Thank you, L.A. City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo, for being such a pal to the billboard industry.
The new gigantic digital ads in my neighborhood, with white-hot flashing pitches for Coke and Sean John, are a swell addition to otherwise quaint Silver Lake Boulevard.
Thank you, Los Angeles City Council, for rolling over time after time to the same outdoor advertising companies -- Regency, Clear Channel and CBS, to name a few.
I'm sure residents of the Fairfax district are happy too. They have a spiffy new electronic sign the size of the Queen Mary on 3rd Street near Fairfax, telling them not to miss the new "Smackdown" TV premiere and "Magic's Biggest Secrets Revealed." (How do they cut that woman in half?)
Dear readers, if you thought the Los Angeles landscape was already polluted by advertising, just wait. The city could end up looking like Planet Plasma. There will be no such thing as nightfall. Digital ads will keep darkness at bay, changing every few seconds and selling everything from bad sitcoms to cheap perfume.
About 40 to 50 billboards on the Westside alone have been converted from conventional to digital this year, and SEVERAL HUNDRED MORE could soon be converted citywide under terms of a lawsuit settlement city officials rubber-stamped in 2006.
"It's a mess," said Ted Wu, a billboard-regulation activist who has fought a losing battle for roughly 40 years. "I don't think there's any councilman . . . who understands the problem of visual pollution."
So how did outdoor advertising companies manage to rule the city and take control of our lives?
"I don't want to call it corruption," said Wu. But with campaign donations, "everybody is in the billboard companies' pockets."
City officials have admitted over the last decade that because of inept regulation, they had no idea how many billboards existed in Los Angeles or how many of them had permits. Bungled attempts to address the problem have resulted in multiple lawsuits by billboard bullies, who have made "free speech" and other arguments.
In 2006, Delgadillo worked out settlements that must have had the advertising giants popping the champagne.
Delgadillo "negotiated" a deal that gave billboard companies the right to modernize some signs, add new ones and legalize some that had been erected illegally. It's not clear why he didn't also hand over his first-born, Lakers season tickets and free use of city vehicles with his wife serving as chauffeur.
