Where have all the fliers gone? Long time pasting.

According to the story, there's some dude who has been taking it upon himself to clean up the neighborhood by going around and tearing off all the fliers and handbills that have been taped onto walls, barricades, and streetlights. The dude, Gideon Kramer, is backed up by both state and local laws banning the posting of fliers. In fact, in 1999, the Board of Supes passed a measure that seriously raised fines for doing so. The measure also included a bunch of provisions, which would allow them to be posted, but nobody seemed to follow them. As a result, a lot of people and organizations have been hit with thousands of dollars in fines for postering things everywhere.

On the other hand, people who post things up on streetlights and any other assorted things in the Mission do so to advertise their wares. Viral marketing at it's most organic and basic, a form of advertising that goes way back to Flintstones times. But, as the Bay Guardian article points out, it's mainly political groups like ANSWER or the International Workers Party who are bearing the brunt of the crack down. Both of them have been hit with thousand of dollars worth of fines, not because they were caught putting the fliers up but because it was generally assumed by the cops that fliers calling for the ending of U.S. Imperialism with a big huge ANSWER logo on it could have only been put up by someone from ANSWER. This makes the whole thing a freedom of speech issue and that's what makes the whole thing kind of juicy-- it's freedom of speech vs. freedom of people to keep their neighborhoods clean. Or, as Jones puts it in his usual understated way, "those trying to stop war and those trying to combat blight." Oh, Gideon Kramer, don't you want to bring the troops home now?

But wait, there's more!