Comments on: Talking Billboards Installed in Chinatown

By: tracy

tracy — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 15:40:53 +0000

I live at the Residences of Gallery Place, the signs are attached to the outdoor community terrace of our building and are awful!

By: Laurence Aurbach

Laurence Aurbach — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 22:10:16 +0000

“They remind me somewhat of a scene from the movie Minority Report”

And a similar scene in “Back to the Future II.”

Busy urban sidewalks are more than simple conduits for moving bodies from point A to point B. Busy urban sidewalks should be places where people linger, people-watch, chat, get some sun, and in general, hang out. William H. Whyte and Jan Gehl have documented in great detail how the most successful urban streets and civic spaces are designed to be hospitable for these purposes. Why should we allow our civic realm to be assaulted with blaring advertisements ? Why should we allow these obnoxious gadgets to debase our functioning public spaces? DC citizens are not proles to be browbeaten with invasive advertising demands 22 hours a day.

Instead, we should be making our busiest streets more pedestrian friendly and more amenable for lingering, which will in turn boost popularity, civic value, sales for adjacent merchants, and property values for adjacent owners.

By: Eric Fidler

Eric Fidler — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 04:00:26 +0000

The billboards are annoying mostly because they are both auditorily and visually intrusive. Rather than showing lame AT&T ads, the billboards would be more Washingtonian if they showed PSAs from local NGOs or daily clips of nonsense spewed daily on the Senate and House floors. Unfortunately, finding a patron willing to sponsor such interesting content is about as likely as District residents getting voting representation in the government they fund.

By: Inaudible Nonsense

Inaudible Nonsense — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 03:52:51 +0000

Other than Times Square can anyone name another U.S. city with an intersection of insane billboards? I grew up in Chicago and lived for many years in San Francisco — neither of which have anything like this. And I think both are truly world class cities. And world class on their own merits not by aping other cities. That’s what second tier cities do: the Sacramentos, Dallases, Atlantas and San Joses of the world do. DC is better than that. We can have our own identity instead of “a small town’s idea of what a big city should feel like” — as Time magazine once said of Atlanta.

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 02:43:13 +0000

I’m not arguing against development, I’m arguing that conflating it with gawdy outdoor advertising is silly. I just don’t understand why blaring commercial messages at the city’s shoppers is synonymous with economic development.

I suspect that Evans and others just think it’s sort of cool. I also suspect that they don’t walk down that block as often as I do.

By: Justin

Justin — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 17:49:05 +0000

Tom: That’s exactly my point. It’s taking time, trying to stop or slow change makes it take indefinitely longer. Chinatown isn’t an international center of commerce. But DC is a capital city that is rapidly growing and transforming. In 5 years, NoMa and Near Southeast will be developed. In 10 years, Poplar Point and Anacostia. From then, who knows, but its happening quickly.

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 03:42:16 +0000

Justin: Chinatown is hardly competing with those areas — getting a Bed Bath & Beyond does not immediately vault us into the ranks of the world’s foremost centers of commerce. Besides, those areas evolved in their own time and place. Would Times Square become what it did if it was starting today? I doubt it — our attitudes about advertising are very different, and the industry has changed. DC is showing up late to the party, desperately aping its betters. It’s pathetic.

And Si: I have to disagree. I definitely heard those billboards from across the street, and was surprised by their volume.

By: Justin

Justin — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 20:55:36 +0000

Times Square keeps coming up as a reference to Chinatown. NYC isn’t the only place with a “lights district”. London has Piccadilly Circus, Tokyo has Shibuya and Shinjuku, and basically every other urban, world-class city has an intersection like this. DC is slowly becoming a true world-class city. Bright lights is not a cause of this, but probably a side-effect.

By: Si Kailian

Si Kailian — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 20:44:00 +0000

um thats the reagan building not the convention center lol.

those talking billboards are fortunately loud only right under them & in the metro escalator area. they play the same boring irritating cingular commercial over & over. those poor newspaper guys.

By: Rob Goodspeed

Rob Goodspeed — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 20:27:29 +0000

They remind me somewhat of a scene from the movie Minority Report (also set in Washington), where people are assaulted by moving, talking billboards that recognize each person and address them by name by scanning their retinas. "Hello, Thomas Lee. Are you in the market for renter's insurance? Nationwide can help ..."