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This Space for Rent: Call City Hall for Details

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A trash can marketed by Pepsi. Image Credit: Seth Anderson

Among the many things called for in Mayor Emanuel's proposed budget is $25 million in what's called "municipal marketing." That means everything from trash cans to electrical boxes to the parking meter fare boxes whose revenue the city doesn't see are fair game for advertising and sponsorship.

Chief Financial Officer Lois Scott is in charge of ensuring Emanuel's plan comes to life.

“Those 4,700 pay boxes have some economic value in using that real estate. The city reserved the right to sell advertising on those as part of the transaction with Morgan Stanley” that privatized the 36,000 meters, Scott said.

“There’s also some real interest in those [400] Big Belly [solar trash compactors downtown] and selling the rights to advertise on those. That income stream is also the property of the city. And we’ve had encouraging conversations with ad agencies about electric light boxes that operate street lights.”

Almost makes you wish for more graffiti. For those concerned Emanuel is turning the city into OCP, the mayor had this to day.

“Rather than worry about that side, there are some places where advertising actually may be a beautification,” given the condition of the infrastructure.
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Comments [rss]

  • a move where you can simplify it for good? know more through us ,. just visit us .

  • make the days of you to move better , check the way you re though some info for good.

  • moving days, cool at most? just visit us and know more things where improvement is at most.

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  • High_n_Dry

    Stickers, our only defense against annoying ads are stickers.

  • How are stickers less annoying than ads?

  • High_n_Dry

    That is perfect! Keep them coming. Though the length of that may qualify it as a bumper sticker.

  • Just so you know, it's trademarked, but I'll sell it to you for $3.

  • Yum Yum van slee

    Because at least they aren't trying to manipulate you into giving your money to some dopey corporation

  • 1. Who cares what's on the tacky piece of crap stuck to my trash can? I'm no more or less likely to read it. It's still just a tacky piece of crap.

    2. Do you manufacture your own stickers? 

  • Yum Yum van slee

    Take a look at the lakefront bike path. The issue goes beyond ads on garbage cans. The cans themselves, "these free green cans," have been placed in over-abundance to maximize revenue from ad sales, effectively selling the public park space for ads. Go and see for yourself: There is now a trash can situated every 20 yards, sometimes clustered in groups of five or more, all along the path in areas visited primarily by cyclists, roller bladers and joggers, who it can be argued aren't very likely to have much of a need to throw anything away. These cans are in fact clearly intended as vessels for advertisements, sugar-coated with a recycling initiative that is, again, unnecessary in these areas. If the recycling initiative is intended to be effective, why not put the cans in alleyways in the neighborhoods and other high-trash ridden areas. Instead, cycling commuters along the lakefront  are set to be exposed to more advertisements in a set 45 minute commute than can be found or experienced anywhere else on earth -- this even includes watching 45 straight minutes of commercials, as in such a ride one should expect to pass no less than 400 of said trash cans, each with multiple visible ads.

  • Your problem is trash cans on the lake path? Well, that's just silly. I use the lake path often, and haven't felt unnecessarily accosted by trash cans.

    You might consider that maybe this barrage of unrestrained trash cans exists because people who use the lake front have a problem disposing of their trash. Remember last summer, when the cops closed North Avenue beach and all the beachgoers left the lakeshore covered with plastic bottles, because they couldn't be bothered to carry their trash to any of the army of trash cans you claim line the shore? One of the more popular arguments I heard in the aftermath was that there weren't enough trash cans along the lake path. The piles of trash I frequently find along the path would suggest this to be the case.

  • Yum Yum van slee

    Did you use it today? How about yesterday. Last week? Last month? Have you seen what I am talking about? Are you suggesting that I am lying about the placement of the trash cans, or that there is some logic to the placement I've described? Are we talking about a fifteen mile length of the path, including areas used by few people other than cyclists, rollerbladers and joggers, as I pointed out already... or only the trashiest area on the path, north avenue beach, which is most convenient for your argument that talk of too many trash cans is "just silly"? Wait, are we talking only about trash cans, or trash cans placed specifically for the purpose of selling ad space along the lakefront, as asserted by the messages on the trash cans themselves, as well as this article?

