Slovakia has to be one of the billboard capitals of the world, with Bratislava exceptional in this respect, but many, if not most, of the adverts that are pushed in our faces are in fact illegal, and now Bratislava City Hall plans to combat the problem with red stickers.
You may already see the stickers on some billboards as the city council set about covering several dozen unauthorised billboards in the city, with plans to remove them by the middle of August if the owners haven’t already done so, with them footing the bill for the work in any case.
The illegal billboards have been put up on city land without any authorisation and city hall had previously challenged owners, usually advertising agencies, to remove them. TASR newswire writes that around 450 illegal billboards have been erected in the city.
On the same theme, Slovakia has its own vigilante against the illegal advertising, with people referring to him as Batman. He and his compatriots have already removed around 700 illegal billboards, while recording the details of every case together with photographs. He set up a civil initiative to combat the visual smog in Bratislava and so now there are a team of around 20 activists going round destroying illegal adverts of all kinds from the streets.
The vigilantes, who take the law into their own hand due to the tied hands of authorities in many cases, check the illegality of the adverts and are even decent enough to send the owners of the adverts a photograph of before and after.
The writing is on the wall here. Vigilantes tackling illegal billboards today, tomorrow it could be drug pushers, anti-social behaviour or “problem” businesses. The fact that these people have become fed up of the lack of action by the authorities and have taken the “law” into their own hands should be a warning signal to all concerned.
Batman and Co. – keep up the good work!
well, I think it’s more visually disturbing the whole architecture of the city and the generally low taste and quality in terms of urban design, landscape, and advertising campaigns.. then I would rather have the town council spend money on making the town look better and become more functional than waste money and trees to produce nonsense “Stop illegal ads” campaign, it’s way hilarious
JB, can you remove that comment above? I did not write it.
Should I change my username?
My name is Matteo and someone is using matteo.