Friday, February 6, 2009

Digital billboards light up my worst nightmare


I was driving C home from daycare a couple of weeks ago when I was mesmerized by one of the millions of digital billboards that have illuminated our city in the last several months.

If you haven't seen these billboards, they can change on a dime. That's the beauty -- and the potential horror -- of the whole enterprise. No more static images. Kind of like Forrest Gump and his box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.

My experience that night started out with an image of the innocuous Mickey Mouse holding a birthday cake and telling all of Los Angeles that they could go to Disneyland for free on their birthdays.

"What's that? What's that?" C shouted and pointed from the back seat.

"That's Mickey!" I said. "Look! Look!"

Well, it was Mickey for a moment ... and then it changed. To something truly horrific.

"Don't look! Don't look!" I found myself shouting.

Anyway, I wrote about the whole experience on LA Moms Blog. They posted it this morning, so I hope you'll have a look and enjoy reading.

Photo credit: © Boguslaw Mazur - Fotolia.com

3 comments:

  1. Ugh, I hate those things. I think there's a group fighting the billboard blight in the city... digging up the info now.

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  2. Yes, the group actively fighting billboard blight in Los Angeles is the Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight, and has a website at www.banbillboardblight.org. If you're concerned not only with visual blight, but with the propriety of turning over the city's visual landscape to commercial advertisers, please visit the site, learn more about the issue.

    Dennis Hathaway
    President, Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight
    info@banbillboardblight.org

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  3. Thanks for the info, Jessica and Dennis. I'll take a look at the site. It didn't hit home until I found myself pointing at something totally inappropriate for my daughter to look at.

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