 |
Once upon a time, before there was the Internet, television, radio, or mass-produced newspapers, there was The Town Square. Back in the good old days, if you wanted to catch up with what was going on where you lived, you hiked your butt downtown, and searched out news and information for yourself. Everywhere there was a town, there was a Town Square; and that's where all the action was. You might see a Town Crier, chanting the news. Or a grubby little kid would be passing out handbills. But mostly, you'd see signs. Signs were everywhere!
In those days, the public relied on stuff like this -- it was actually called "commercial speech" back then -- to spread vital information about the town and its marketplace. This played such a central role in public life prior to the official founding of the United States that Benjamin Franklin authored his early defense of a free press in support of his decision to print, of all things, an advertisement for voyages to Barbados!
Now, you might think that with things being what they are today, that within all the urban, suburban, and exurban sprawl surrounding us, you'd be hard-pressed to spread news and views in a "town square." Towns aren't quite like that anymore. But stop and think about this -- us Modern Folks have the next best thing: the Freeway. After all freeways are just about everywhere, and most of us find ourselves trapped on one at some point in our lives. Many of us traverse them daily, whether we like it or not. It can reasonably be considered to be a modern-day Town Square, because that's where everybody is!
When placed in this context, do you realize that as you crawl along the bypass, twiddling your thumbs, playing with the stereo, or checking your teeth in the mirror until that logjam of cars ahead of you clears out, that you're the biggest captive audience there is? Of course you do -- that's why our roadways are littered with billboards. Those have become such a part of our landscape that we take them for granted. But what about homemade signs?
One Southern California resident flashed on a bit of brilliance in late 2000 as he was driving along a San Diego interstate. He was righteously pissed off at the Supreme Court decision that handed George W Bush the US Presidency, when he happened to see an old mattress sitting on the side of the road. In the blink of an eye, he had an epiphany -- he pulled off to the side of the road, grabbed a can of spray paint that just happened to be in his trunk, stood the mattress up on its side, painted "RIP 1776-2000" on it, got back in his car, and drove away. He happened back along the same stretch of road a few hours later. Much to his amazement, the mattress was still there. Right then and there, the Freeway Blogger was born.
Freeway Blogger -- who prefers to remain anonymous -- doesn't just hang hastily-scribbled signs, either. He's got homemade-sign-manufacturing down to an art form, using an overhead projector as a stencil tool (the better to make the lettering more professional-looking), and utilizing duct tape, paint, coat hangers and bungee cords to firmly attach them to fences, signposts and overpasses. The idea, you see, is not to make one or two big, flashy signs that you spend a lot of time and money on; the idea is to hang as many simple, easy-to-read signs as humanly possible in a short amount of time. The more there are, the more they'll get noticed, and maybe even discussed.
Putting them out on the freeway is a sheer stroke of genius, but it's genius that Freeway Blogger happens to think is a Constitutional right. He contends that if Clear Channel can plaster the nation's concrete ribbons of roadway with big ugly billboards, and if gas-guzzling SUVs can spew clouds of exhaust all over them, then there should be no reason why his little simple signs should be considered to be "litter".
Naturally, the California Department of Transportation felt differently. First citing safety concerns, and dancing around the notion that said signage was actually "litter," CalTrans generally went out of their way to take down the signs. Freeway Blogger wasn't the only one hanging signs: two women from Santa Cruz hung a sign protesting Bush administration policy in late 2001, only to see it removed by CalTrans almost immediately. The only problem was that they never bothered to remove the American flags (placed after 9/11) that dotted the same stretch of roadway. The women sued CalTrans, saying their free speech was abridged when the agency chose to remove some messages, but not others. California's 9th Circuit Court upheld this view, which vindicated Freeway Blogger...somewhat.
I caught up with FB one fine sunny morning not long after the November 2nd election. Needless to say, he was a bit more disheartened than he was four years ago. In fact, he's turned his blogging art into a full-fledged website, which he'd been working on since 2000 but started putting a lot more effort into in the months leading up to the election. The signs are irreverent and sometimes quite funny, and have gotten him quite a bit of notice. And now he's taking his message and his method nationwide, and he thinks you should, too....
Cosmik: When were you motivated to become "The Freeway Blogger," and why?
Freeway Blogger: I became motivated after the Gore vs. Bush decision, when I found they weren't going to count the votes. Gore vs. Bush pissed me off. I'd always been taught that democracy was a place where you counted the votes. I was taught by my father, a liberal Connecticut law scholar who loved his country. If he was still alive I don't know if I'd have put that much into it, but he was dead and for some reason the dead can place a bigger burden on you than the living, and so I decided to fight for democracy for his sake.
Cosmik: When did you hang your first sign, and where? What did it say?
FB: The first sign I put up was a mattress beside an on-ramp just after the Gore vs. Bush decision in 2000. It was lying on the side of the road and I had a can of black spray paint in my car so I spray-painted "1776 - 2000...R.I.P." onto the mattress and propped it up against a tree. It didn't look exactly like a tombstone, but I think the point was made. When I came back a few hours later it was still standing there. I couldn't believe it. A few thousand cars had passed by and not one of them had pulled over and knocked the thing down, which is all it would've taken. It was amazing to me that, during that politically charged time, in San Diego (predominantly Republican), not one person would've bothered to pull over, walk twelve paces and knock it down. Then it occurred to me - it was an onramp, they were accelerating... they all saw what it said but couldn't be bothered to stop. That was someone else's job... probably the guy right behind them. And it happened time after time after time for a couple of hours. Go figure.
Cosmik: How did you start researching the laws regarding "sign placement" in your local area? In other words, where did you get that information?
FB: Legally I knew if all those people were allowed to stick flags over the freeway, I was allowed to put up my own patriotic messages. The Case "Brown vs. CalTrans (9th Federal Circuit Court)" re-affirmed it. CalTrans still considers it their right to take down the signs, even though they still don't take down the flags, and I say let them. There's plenty more where that came from. I dare them to arrest me for putting them up in the first place though. This is America, not North Korea...not yet.
Cosmik: It appears from your site that you haven't been caught yet. How close have you come?FB: After hanging over 2,000 signs I've been caught three times, twice with reporters, which made the police much more docile. The other time is reported in the Weblog "100 signs, 1,000 soldiers." It was pretty funny, actually. The cops don't want to fuck with me -- they just want me and my sign out of there. I'm happy to oblige them!
Cosmik: Do you have a team of folks by now (since your website went up), or are you still a "loner" in this endeavor?
FB: There are over 1200 of us now, thanks primarily to organized actions like Freeway Free Speech Day. At first I thought the movement would grow organically just on the strength of people seeing the signs and thinking "Hey! I can do that too!" It didn't happen. I'm still not sure why. Visits to the website, fueled by media and web publicity, got a few people to do it. Large organized actions really set the ball rolling, though.
Cosmik: What kind of response have you been getting to your website, and has it seen an increase in traffic since November 2?
FB: In the month before the election we had a huge spike in visitors, about a quarter of a million. Since the election it's tapered down. People are re-evaluating where to go from here. I don't blame them.I don't either, FB. In fact, I was so motivated after putting this story together, I hung my own blog out on Interstate 95 not too long ago. It was in response to Freeway Blogger's call for a "Day of Rage" to protest the vote, and to highlight the wonderful work being done by Bev Harris at http://www.blackboxvoting.org. This being Florida, home of Brother Jeb, though, it came down inside of a day. HAA! Imagine my shock! (Some people just have no sense of humor whatsoever...)
(C) 2005 - Melanie Campbell