Signs of the Times

Above, a blank billboard serves as backdrop to the Food Court sign on Thomson Ave. near Skillman in Queens.  Note the ATM serves $10 bills, so nearby Laguardia Community College students won't have to break a hundred to buy a sandwich.

Below left, on Van Dam at Bradley in Queens, a car turns a blank billboard into a dead drive-in movie screen.  A few blocks further north on Van Dam, below right, a blank billboard is lost in all the non-blank stuff.


And below, in Manhattan on 7th Ave. at 27th St., a store was wrapped in ads one week, then shrouded in black a week later -- maybe the world's first blank banner-ad building!

Blank Billboards

Giant naked beer can, above Penn Station on Eighth Ave.
Pity the dinosaurs of advertising?  Not likely, but seeing so many blank billboards is a little disturbing.

It used to take some real investment, and steel supports, to subject us to huge ads.  Now the real world resembles the Internet, and crawls with massive banner ads printed on fabric that are easy to change as a t-shirt, like the ones at the bottom here.

Not only is it spooky to have ads crawl out of their slots onto the real world, but the emptiness spreads too.  Note how phony the photos of the cylindrical billboard near Penn Station look (on top and to the left) -- like they were computer generated.  Something about the blank beer can shape, and the emptiness of what would normally be the focus of attention, throws everything off kilter.


Above, blank billboards at Bowery and Kenmare, left; at S 4th St. and S 5th Pl. in Williamsburg, right.  Below, banner ads that loomed over Houston and Lafayette not long ago.