The Spamming of Boston: Selling Out the CityBy Jane Holtz Kay "Everything's pink and blue and weird at first," says the bus shelter sign standing just outside the Boston Public Library. "Weird," indeed, it seems, as you survey this "Yahoo personals" advertisement outside this premier work by McKim, Mead and White at Copley Square and other prize sites across the city. An onslaught of kiosks, toilets, shelters and information signs, plastered with blatant billboards, are turning the city streets into an advertisers alley. Call it the spamming of Boston. Not only the Library, but dozens of Boston's premier architectural and historic sites are on the auction block for an army of "information" (we use the word loosely) panels scheduled for Boston's sidewalks and spaces. As the German profiteers of the Wall USA company slather the city's historic landscape with this marketable litter-technically called the Boston Street Furniture Program-the advertisements featuring the film "Dumb and Dumberer" are an apt description of the deal. For a relatively small sum, the corporation has launched phase one of a 20-year contract program of shameless commercials and pedestrian clutter including seventy, yes 70, large "information" panels, plus eight coin-operated toilets, 15 telephone kiosks and five map "pillars" (love the word). Add the forthcoming 250 bus stop shelters plus 11 information kiosks consisting of large rounded message-bearers and the litter grows. Even now, some crowd out pedestrian passage. One map even manages to mislabel parts of the South End. The gaudy illumination of others mars the soft glow of evening streets.
This is how the city slides. Not with a bang but inch by inch, row by row. With nary a word of demurral from the Landmark Commission, the number of these backlit assaults can only go up, the landscape down. It is typical of these financially-challenged, short-sighted times as the city plays the naming game, peddling the labels for parks and public spaces to corporations. But worse. It isn't enough to see today's advertising banners on street lights, or to walk on Nike ads painted on the floor of the subway at Marathon time, this street furniture program will overrun our daytime streets and illuminate our nighttime one with the backlit glitz that dulls the evening streets and stars. To be sure, it isn't the first incursion in the city. Spaces already littered with news boxes, illegal signage and sandwich boards make walking awkward and views ugly. In the name of freedom of speech, schlock marketing has already managed to make picture-perfect places (the Public Garden) and public walkways (State Street) into litter collectors for "newspaper" boxes. Forty-plus such boxes, many empty, sit before the Back Bay Station. Do we need more? No matter that Bostonians, from tourist industry advocates to neighborhood activists argue 'what price beauty'? The modest amount of money ($750,000 as first cash payment) and the failure of the Mayor and Landmarks Commission to say 'no' reflect not only city chief's disrespect for the city but the commission's continuing unwillingness to protect the urban landscape at any scale. High art and low, upscale historic architecture and shared historic sites (as per the Gaiety Theater) alike are up for grabs by the privatizers and privateers. Street furniture defenders argue for the shelters' sleek modernity. And, no question, such artifacts unadorned elsewhere can be transparent and attractive. But the slathering of commercial messages undo their elegance and subsume their service to Madison Avenue messages. "Pink and blue and weird" won't do much for the paying customers here to see the staple brick and sizzle of the real city and even less for those who care about its past. The sell-out to spam, not to mention pedestrian access, will do still less for those who live here fulltime.. A cartoonist-friend of mine recently drew a picture titled "The Modern University." It features the "Exxon Science Building," the "David Jones 'caffeine free Diet Coke' Endowed Chair," and the "Aol-Time Warner Library." Maybe he and the mayor are on to something. Life seems to be imitating art in these parts. But to those who care about their heritage at hand, it's no joke on this city's streets. This article appeared in the Boston Globe on June 12, 2003.
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In the name of economy (what else?) our preservation Mayor has accepted a litter of artifacts whose assault on the cityscape destroys sightlines of vintage vistas and dominates historic neighborhoods and architectural districts. Take (please) the Nissan ad flags flapping in front of Back Bay Station obscuring the entry. Not only the gaudy advertisements or multiplying messages on the back of maps but their ill-placed define Boston's non-planned posturing. A somewhat earlier Nissan billboard above the Copley Square subway declaring "the best way to see the city is not underground" was a portend. (Was this an MBTA death wish or just mismanagement?)