It could be a long four years.

From one conflict to another, with love

I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult. E. B. White

Before sun-up Saturday morning I altered the Army recruiting sign at the eastbound Tri-Met bus shelter/stop at Capitol Highway and Sunset Boulevard.

Beneath the sign’s “Army Strong,” I duct-taped a home-made sign reading “War is Wrong.” My small sign covered up the phone number of the recruiting office.

My actions left me conflicted. In fact the whole Army sign gestalt was, and is, a bit crazy-making.

Where to begin?

I have no great love of “outdoor advertising,” as the billboard industry likes to call its handiwork. It diminishes the outdoors.

Nor am I fond of public agencies foisting advertising on a captive, transit-riding public. I’ve actually testified on the matter of “sponsored” streetcar stops. And, in a related lost cause, I told this spring the Portland City Council to abandon the idea of selling naming rights (a form of advertising) to parks facilities.

The recruiting sign raised yet another issue —the little matter of war and the sleazy way the Army goes about recruiting kids who are, well, weak, and vulnerable to pitches like “Army Strong.” Add to that the irony of the Army’s macho description of itself as it tries desperately to keep up its troop strength — and morale.

Of course the sign, which is back-lit and glows at night, is attached to a bus-stop shelter heavily used by Wilson High School students, notably ones who take the bus.

So that’s one side of my conflict. The one that led me impulsively to put “War is Wrong” over the recruiting phone number.

The other side is that I have been known to rip down signs that are placed illegally on utility poles and in the public right of way. My garage is full of signs for 1-800-GOTJUNK, College Painters, Avoid Foreclosure and Jobdango.

Some consider me a zealot in this matter. They are right. I am.

So there I was staring at my illegal alteration of the Army recruitment sign, liking my message but feeling vaguely hypocritical.

I went away to think things over for a while. After two cups of coffee, my misgivings hadn’t disappeared.

Journalists have this rule that if something you write doesn’t sit well, delete it. That’s what I did with my amendment to the sign. Three hours after I did the deed, I undid it.

But I’m not finished with the “Army Strong” sign just yet.

I’m now toying with “improving” it by memorializing it. I have in mind making a string of those origami peace cranes. One crane for each of the more than 80 Oregonians who have been killed in Iraq. My idea is to festoon, ever so gracefully, my string of cranes around the margins of the sign.

People can make of it what they will.

Apostrophe gut check in Hillsdale

The clever little book, "Eats Shoots & Leaves" (subtitle: "The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation") makes fun of punctuation foibles.

Careful and not-so-careful readers know I've have a few myself. So I'm entering dangerous terrain with the following....

Reading the book's chapter on apostrophes, "The Tractable Apostrophe," led me to do an apostrophe check of Hillsdale commercial signs.

After skimming our signs, I'd give the Town Center a B-plus.

As you can see in the photos, we have some exemplary punctuation practitioners.

The honor role includes Noah's, Salvador Molly's, the Hillsdale Farmers' Market and Papa John's Pizza. You have to look closely for the apostrophe in the Papa John's signage. It's as if the company punctuates grudgingly. Corporate consistency is a problem for Salvador Molly's. The listing for its catering service on its web site mysteriously drops the squiggly.)

Lowering Hillsdale's punctuation grade is Starbucks, a notorious flaunter of apostrophe misuse. Clearly we need an apostrophe to indicate possession here—Starbuck being the first mate of Captain Ahab’s ship, the Pequod, in "Moby Dick." The place is Starbuck's.

Also, pulling us down is Edward Jones Investments, although I suppose you could argue that the investments are the firm's clients', not Jones' (Note the tricky punctuation here! Whew!)

Queen of Diamonds Jewelry is another drag on our grade.

Lynne Truss, the author of "Eats Shoots & Leaves," presents a long list of offenders. The Edward Jones and Queen of Diamonds examples fall under her category "Signs that have given up trying." Examples: Customer toilet, author picture, mens room.

A more likely and forgiving explanation is that graphic design has won out over punctuation.

You be the judge.

The unforgiving can can always find kindred spirits at places like the Apostrophe Catastrophes or Apostrophe Abuse.