Guerrilla artist faked downtown LA freeway sign in 2001

There is an article? :) I went straight to the video, then jumped around it it to find the payload; it's near the end.

The guy augmented an existing sign with some annotations about the route number and direction.

You can see him working on creating the signage, and then putting it up.

Here is a better article, based off the video and the 99PI episode referenced elsewhere in this thread:

https://gizmodo.com/how-one-fed-up-dude-fixed-an-awful-highw...

Much better than the article.

I remember a story about someone's children going through a civics course, which somehow lead to the children petitioning the municipality to install a 4-way stop sign at a notorious intersection. They got the stop signs installed.

When I see stories like yours, I just think that people have no expectation that government at any level will be responsive to the needs or proposals of the citizenry (which is also my expectation, frankly). I find that sobering to acknowledge.

Nice! Why does Seattle have so many highway-adjacent 2-lane streets which allow parking in one lane? Mercer is even like this once you get into LQA.

So those who don't just click through to YouTube know what this is: This is a 10 minute documentary-style video of the event, made by the guerrilla artist himself. I have heard this story before but had no idea this video exists. Worth the click.

If you go back to the historical street view for that location in 2008 (you may have to move the camera to the other lane, historical street view is quirky), you can see the guerrilla sign. Looks like they replaced it sometime between 2008 and 2011.

Edit: Here's a link:

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0556515,-118.2563396,3a,75y,...

IANAL, but my understanding is that the time of discovery rule is only for certain civil matters, not for criminal matters (though plenty of serious crimes lack any statute of limitations). This would imply that if the government wanted to sue Ankrom for the cost of returning the sign to its original state, they might have a case, but they can't throw him in jail. Of course doing either would be a bad look, so it probably doesn't matter.

Can’t really imagine a jury putting this guy in jail so it doesn’t really matter

FWIW I have a cousin who is involved in traffic planning in a different city in Ontario and said the eventual Hamilton response to the calming cones was fairly silly; they painted bump-outs on the road, which has very little traffic calming effect compared to physical barriers like cones or curbs.

Or bike lanes in New York:

https://untappedcities.com/2013/09/25/guerrilla-bike-lanes-a...

Yes, this is art. IMNSHO Art is anything that was done on purpose but wasn't necessary. As a result you almost can't help but to produce art. Singing in the shower? Art. Snoring in your sleep? Not art. Recording yourself snoring in your sleep? Art again. Of course whether it's good art is a matter of opinion.

As far as I know, everyone is an artist and everything can be considered art.

The trick is to state that fact early enough, when people start questioning your work.

I remember when the sign appeared and was happy to see it. It also looked pretty good, but was slightly odd due to differences in the reflectors around the perimeter. The sign faded more rapidly than the similar I-5 sign on the right side of the freeway. It had a nice, long life and should feel proud about the job it did.

Reflective signs have a finite lifetime and the rest of the sign was probably in need (where "need" is defined in large part by whether or not the feds are picking up the tab) of replacement by then.

> Why replace it just to make it "official"?

The original sign barely had enough space to fit the I-5 logo over to the left. The “fake” (and I use that term loosely) had 5 & 110 crammed next to each other and 101 way over on the right. The “official” sign spread out the choice of 3 freeways evenly, increasing readability.

In the US, it is fairly dependent on which state, how old the signage is, and who owns the road. On Federal Highways, I haven't seen button-copy (The small reflective buttons on letters & such) installed in a very long time. Sometimes highways will get signage updates to many signs but others will be reinstalled on new posts, so you might see button copy around longer in those cases.

When I drive through California, however, I see lots of older style signage or posts that is phased out most everywhere else. I suspect due to budget constraints.

The retro-reflective sheeting is WAY more popular and effective, but it's also very delicate and easy to scratch. I also think it only has a 10 year lifespan (technically at least. In practice states seem to keep it a bit longer than that since it's so expensive)

I just watched the 10-minute video posted in this thread, and learned something new. His final process step was to spray a light mist of gray paint over the entire sign, to mimic the patina of the other ones sharing the gantry.

To me, that's when this went from guerilla engineering to art. Or better yet, both.

> Is artist the right term here? Seems more like guerrilla engineer or guerilla highway management person.

The name "Harry Tuttle" comes to mind. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dht_3NziwSw