Sidebar: Who
Are These Lawless Rowdies
To hear some people tell it, we've got trouble, my friends.
Right here in River City. With a capital T. And that rhymes
with P. And that stands for...posters?
Last week, the head of Portland's anti-graffiti efforts
announced a pilot program aimed at stripping utility and
telephone poles along Portland's main pedestrian arteries
of the chaotic collages of posters that often jacket them.
While some see this free-form propaganda for upcoming
rock shows, protests, yard sales and art happenings as
the pulse of cultural life, others--including Mayor Vera
Katz--see it as a nuisance at best, vandalism at worst.
Caught in the middle of the great cultural divide is
Hugh McDowell of the Office of Neighborhood Involvement.
McDowell, a conciliatory gentleman, says the city has
struck a deal with Multnomah County and the utility companies
that deliver communications and power over the poles.
A new task force launched this month combines the poster-ripping
power of volunteer clean-up crews and juveniles working
off community-service sentences. McDowell isn't sure yet
how comprehensive the program, set to run for a yearlong
trial, will be. However, if it meets its goal, Portland's
rockers, underground artists, political rabble-rousers
and would-be flea merchants will have to look elsewhere
for a primary means of advertising.
Portland's new crackdown is motivated by several factors.
A seldom-enforced ordinance forbids attaching posters
to city-owned utility poles. The city, however, owns only
about 5 percent of the thousands of poles within its boundaries,
and it isn't clear how the law affects poles owned by
utility companies. Still, the ordinance clearly tilts
official attitudes against postering.
Utility companies claim that signs on poles, particularly
hard poster-board advertising signs from the beloved "LOSE
WEIGHT IN 30 DAYS" genre, pose risks to their maintenance
workers. Worker-safety concerns also underpinned the arguments
in favor of Seattle's harsh anti-poster laws, adopted
in 1994 and widely blamed as a cause of the decline of
that city's once-legendary music scene. Last year, however,
a pro-postering group called Free Speech Seattle obtained
statistics showing that the rate of injuries suffered
by Seattle City Light employees actually increased after
the ban took effect.
For most poster critics, the argument is more aesthetic.
Many neighborhood activists and merchants view fliers
as a visual blight. This isn't the first time the city
has responded to such concerns by going on the warpath.
"I think I spoke to a Willamette Week reporter
about this very issue 12 years ago," says Mike King, a
local graphic designer and poster artist.
King and others involved with Portland's art and music
scene say a poster wipeout could potentially devastate
the city's homegrown culture. For small clubs, bands and
galleries, fliers are the one and only source of promotion,
and even larger music venues rely on the virtually free
medium.
"It's huge for our shows, and huge for seeing what's
going on," says Jenna Sather of Crystal Ballroom, the
classic West Burnside dance hall that's part of the McMenamins
bar, restaurant and music empire. "More than that, it's
a little piece of our scene's history, and it's great
to be able to look at old fliers and see what was going
on at a given time, and how things have evolved."
Beyond immediate threats to the local arts scene, King
says anti-postering efforts could hurt Portland's visual
ecology over the long term. "Poster art is ground zero
of the design movement," he says. "Everything filters
up from there. Ten years ago you didn't see all the distressed,
messed-up, distorted graphics that you now see on TV commercials.
It all started on telephone poles."
While Katz's office equates this art form with graffiti
(the official term is "pole litter"), McDowell strikes
a more even-handed note. "It's a tough spot to be in,
because I'm not unsympathetic to people who want to poster,"
McDowell says. "Six months ago, the mayor asked me to
come up with something we could do, and this is what we
came up with."
McDowell hopes a viable compromise on postering can be
worked out even as the clean-up campaign takes shape,
noting that some cities have experimented with providing
public kiosks as an alternative target for posters.
However, if city leaders are looking northward for inspiration,
they should take heed of history. In Seattle, a kiosk
program once talked up by city council members never materialized,
stifled by bureaucratic inertia and a lack of funds.
Who Are These Lawless Rowdies?
"After all, this is really just another form of graffiti...."
--Mayor Vera Katz on posters, The Oregonian, Monday,
Nov. 13, 2000
In an effort to help the city in its efforts to crack
down on a dangerous class of vandalous scofflaws, Willamette
Week hit the mean streets of Northwest Portland to
find out just who's behind all those naughty posters.
Of course, the majority of offenders seem to be punks,
hippies and rock-and-roll types--what can you expect from
those people? We were shocked, though, to find
that this crime wave has spread to erstwhile "respectable"
elements. Here are a few malefactors who are neck-deep
in this dereliction of the peace--and have the gall to
carry out their mayhem in the mayor's back yard!
AMONG
THE GUILTY:
The Democratic Party (Northwest 19th and Lovejoy)
This hideous pale-green atrocity beckons Portland pinkos
to an Oct. 22 campaign appearance by His Litigancy, Al
Gore. Apparently paid for by "Gore-Lieberman Inc.," it
also bears the names and phone numbers of the following
conspirators: the Democratic Party of Oregon, David Wu
for Congress, Earl Blumenauer for Congress, Bethel AME
Church and the Graphic Communications International Union.
McMenamins (Northwest 21st and Lovejoy)
Who knew that one of Portland's most sterling homegrown
business successes also engaged in littering and vandalism
on such a scale? Posters for the McM Bros.' Crystal Ballroom
are all over the neighborhood, like the work of a tagger
on a spree.
The Mark Woolley Gallery (Northwest 23rd and Lovejoy)
We knew there was something fishy about the Pearl District's
so-called "gallery scene." To judge by the appearance
of this flier for something called the "Toxic Opera,"
it's all just a front for crime!
The Oregon Chamber Players (Northwest 23rd and Johnson)
Classical musicians try to look so...innocent.
We now know the truth! These violin-wielding hellions
afflict the unsuspecting public with a flier announcing
their performances of Haydn's Symphony 58 and Divertimento
14. All Saints Episcopal Church, named on the offending
document, is a possible co-conspirator.
--ZD
