 |
Rules and Regulations of the California Department of Corrections
Subchapter 4, General Institution Regulations Correctional programs are operated at advertisers' expense for the protection of society. The public has a right and a duty to know how such programs are being conducted. It is the policy of the CDC to make known to the public, through the news media and through contact with individuals, all relevant information pertaining to operations of the department. However, due consideration will be given to all factors which might threaten the safety of the department in any way, or unnecessarily intrude upon the personal privacy of staff. The public must be given a true and accurate picture of department institutions and operations. |
The Billboard Brigade by Bob Armstrong
The Progressive, April 1998, p. 13.
The slogan TORCH THE ASS OF THE RULING CLASS appeared overnight in huge block letters on the
base of a San Francisco billboard. Last summer, many billboards startled passing motorists with
agitprop messages from unidentified pranksters.
Unlike taggers who sometimes deface billboards with graffiti, these anonymous artists specialize in slogans that mimic advertising. Most of the alterations leave enough of the original image or words to make it clear that the subversion is directed at the company that rented the billboard space. Sometimes they change only a single word in the corporate advertisement, using the same colors and typeface in the correction. For instance, one revisionist altered an ad for Johnnie Walker Red on a downtown kiosk, substituting the word "white" for "right": POLITICALLY CORRECT? HERE'S TO JUST BEING WHITE.
The group seems to have targeted Lucky supermarkets with a special vengeance. One billboard amends the supermarket's slogan, Freshness First, to read: FRESHNESS FIRST, FARMWORKERS LAST, LUCKY YOU'RE MIDDLE CLASS. Another billboard reads: PESTICIDES FIRST, LUCKY YOU'RE NOT DEAD.
The perpetrators, who remain at large, sent The Progressive a batch of promotional material in late
January. Included in the packet were photographs of transformed billboards and a one-page "mission
statement" from the California Department of Corrections operations manual. The statement had been
rewritten as follows. "The Department protects the public by:
- Altering California's most criminal advertising in a secure, safe, and disciplined setting.
- Providing work, academic education, vocational training, and specialized treatment utilizing California's billboards.
- Providing supervision, surveillance, and specialized services with the aim of subverting billboards in the community and continuing some of the educational training and counseling programs that were initiated during alteration."
The material arrived in a brown manila envelope, posted with upside-down American flag stamps. The return address read 848 Kearny Street - the location of a vacant lot on the edge of San Francisco's Chinatown. A three-story brick building behind the lot features a billboard ad painted on the outside wall. It reads: "DISCIPLINE IS THE FORTITUDE TO STAY THE COURSE."
Pat Tinsley, the operation superintendent of Eller Media, an outdoor advertising company in Oakland, concedes his antagonists are disciplined. His employees have spent long hours reconstructing the altered signs. "It's a high cost to us, but they are creative and use their imagination," he says. "They are very professional. They use rigs, they use the right glue, they operate at night in areas where they know there will be few cars going by. When it happens we say, 'Our friends have struck again.'"
Daily Mass?
San Francisco Chronicle, Monday, July 28, 1997, p. A-13.
Undeterred by the negative publicity generated by Friday's debacle, at least some bicyclists
appear determined to keep pressure on the city.
Posters taped up anonymously over the weekend at Justin Herman Plaza urged cyclists to stage a Critical Mass every day this week, beginning today.
"Bicycling is not a crime," the poster read. "Critical Mass every day until this town is safe for more than just cars." The posters were taken down quickly, however.
Anonymous bike supporters also defaced a billboard at the corner of Third and 16th streets south of China Basin. The billboard had a drawing of a pig wearing a San Francisco police uniform and claiming that police brutalize blacks, gays, prostitutes and bicyclists.
It was not known yesterday how long the billboard, standing about 10 feet tall and 15 feet wide, had been defaced. The billboard's owner, Eller Media Co., was unavailable for comment.
Unspun by Phyllis Orrick
SF Weekly, August 6, 1997, p. 8.
Back in June, a billboard near Unspun's office was altered overnight from an ad touting Lucky supermarkets, FRESHNESS FIRST, to one denouncing worker exploitation, FRESHNESS FIRST, FARMWORKERS LAST, LUCKY YOU'RE MIDDLE CLASS.
At the time, no group claimed credit for the prank. One of the best-known Bay Area billboard saboteurs, the Billboard Liberation Front, expressed admiration for the craft and craftiness of the execution, but denied complicity.
Over the several weeks since then, Unspun has noticed one other Lucky's ad in the immediate area
that had been tinkered with in a similar manner. This one read, PESTICIDES FIRST, LUCKY YOU'RE NOT
DEAD.
Last week, the perps came a step closer to unmasking themselves with two separate mailings that landed within days of each other in the Unspun mailbag.
Inside the first unmarked manila envelope was a single sheet of what looked like a page from the California Department of Corrections Operations Manual, complete with state seal and bureaucratically utilitarian typography and layout.
There was also a Polaroid of an altered Maxwell House billboard, one of a series that recently went up juxtaposing Maxwell House's longtime traditional image with trendy coffee-drinking habits.
The new version of the Maxwell House ad features a message in gold letters that's decidedly different from what the good-to-the-very-last drop people intended.
WE'RE PARTIAL TO BLACKS, BUT WE ALSO BEAT HOMOS, HOBOS, AND WHORES, it reads. Next to the new slogan stands a riot-helmeted, storm trooper, pig policeman with a dialogue balloon that says, "Bikes too." Which makes it especially timely.
Then Unspun took another look at the Department of Corrections "Operations Manual" page along with some other snapshots of what look like other examples of the prankster(s) work. Each photo bears a credit for the California Department of Corrections.
More than satire is involved in this effort; a slogan such as TORCH THE ASS OF THE RULING CLASS suggests serious, if not especially cogent, class politics at work. Happily, though, whoever's sending these messages, earnest though he or she might be, is smart enough to know that for people to absorb a message, they first must be interested, or even amused, by it. Come to think of it, that's just the tack that any successful advertising takes.
- Slingshot, Number 66, Fall 1999, p. 9.
- Street Spirit, June 1999, "A Public Service Announcement," p. 12.
- Industrial Worker, June 1999, p. 8.
- Nonviolent Activist, May-June 1999, p. 16.
- San Francisco Examiner, May 25, 1999, p. A-14.
- Against the Current, March-April 1999, p. 2.
- Hip Mama, Number 19, 1999, p. 5.
- Bitch: Feminist Responses to Pop Culture, Number 10, 1999, p. 13.
- Auto-Free Times, Winter 1998, "Billboard Wrenching," p. 39.
- Slingshot, Number 63, Winter 1998, p. 15.
- Earth First! Journal, August-September 1998, "Billboards to the Editor," p. 3.
- Dollars and Sense, May-June 1998, p. 8.
- Alternative Press Review, Spring-Summer 1998, p. 17.
- Slingshot, Number 60, Spring 1998, p. 1.
- Earth First! Journal, March-April 1998, "Earth Night News."
- San Francisco Frontlines, January 1998, "The Billboard Correction Team Strikes Again," p. 24-25.
- San Francisco Frontlines, October 1997, "The Billboard Correction Team," p. 12-14.
- Slingshot, Number 59, Fall 1997, p. 10-11.
- San Francisco Bay Guardian, August 6, 1997, p. 4.
- SF Weekly, June 18, 1997, "Dog Bites."