One more example of history via poster sediment. The management of the woefully disused (but lovingly postered) Sun electric building appear to have used a sawsall yeasterday to re-discover a long buried door beneath 5 inches of plywood and show posters on 11th.
Below pounds of wheat-paste and staples the deepest layers are nearly indecipherable, although an ad for a show at the Catwalk from Nov. 26 2005 barely survives. While the future of the corner building remains uncertain, at least it provides an occasional archive.
Prolific postering in certain areas (e.g. Pike-Pine) has created a visual blight that leaves many areas looking tattered and littered. The main problem is old posters are almost never removed (as required by SDOT regulations, maximum of 30 days), except by those who have a commercial interest in doing so. The result is a thick accumulation on many poles and other structures.
The regulations also say that a poster should not ever be put on top of another poster, but obviously this requirement is widely ignored. Many who poster are very selfish…they think THEIR poster is more important than the others…and they could care less about the unkempt appearance of our streets.
Posting is protected free speech. The city lost that case long ago, after trying to outlaw posting entirely.
Because the corner building is vacant – Pine and 12th – it does look messy. But that is temporary, and, when rebuilt that will not even be a posting surface.
Guess free speech is sometimes messy. I would actually be a little concerned with city resources used to worry about posters when so much else is under stress in this tight economy. Food banks or poster mess, I will take resources for food banks.
Citizens can pick up the paper and recycle it with no legal complications. I have a friend who does litter clean up for several blocks in the U Dist. as a total volunteer, and the same could happen on The Hill.
Project for the Community Council??
If you’re wondering about the next Capitol Hill street sweep, the Chamber of Commerce is hosting one on Halloween morning from nine to noon called the Monster Clean Up. I think they’ll be covering from SU to Cal Anderson between 12th and Broadway. The Council will be there – will you?
Free speech is not blight. Not being involved in your community is blight. I love seeing posters and flyers for events and meetings and what not. It makes me feel like I’m in an active community. If you consider an active community to be “dirty”, perhaps you should not live on the Hill. I advocate spraying water on folks who feel compelled to tear down posters.
90% of the posters are commercial speech, not political speech, so we can put that argument aside. The posters, and the layers of them, however, do give Capitol Hill (and really Pike/Pine) part of its character. If you think it’s blight, you probably should have stuck to Ballard or the East side!
It sure would be nice if those of you who like postering would get better informed before you spout off on the issue. In fact, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that utility poles are NOT a “traditional public forum” and therefore not protected by the free speech provisions of the state and federal constitutions. But by the time of this ruling (September, 2004), the City had already overturned the poster ban, and soon thereafter put the SDOT regulations into effect (January, 2003). These rules are a reasonable compromise between those who dislike postering and those who support it, but they are almost completely ignored and un-enforced. Even I would not object to postering IF the regulations were respected.
By the way, I have lived on Capitol Hill for 32 years and am very involved in my neighborhood. I’m not going anywhere. And there are lots of people here who do not like the mess that unfettered postering has created.