Signs of the Apocalypse 0

LCD signs seem to have made much greater inroads here than in the Greater Philadelphia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Up there, I remember some LCD billboards along I-95 south of the Philadelphia Airport, but I did not see them at schools and churches. Furthermore, the billboards would rotate among several advertisements, but each ad would be a static display, except possibly for a temperature display.

These sign down here are more animated than a Pixar movie, with dancing text, fade-in-fade-out, graphics, and pictures. (Probably look good on the computer screen when they are composed and allow the persons who program the signs to think they have l33t hax0rz sk1lz, but from the road they are really uglificated.)

Schools and churches and some businesses have them and more businesses want them. More to the point, the people who sell them want to sell more of them, until Atlantic Avenue looks like the Lost Wages strip.

Personally, I find them obnoxious, ugly, and distracting from my driving. (A church with an LCD sign is a church whose door I shan’t darken.)

So, when Virginia Beach restricted them, I did not regret it, though I didn’t feel strongly enough to, say, write a letter about it to a council critter.

I would still prefer that they went away, but, on reflection, I think Joel has a fairer idea.

If a business can afford an LCD sign, let them get an LCD sign. A less invasive ordinance would have been to regulate the size, height, brightness, etc. of the signs. Let’s keep the signs from being too big and too bright, but let’s allow businesses to take advantage of new technology in advertising.

Especially the brightness.

(The local rag says garden clubs were responsible for the ban.)