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Ever feel like all of New York is becoming Times Square writ large, overly commercialized and Disneyfied? You’re not alone. Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer, taking a page out of Charles Schumer’s playbook, held a slow-news-day press conference last weekend to decry illegal outdoor ads popping up on buildings and scaffoldings all over island [2], like the horrifying H&M ad on the Flatiron building [3] this spring. He said building owners and advertisers “have been in cahoots” in producing this blight to the streetscape. Stringer wants to up the fines for illegal postings to a cool $25,000, which presumably would dissuade advertisers from tactics like “wild postings,” which to some looks a lot like corporate graffiti. (One outdoor ad specialist calls pasting ads on construction sites and buildings “an excellent choice of media for a comparatively inexpensive cost, demographic-specific and in-your-face format [4].” Gee, thanks for the in-my-face formats. In May, Curbed.com and the Municipal Art Society held a contest for readers to submit their examples of the most offensive “advertecture.” [5] The winner: this four-story Molson billboard on an Upper East Side apartment building.
—Posted by Brian Morrissey