99% Invisible - 152- Guerrilla Public Service

Episode Date: February 11, 2015

At some point in your life you’ve probably encountered a problem in the built world where the fix was obvious to you. Maybe a door that opened the wrong way, or poorly painted marker on the road. Mostly, when we … Continue reading →

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. At some point in your life, you probably encountered a problem in the built world, something that was poorly designed and the fix was obvious to you. Maybe a door that opened the wrong way, were a poorly painted marker on the road. I noticed this kind of stuff all the time, even more so now after creating the show. I'm sorry if you do too, because you listen to the show. And mostly when we see these things, we grumble on the inside, and then do nothing. There are all sorts of reasons for our inertia.

We don't know how to fix it. It's not ours to fix. We could get in trouble. That's producer David Weinberg. You might notice these little design flaws for years silently fuming, until one day. He called me and said,

you know, okay, we're doing it. It was early Sunday morning, August 5th, 2001 in Los Angeles, California. Richard Encrum and a group of friends were on the fourth street bridge over the 110 Freeway. They were about to commit a crime. It's going to be a high profile of dangerous situation. Not only could I get arrested, I could kill somebody.

Really, I was terrified of that. But let's back up. About 20 years prior, Richard Ancrum, an artist living in Orange County, was driving north on the 110 Freeway. As he passed through downtown Los Angeles, he was going to merge onto another freeway, the I-5 North. But he missed the exit and got lost. And for some reason, it just stuck with him. Years later, when Richard moved to downtown Los Angeles, he was driving on the same stretch of freeway where he'd gotten lost a decade before.

When he looked up at the big green rectangular sign suspended above. I realize why I missed the exit is because it wasn't adequately signed. Bad way finding. The exit for the I-5 wasn't indicated on the green overhead sign. There was even a big open space where there should have been a blue and red interstate shield, and above that, it should have said North. It was clear to Richard that Cal Trans,

the California Department of Transportation, had made a mistake. So Richard and artist and sign painter decided to make the interstate five North shield himself and install it in the place he thought it should have been all along, high above the 110 freeway. He would call it an act of guerrilla public service. All ideal is to be sort of a public servant

or actually to show what you can do with artwork. You can put in plain sight and have it functioning, working thing for everyone to use. Richard started by studying LA freeway science, holding up pantone swatches to perfectly match the paint color. He dangled over bridges to measure the exact dimensions of other signs. And most importantly, he downloaded

the Necronomicon of California Road signage, the Mutt Kid. The MUTCD, the manual on uniform traffic control devices, quote, to provide for uniform standards and specifications for all official traffic control devices in California. It's not a beach read. I have it as more of a lazy Sunday afternoon read. All the specs are online, so people can bid on projects. Richard wanted his sign to be built

to the exact specifications of cow trans, which were designed to be read by motorists traveling at high speeds. The shield with a five on it is three feet roughly high and wide. It's less than eight of an inch, barely an eighth of an inch thick aluminum. It's still pretty strong. And above that, I put the word north, and that was about 14 inches by five feet. And again, I used the same tight face that was there and the same signs.

I tried to match everything as close as I could, so it wouldn't be obvious. CalTrans didn't do it. Richard's brand new additions had to blend in perfectly with the existing signage, which had been collecting dirt and smog for decades. I sprayed the whole thing with a really thin glaze of gray and knocked down the shine. After he finished it, Richard signed his name on the back of it with a black marker,

like a painter signing a canvas, then came the next phase of the project, the installation, which he planned with the precision of a bank heist. He bought a disguise, a white hard hat and an orange vest, so he'd look like a cow trans worker. Basically looked as best I could. And he made a decal for his pickup truck, meant to look vaguely official, that said, aesthetic deconstruction. The night before the installation, Richard drove out to the site and hid some of his supplies

so they'd be easy to get to the next morning. When I interviewed him he took me to the spot and showed me where he'd stashed his stuff. Okay we're basically here. Right now the ivy isn't that thick but it was a lot thicker and I had basically behind that tree it stashed the ladder and the signs and stuff. After he hid his things he climbed a tree and just sat there, going through everything in his head.

I just sort of called myself down by being there and hanging around with it the night before. Richard was worried that he might drop the sign or one of his tools onto the road below. Drivers going 60 plus miles an hour would have no time to react if something landed on the road in front of them or worse onto their car. That was a scariest thing of the whole project. Is if somebody got hurt, you know, I'd have to live with that.