  • If it really matters to your very silly argument against trach cans, I was on the lake path just last Friday, riding a pretty significant length of it. Of course, you haven't said specifically where on the lake path you're talking about, so I don't know if I've seen your trash can onslaught or not.

  • ChicagoD

    Blue, this might be an even worse use of your time than normal.

  • High_n_Dry

    I do make my own stickers, well not the physical sticker but the content written on the paper with glue on one side is mine. Perhaps you've seen this one on the new parking meters "WWJD? He'd f**king walk!"

  • Again, moved to avoid skinniness.

    This is where we come to the question that no fan of property defacement has ever been able to answer. Your original statement was that your stickers would save us from ads you personally find annoying. You have no problem with the idea of placing your stickers on the property of others, in effect unilaterally choosing how this property should look. You do not take into account the possibility that much of the public finds your stickers as annoying as you find the ads. So how is your unilateral decision any different that the decision of the marketing people? Why do you feel you have more justification to clutter the public space than ad folk? I should think if you were consistent, you'd accept that their right is at least equal to yours.

  • Yum Yum van slee

    I find stickers ugly and annoying, but also satisfying in their function as a voice against selling our public spaces for advertising, since any protest of this kind is almost always either ignored or vehemently fought against because it is a question of aesthetics and pride in one's home versus money and money and money and money. This person is obviously speaking of stickers as a reaction to this wanton selling of our public spaces without our consent, not as a way to enforce his aesthetic upon you. But again, tactics such as the one you employ here, ignoring the obvious intent of the message, are common in the marketing apologists community, the same community of people who have always chosen money over aesthetics, and who consequently unintentionally smother artistic and bohemian communities with their polluted bourgeois lifestyles because they are so starved for some actual culture that they have to dogpile onto it.

  • And I can't believe I have to explain to you that putting stuff up is putting stuff up. A sticker in a public space, even covering an ad, is still in a public space. The guy is simply saying I want you to see this instead of that. It's the same damn thing.

  • Who really cares why this person thinks he's putting up stickers. The intent of the message is irrelevant. (This is especially true for people like me, who will automatically tune out any such message, regardless of its origin.) The effect is that he imposes his aesthetic will on me. Rationalize it all you want, he is doing exactly what the advertisers are doing. So what gives him justification that the advertisers don't have?

  • Yum Yum van slee

    I can't believe I have to explain this to you, but the difference is that he is using stickers to sully ads, as opposed to using ads to sully public space. 

  • High_n_Dry

    As ChicagoD said below, I'm a pot stirrer not a doer. I've never placed stickers on the parking meters. It is a slow day at work and DailyCaller's articles are lame so I can't infuriate any Conservatives at the moment.

  • You're so much not a doer that you can't even work yourself up to answering the question in hypothetical? What's the point of pointless internet discussion to kill boredom if you're not even going to discuss the pointless point you brought up?

    I don't know what the world's coming to when we can't even work ourselves up to committing to boredom.

  • High_n_Dry

    Work became work.

  • slickpoetry

    "Support for Chicago Parking Meters, LLC. Nice."

    Posting here to avoid skinniness:

    The revenue generated by this advertising does NOT go to Chicago Parking Meters, LLC, or LA-Z parking company. It goes straight to the city's budget. Is that difficult to understand? 

  • High_n_Dry

    Good. Great. Grand. I'm still ok with defacing CPM, LLC property.

  • High_n_Dry

    To ChicagoD. I've never placed a sticker on a meter but I may now that CPM,LLC has your support.

  • ChicagoD

    Nah. You're just a pot-stirrer, not a doer.

  • ChicagoD

    Yes, but you're a cock.

  • I post to the Doritos story to avoid skinniness.

  • slickpoetry

    Yeah, vandalism is always preferred to something that actually makes money for this beleaguered city.

  • High_n_Dry

    Boo hoo.

  • ChicagoD

    Hey, Captain Dickface and his sticker "art" have arrived!

  • Yum Yum van slee

    Hey, Major Marketing and his corporate shill attitude has arrived!

  • High_n_Dry

    Support for Chicago Parking Meters, LLC. Nice.

  • I wouldn't know if I've seen it or not, as I ignore things stuck on the side of parking meters.

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