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.
