April 09, 2004

Billboards--Spam From A More Civilised Age. These babies would give Ladybird Johnson an embolism, but is there anything more American than a GIANT ad?
posted by anonymous 20 years ago
  • Ah, billboards! When I moved to New Jersey from California, the lack of them was very strange. I mean, there were so many trees where billboards should be along the sides of major freeways. To keep from freaking out, I had to start reading what was posted on the sides of trucks, and I found GOD. Yes, there were trucks with GOD written on their sides! I didn't know till then that GOD was in the trucking industry - I had previously thought it was a sponge. But, back to the link. If you bought a $2,600 Rhonda Fleming/Chesterfield one, what would you ever do with it? Unless, of course, you had a barn with a long, unsullied wall, near a highway.
  • I'm reading you loud and clear, good buddy; a big 10-4 on that "GOD" thing "(Guaranteed Overnight Delivery" is catchy but tacky, and those drivers are on a highway to hell..) I was thinking about how to find a good nineteen-foot-long piece of real estate for my fave "Take a Break With Burgie Beer" billboard, when I realized that after 9-11 and those spontaneous home-made "We Heart USA" "billboards " made out of bedsheets that hung on overpasses for months and months, you could just put anything up anywhere. In my new town of Worcester, I've spotted at least six mini-boards with the text "Boycott KFC" and a stylized logo of the Colonel-guy's head. Been up for weeks. At first I thought it was some sorta hip viral marketing thingie, but then I remembered I'm in Massachussets. Turns out it is a PETA campaign (they keep the birds warm in little bitty mink stoles?). But the sheer size of the thing, only half as big as a real billboard, say, still got my attention on the turnpike...
  • There was a brand of beer called "Sicks" ???
  • "I didn't know till then that GOD was in the trucking industry - I had previously thought it was a sponge." Great book, one of my favourites! Per original post, I went back to Vermont a few years ago, where billboards have been outlawed for a couple of decades and I didn't miss seeing them a bit!
  • I love the GOD trucks. I also like the trucks and ads for some moving service that pop up around the city - I'm not sure of the name (is it Moishe's, or is that a different one?), but the number is 666-6666. I'd like to see the two companies engage in the epic battle between good and evil.
  • (and that grammar was a train wreck. Sorry).
  • For those of you nowhere near New England, G.O.D. Trucks. Silly Path. Everyone knows that if you have a barn near a highway you advertise for Merrimac Caverns (the spelling tends to vary as you get up in to Wisconsin). And babywannasofa, 666-6666 is Carmel limo service. The official home of evil is the Tishman Building on 5th Ave.
  • trippy billboards(!) did they seem surreal to anyone else or am i on drugs?
  • wow! the billboards are really quite interesting. i do like classic ads and all that. some guy near my hometown took the trouble to re-create a mailpouch tobacco ad, large as life, on the side of his newly-rebuilt barn. i thought it was a nice touch. of course as nice as the billboards are the website itself could use some help. egad.