And then the project, I'd have to sh** can it, because it would have defeated the whole idea of it. But despite some reservations, Richard was pretty confident he could pull the whole thing off, and he'd gone too far to turn back. And that brings us back to the morning of August 5th, 2001. Richard did not act alone. He asked several friends to film the installation from different vantage points. Amy Inoa was one of the

friends he enlisted the film. We did it at 6am or 7am on a Sunday morning. It was tense because we all thought we were going to get into trouble. Richard had chosen a Sunday morning to put up the sign, knowing that there would be little traffic and the morning light rising above the skyscrapers would be just right for filming. What he hadn't anticipated was that cow trans had also picked that morning to do work on the same stretch of highway. Yes, they happened to be doing some other work on the freeway just south of that sign. When they saw the cow trans workers, they thought about turning back.

But I had surmised after all this is a pretty large city that would be more than one sign crew. My assumption was they'd think the other guy was doing it. Richard parked his truck and when everyone was in position with their cameras He went to work. The hardest part really was getting over the razor wire with the ladder. Once he was up on the catwalk nearly 30 feet above the highway He started screwing in the new sign. Careful not to drop any screws on the cars below. Half way into it, we just felt like okay, he's gonna get away with it. The whole thing took less than 30 minutes. As soon as it was up Richard packed up his ladder rushed back to his truck and blended back into the city.

I think we all went out to breakfast together after words and we were super relieved and really happy. Only a small group of people knew that the interstate five shield with the word north hanging above the 110 freeway was a forgery. He didn't say to us don't tell anyone, so our friends all knew about it and we would drive by it and we would just all feel really happy about it. But it never sort of managed to leak out past that small group. For a while. For a while. For nine months, the secret stayed within a small group. For a while. For a while. For nine months, the secret stayed within a small community.

And then Richard's friend Gary leaked the story. Oh, what the hell, Gary? Why can't you be cool? Just be cool, Gary! Richard's secret was out to CalTrans and to the press. From the fake magnetic sign on his beat up blue truck to a work order proclaiming rush. But he did is against the law, but CalTrans says it has no plans at all to foul charges against him. After they found out what had happened, apparently they sent a grout there he was inspected.

Richard was hoping to get his sign back from CalTrans after they took it down. He was thinking he would hang it in an art gallery. But CalTrans didn't take the sign down. It passed the CalTrans inspection because that's really the final test of how good the artwork is. It stayed up for eight years, nine months, and 14 days, I believe it's not exactly accurate, but it's pretty close to that. In interviews about the incident with other news organizations, CalTrans didn't exactly condone Richard's handiwork, but they were pretty kind about it. Here's the CalTrans spokesperson at the time.

He did a good job, but we don't want him to do it again. And in fact, he did such a good job that I'd like to offer him a job application. More than eight years after Richard's sign went up, he got a call from a friend who noticed some workers taking it down. Richard contacted CalTrans to ask if he could have his sign back. By the time I tracked him down, it had already been crushed into a bale going for China. And who knows what it turned into could be a waffle iron by now. After Kaltrans took down Richard's sign, they replaced it with a brand new one. But this

time, they incorporated his ideas into the new design. They added the five north and the shield not only to that sign, but to additional ones up the road. A little epilogue. Richard's highway sign is a happily ever after story. The sign worked. People appreciated it. No one got hurt, thankfully. Even Count Trans was really pretty nice about the whole thing. There's another gorilla sign story out of New York City, a group that calls itself the Efficient Passengers Project, has been hanging signs in New York subway stations to tell

people where they can board the train to make the most efficient transfers. The project is not at all affiliated with the Metropolitan Transit Authority, but the signs look just like MTA signs, black with white helvetical lettering. They say things like, board here for best transfer to the four, five, and six trains, or board here for best transfer to F and M trains. It's the kind of knowledge that you build up over time as a regular subway rider, and this guerrilla signmaker is offering it to everyone. And though some have applauded the signs, not all New Yorkers are pleased.

These are secrets, some say, that people should have to earn. They will unbalance the cars, they say, leave signage to the experts. The MTA, for their part, is taking down the signs as fast as they go up. MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz told us in an email that, quote, posting of the signs is considered an act of vandalism. Point me if you decide to undertake an act of Gorilla Public Service, just know it may not be received as such. 99% Invisible was produced this week by David Weinberg with Katie Mingle, Sam Greenspan, Avery, Trouffleman, and me, Roman Mars. We are a project of 91.7KALW, San Francisco, and produced out of the offices of Arxan.

In architecture and interior sperm, damn good one, if you ask me, if you ask anyone really. In beautiful downtown Oakland, California. You can find this show and like the show on Facebook, we're all on Twitter and Instagram. Every runs the Tumblr, I make the Spotify playlist of 99 PI songs, but I encourage you to explore the entire world of 99% Invisible at 99pion.org. Radio tilpion from PRX.

you