19125 CA$H 4 $IGN$ CONTE$T!!!

First Prize:
Second Place: $75 CASH!!!
Third Place: $50 CASH!!!
Fourth Place: $25 CASH!!!

Ok some questions I already got:

- Realtor signs affixed to properties advertising them for sale are NOT bandit signs.

- However, a realtor sign planted on a utility pole or in the highway median, IS a bandit sign. I know it sounds confusing, but it really isn't. City code lets you put up signs on buildings and lots advertising them for sale, but you can't put 20 signs out like breadcrumbs, such as "AWESOME HOUSE THIS WAY ----->>>". As nice as that is for the driver searching for someone's open house, that is a bandit sign.

-- The signs you collect can come from anywhere, but it would be nice if you focus around your immediate neighborhood before venturing out into other neighborhoods.

Tips for finding lots of signs:

- Commercial avenues. Lehigh Ave gets plastered a lot, so does Frankford Ave, York west of Memphis St, Aramingo, Richmond, etc. Lehigh gets re-populated about 1x a week more than any other road in 19125 from what I've seen.
- Wawas, pharmacies and busy intersections with 2-way traffic.
- Residential streets close to commercial corridors
- Highway medians

You just can't. Because I said so.

If you do, I don't want to hear about it (or from your personal injury lawyer... and you CAN'T use Leo, by the way). :D

jbette/sdm, get a tall ORCA member to help lift you. Like me or Phil.

Hah

Find a tall guy on match.com and date him until the contest is over.

If you're looking for a honeypot, my bud in Fox Chase just posted this...

I also saw some in EKNA-land in pockets and there's a whole storm of them over around Norris Square, too.

There's some around my own house but if nobody gets them by Sunday, I'm nabbing them. [Don't worry, I'm excluded from the contest.] :-)

Ok temporary derailment interruption:

Somebody save this poor tree outside Coffee House II from its misery (and improve your shot at a Kindle or some $$$)...

Yeah but the paper bandit signs have like 80 staples in them; so if there's only 4, I won't accept it as "authentic". Also has to be on card stock. I've never seen anybody use photocopy paper for the junk car signs (yet). They use the card stock because copy paper dissolves in the rain.

Yeah I was waiting for someone to blame the signs on OWEbama.

It can be yours...

I have a new surprise coming for the ones going high up.

It involves paint.

Apparently the only way a roofer can get any business in this town is to bolt signs way up high on the utility pole at the Wawa parking lot.

Because you know: if it weren't for utility poles, there would be no roofers in this city because they wouldn't be able to get any work.

You mean Local 30? Considering how many small companies love the bandit signs, and that they take advantage of sending guys out with ladders to put them up high out of reach, doubtful.

Most of my physical confrontations I've had with people getting combative with me over removing signs have been with low-IQ-level roofers. In fact, all but 1 has been a roofer, or a roofer's apprentice. The one who wasn't was a political wonk putting up bandit signs for a politician I shall not name.***

They not only do that, but some companies put out the illegal bus benches. Union Roofing, who can only seem to generate 1-star or 5-star reviews (http://bit.ly/HicaeA), has illegal benches on my street, along with another HIC and a check cashing jawn. I have yet to see someone actually sit in the traffic island at Cumberland & Aramingo on that bench; but since the benches are still mostly intact and haven't been vandalized I'm not too worried about them.

I just find it hilarious that roofers insist on using the signs, whereas carpenters and plumbers can get by without them.

*** There ARE decent and honest roofers in the city, but they are far... FAR outnumbered by shysters who sully the entire profession, and judging by the court records I use to validate business and home addresses, it often turns out the bandit sign roofers have more damaged reputations than the ones you find with loads of smarmy reviews on Yelp or Angie's. I cringe the day I need my roof replaced and will wind up calling a contractor from out of state (and only after after reviewing civil court documents... who wants to get a $6,000 estimate and then wind up with a $10,000 bill) only because the pool of available roofers within easy reach of my home is overwrought with bad apples.

By the way if you want some fun with contractors, mostly with roofing and plumbing... guess how many online reviews, both positive and negative, are actually written by competing contractors (negative) and positive (family/employees of contractors). It's hilarious.

Stock do you think you can get the MyPhillyRoofer one at the Aramingo Wawa?

It's facing the parking lot so you see it when leaving Wawa and it's screwed in with bolts. When I get free time I had planned to go over there in the middle of the night when most of the MPR roofers would be drinking and not notice little old me with a pole extender white-washing their sign.

That's the high-up one that's been annoying me the most.

Another one being put up by Josef Bonk for Primo Roofing and Solar is also annoying, it's mounted on wood as well.

Actually, I think white washing is the better answer to those really-high up signs because to replace the sign that's been bolted, they have to take the old one down before they can put the new one up.

Someone down in Newbold (that gentrified area of Point Breeze) is doing raised planter beds made out of bandit signs. I have to trade some more emails back and forth, but all the bandit signs collected may go to fund new planter boxes. She is calling them "BanditBoxes". Work in progress:

http://jumo-organizations.maker.good.is/projects/BanditBox#

Interesting remark from Councilman Jones. It's like an about-face from his bill that tries to legalize the signs: http://www.newsworks.org/index.php?option=com_flexicontent&view=items&id=36371:philadelphia-city-council-wants-more-action-to-reduce-sign-clutter

Yeah I think the phone number should be scratched out or covered with a happy face sticker. Defacing the phone number makes the signs useless. Honestly if we haven't gotten any traction by now I was actually thinking of building a robodialer and start feeding the thing phone numbers that come in from bandit sign reports on the website.

Sandwich placards are not bandit signs. The city specifically refers to signs that are moored with stakes or mounted. City code lists the mountings. Goto banditproject.org and look through the Resources section.

I just heard that banditproject was on FOX29.

Wish I had some help running a citywide bandit sign contest. I have someone who wants to pick up huge truckloads of Coroplast to start building raised planter beds with them. If they're actually sellable, maybe she could launch a side business and get signs picked off telephone poles and made the beds at her "factory" (her backyard).

BUMP. This is your last full weekend before the Philly Spring Cleanup to get those signs down. There are a BUNCH on Belgrade and on Gaul.

I will be out this Sunday ripping signs down so if you wanna get some points, better get them soon!

How this works... you keep your signs with you and cart them back to your house. On the Philly Spring Cleanup, you need to swing by Thompson and Huntingdon behind Mount Wawa, or you need to find Arthur Meckler from FACT over at Palmer Park (Frankford & Columbia).

Arthur is collecting signs over there and I am doing it by Mount Wawa. The clean-up wrap up at noon, so if you miss us, then give them to me or Athur at PBC before 12:30. Once we have the last signs collected we'll announce the winners at the Brewery.

It's an Amazon Kindle Fire people. Brand new, in the packaging, never been opened, worth about $200.

And the 2-4th place prizes are $75, $50 and $25 in cold hard cash. Take it to sugarhouse and turn it into $1,000... or drink it all, or buy yourself some happy.

That is all.