During his 2009 election campaign, City Attorney Carmen Trutanich promised to crack down on anyone putting up illegal billboards and supergraphic signs. Continuing to make good on that promise, his office has gotten the owners of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel to remove the latest in a series of illegal supergraphics that have covered the walls of the historic structure for the past four years.The sign removed advertised the Warner Bros. movie, “Clash of the Titans” and was installed last month by In Plain Sight Media. Most of the previous signs advertised H&M, a Swedish clothing company. A federal court lawsuit filed last year by the sign company and owners of the Hotel is still active.

via Unwrapped: Illegal Supergraphic Ad Removed From Historic Hollywood Hotel.

Related posts:

1. Owner Arrested For Hollywood Supergraphic Previously Cited For Sign Law Violations
2. Office Tenants Plagued by Series of Illegal Supergraphic Signs; Do the L.A. City Attorney and District Councilman Care?
3. Movement Happening on Illegal Signs

• LA Weekly profiles advertisers in Los Angeles, as well as AAA compatriot Public Ad Campaign’s Jordan Seiler. Here’s how it starts “Supergraphic multimillionaire Barry Rush couldn’t have been pleased to hear a few weeks ago that Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich had taken the audacious step of jailing a compatriot in arms, a Hollywood landlord who, for an undisclosed sum, cut a deal with a shadowy firm that draped an illegal supergraphic around a historic Hollywood Boulevard building.”
• Following the arrest, Ban Billboard Blight reports that several illegal “supergraphic” billboards have come down. “It’s surely no coincidence that companies have been removing these signs after City Attorney Carmen Trutanich filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against one sign company and a number of property owners, engineered the arrest and jailing of a landlord in Hollywood who put up a huge illegal supergraphic on an historic Hollywood Blvd. office building, and issued arrest warrants for sign company executives and a property owner who allowed three illegal supergraphics on yet another Hollywood building.” And they seem to be coming down all over the city.
• Fuel Outdoor has finally been removing their illegal signs after losing in court.
• Ban Billboard Blight has also reported on NPA Outdoor’s illegal activity in Los Angeles. And Public Ad Campaign has reported the NPA Outdoor is leaving New York.

Related posts:

1. Office Tenants Plagued by Series of Illegal Supergraphic Signs; Do the L.A. City Attorney and District Councilman Care?
2. Owner Arrested For Hollywood Supergraphic Previously Cited For Sign Law Violations
3. Sign Companies, Property Owners, Advertising Agencies, Major Corporations Thumb Their Noses at L.A.’s New Off-Site Sign Ban

The supergraphic sign above for the movie “Prince of Persia” on a Westwood office building is legally permitted as an on-site sign, which the L.A. sign code defines as a sign directing attention to a product or service generally sold or offered on the premises where the sign is located. There is no movie theater in the Wilshire Blvd. building, or the offices of the movie production company, so how can the sign be considered legally equivalent to the sign on the local hardware store or dry cleaners?

For an answer, one most go back more than a decade, when Michael McNeilly (the self-proclaimed artist responsible for the giant statue of liberty images around the city) put one of the “Lady Liberty” images on the side of the building at 10921 Wilshire Blvd. He was charged by the city with putting up the supergraphic without a permit, as well as violating a local zoning prohibition on any such signs in the Wilshire corridor from Beverly Hills to Santa Monica.

While that case worked its way through the court, McNeilly changed the sign to one he claimed to be a memorial to the New York firefighters who died on 9/11 in the World Trade Center collapse. Again, he was cited by the city, and this time filed a lawsuit in federal court with the aid of the ACLU, which asserted that McNeilly’s First Amendment right to free speech allowed him to erect the sign without city interference. Two years later, then L.A. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo agreed to a settlement of that lawsuit that allowed McNeilly to keep signs on the 12-story wall of the building, as long as those signs fit the city’s definition of “on-site” signs.

According to the settlement, only current tenants of the building with “bona fide office space” conducting “bona fide business” would be allowed to place messages on the signs. Furthermore, those tenants would have to provide proof to the city that they were conducting such a business by having an employee present during normal working hours.

Yesterday, we went to the office at mid-afternoon with a local community activist who has tried in the past to convince the city’s building department that the various signs that have been put up on the wall do not comply with those requirements. On the sixth floor, there was an office with the sign, “Sky Posters, a Creative Service Agency” beside the door. (Sky Posters is one of the terms used by McNeilly, who is president of a company called Skytag, Inc.) The door was locked, and knocks went unanswered. We spoke to a woman who was going into the office next door, and she said that in the four years she worked there she had never seen anyone enter or leave the Sky Posters office.

As we’ve pointed out in previous posts, McNeilly is a fraud. He claims to be an artist defending freedom of expression when the obvious fact that he is an entrepreneur making millions by putting up supergraphic signs wherever he can find willing property owners and then suing to block enforcement of the city’s ban on such signs. He has used one of the country’s most revered images—the statue of liberty—as a placeholder for signs hawking movies, TV shows, and other corporate products.

In 2008, he put up a huge “Lady Liberty” image on the opposite end of the Wilshire Blvd. building, and then sued the city in federal court and succeeded in getting a judge to order a preliminary injunction protecting it from city enforcement. Lady Liberty is long gone, of course, and now a Nike Ad featuring a 10-story image of Kobe Bryant greets pedestrians and motorists navigating the single most heavily-trafficked intersection in the entire city of L.A.

Nike ad featuring Kobe Bryant on east end of building. Credit: Curbed LA

Based on statements by media buyers and ad agency professionals, advertisers pay upwards of $100,000 a month for supergraphics like that in those kind of locations.

The “Prince of Persia” supergraphic on the west end of the building, visible from the 405 freeway almost half a mile away, made news two days ago when Curbed LA reported that the building owner was speaking out against a proposed development across the street that would block some views of the sign, including the one from the freeway. A statement, perhaps, on how valuable those views are for a sign that is “on-site” in name only.

via How Was This Eight-Story Supergraphic Ad For a Movie Permitted as an “On-Site” Sign?.

"There is a visual conversation that takes place on the streets of urban environments. This conversation is dominated primarily by advertising and utilitarian signage and assumes passive participation. Whether invited or not I am going to participate in this conversation. Public spaces were never intended to be coated from top to bottom with photos of consumer products. These spaces should, in some manner, reflect the culture that thrives in that space.

Some people view what I do as vandalism. I assume that their objection is that I alter the landscape without permission. Advertising perpetually alters our environment without the permission of it’s inhabitants. The only difference is that advertisers pay for the privilege to do so and I don’t. So if you’re going to call me anything, it is more accurate to call me a thief."

Friday night’s arrest of Kayvan Setareh for allowing an 8-story supergraphic ad to be wrapped across three sides of an historic Hollywood building was not the first time the Pacific Palisades man has run afoul of the city’s sign code, according to building department records. In January, 2007, a citation was issued for an illegal supergraphic on the building at 6777 Hollywood Blvd, and In November, 2006, citations were issued for a total of four illegal supergraphics on another building owned by Setareh at 5858 Hollywood Blvd. As reported by the L.A. Times, the arrest of Setareh followed concerns that because there was no inspection of the gigantic ad’s attachment to the building it could come loose and cause injury to pedestrians and motorists in the busy street below.

via Owner Arrested For Hollywood Supergraphic Previously Cited For Sign Law Violations.