We Interrupt This Nondescript Office Building For a Message From Our Sponsors

Have you noticed the sudden appearance of these sidewalk display billboards all over town? They're popping up on the sides of buildings throughout L.A. and have added yet another dose of clutter to our already commercially saturated streets.

Photo above comes from losanjealous, which noticed the new signs as well -- noting that most of them contain posters for movies:

The posters are mounted in tacky faux-chrome plastic frames that are crudely bolted onto the buildings. While King Kong-sized ads on highrises are a Hollywood tradition that are easily ignored–unless being mocked, especially when they are for duds that die on opening weekend (Herbie) or shows that no one is watching (The Comeback [which took a while, but has finally hit its stride])–this particular form of advertising is particularly reprehensible for it’s eye-level confrontation factor and semi-permanent building defacing.

It’s pure and simple visual polution, turing the city into a bad magazine, creating the exact kind of clutter of which L.A. needs no more. No doubt Adbusters would be all over these.

Who's behind these displays -- and how were they approved? Has the city licensed these? Or are building owners free to mount them on the sides of their property?

I saw one building this weekend with so many mounted signs -- all containing movie posters -- that I imagine a few people thought it was a multiplex, and walked in searching for a ticket booth that didn't exist.

Here's one outdoor ad company's pitch for similar sidewalk displays:

Sidewalk Displays are positioned on the inner perimeter of sidewalks, facing outward from parking lots and building locations in high-density consumer locales. These units are built low to the ground and are affixed to freestanding poles or attached to walls of buildings. Sidewalk Displays are a highly effective medium for reaching specific pedestrian and vehicular traffic.

I imagine it won't be long before advertisers start asking homeowners to paste some signage on the sides of their house. Or hitting up bloggers to add a banner to their site. (Oops. Strike that last one. We love those folks on the lefthand side.)