NY Billboards

Grand street side of Grand st-Metropolitan in Williamsburg.

I’ve always liked how New Yorkers deface their billboards in the subway. Unlike, say, Canada or even London (admittedly in London the authorities put the billboards across the electrified tracks, making it difficult – and dangerous – to get at them), New Yorkers merrily abuse the advertising that appears in the subway system, tearing off strips to juxtapose two or three different ads, making comments, drawing figures – or all three, until the original ad has been rendered into something else entirely. This has always seemed like a refreshingly anarachic response to corporate culture. Thankfully, even in these goody-two shoes, hyper-gentrified Bloomberg days, this tradition doesn’t seem to have disappeared entirely.

This in Williamsburg again. In the middle left, someone has thought to correct the original commentators grammar, complete with a useful lesson on the use of ‘we’re’.

Somewhere in Manhattan.

This poster, along with comments, appeared in Bedford Nostrand subway station shortly before the NYC Marathon

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