Dirk Mathison was "in a perfectly good mood" driving home from work one night when he came to the new billboard looming over Spaceland, with its slide-show ads for Sean John, the Pussycat Dolls, "The Bonnie Hunt Show," "High School Musical" and Coke.
"I had a sick and angry feeling," said Mathison, who went to a community meeting where a small army of protesters vented.
Mathison, a journalist, led me to the pole at the base of the billboard, where we each contemplated flipping the switch to shut down the show.
Wait, was it a booby trap? Would we be electrocuted?
We chickened out, but I noticed that one angry Silver Laker had taped a righteous boho screed on the pole under the billboard.
"Kill the Sign," it says. "It is visible from many of our living rooms. Its 50,000 watts of power flash a cavalcade of tacky advertisements at one per five seconds. . . . We have worked hard . . . making Silver Lake a beautiful and desirable place to live, only to see all that work substantially devalued by a mega-corporation that cares nothing about our community."
Hallelujah, but I'm told it's much easier to prevent a conversion from conventional to digital than to do something about it after the fact. If there's a conversion underway in your neighborhood, you might want to raise a ruckus immediately with your council member.
Dennis Hathaway of the Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight has a word of caution, though, when it comes to council members and billboards.
"They're their own worst enemy," he said, arguing that by calling for exceptions to existing bans and recently endorsing spectacularly large electronic ads at the Convention Center downtown, council members have provided ammunition to the billboard companies' free speech arguments.
Go to www.banbillboard blight.org if you want to learn more or take up arms.
And don't forget to send a thank-you card to Rocky.
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steve.lopez@latimes.com
