Monday, December 18, 2006

Seen on the highway, 2

I would love to be driving on I-40/I-85 one late night or early morning and get a glimpse of some of the brave and foolish souls who dangle themselves off the sides of highway overpasses all in the cause of inscribing some message or other in hopes of broadcasting their sentiment to the larger world. Has anyone out there ever witnessed such an event? In my younger days, when I was involved in some social activist work, I and a couple of other folks hung a banner off of one of the main highway overpasses in downtown Atlanta, under cover of dark, in an attempt to get some media coverage. Thank goodness we got the media coverage we wanted out of it, because the process was deeply scary and nerve wracking. But most folks who undertake to use the overpasses as guerilla billboards seem to be driven by more personal desires than media coverage of some social issue. A couple of months ago I saw that someone had put themselves in harm's way in order to declare their love for 'Angela'. (I use quotation marks because I don't remember if this is the correct name or not.) They put up something to the effect of 'Angela I heart you'. Seeing these inscriptions always makes me wonder about the person, or persons, who managed this feat, especially due to my own experience with such a stunt. I'm here to tell you that it is a logistically challenging undertaking. Now this instance has distinguished itself from any other I've seen. After having their love message shown to the world for a couple of months I saw one day that someone had come and painted over the 'Angela' part of the message. Oh how I would love to know the story behind this series of events. It was as if the love had gone wrong and the lover had been compelled to return to their original message and white out the beloved's name. Since I will likely never know the real story, I am tempted to make one up. I wonder if anyone is ever arrested for doing these things? I would love to read the police reports for those arrests.

2 comments:

Elizabeth said...

woah you've gone beta. with links. I saw that same one too. I was trying to decide if that was how DOT struck back, by spraying out the name. But it seemed mighty lazy, even for DOT

Anonymous said...

My favorite piece of highway art was on the D.C. beltway. There was a Mormon temple that was built right next to the beltway, so that if you were coming north on the outer loop you had this long stretch where you'd see it ahead of you in all its golden-angel-topped glory for a good long while before suddenly veering off westward. Some brilliant person found an overpass during that stretch and painted SURRENDER DOROTHY on it. It stayed that way, or got repainted over and over, for years. Classic.

Nice blog, btw. :)

- Celeste