Corporation logos and / or names on city high rises are bad enough. We’ve discussed this before. Now they want more of those god-awful LED billboards downtown.  If the way this bypassed everything isn’t some back-room dealing, I’m not sure what is.  Unfortunately due to the totalitarian media handling that is currently being imposed, Our source wasn’t able to get any reliable information on just how this happened.

[T]he authority asked the city zoning office for permission to put a 20-foot-by-60-foot LED advertising sign on the garage side facing Grant Street. The bottom of the sign would sit 32 feet above street level. Zoning administrator Susan Tymoczko approved it a week later.

City code normally would demand a zoning board review of a sign that, Mr. Ford confirms, is far larger than anything that had previously been on that site.

I bet they blame the hassles they’ve been having with the Hill District / Pens Arena and Casino and this was an “oversight”.

John DeSantis, executive director of the Duquesne Light Home & Garden Show, which will occupy the convention center next month, noted that city officials have long sought to turn Grant Street into a regal thoroughfare.

“If the culmination of this grand boulevard is this lighted, digital billboard, what did you go and spend all of that money for?”

Well, Mr. DeSantis, you must ask yourself: Why would this administration break the Pittsburgh trend of doing everything half-assed?

Thankfully, today, there was a sighting of common sense and the Council will review the LED billboard.

Pittsburgh City Council President Doug Shields said today that council will review a decision by city planners to permit a 1,200-square-foot LED sign on a Downtown garage and bus station that’s still under construction.

Unfortunately, Shields is for the billboard.  Why? Why? Why?  Oh, yeah, the money.

<read in Lewis Black’s voice>
I absolutely hate these electronic billboards that are slowly showing up around the city.  Now, not only do We have to deal with idiots lost downtown that are talking on their mobile phones, but now downtown drivers (We) will have to suffer the idiots that sit there, ignoring the light, because they’re looking at the pretty colors.

You are asking, “what kind of ads will we see?”  Edgar Snyder has already bought two years worth of ad rotation, he also just renewed his television commercial contract for 20 new commercials over the next seven years.  It’s bad enough that because of Snyder’s commercials my two-year old nephew already thinks he is his grandfather.

Next will be Zales or Kay jewelers.  At least they can’t play any music or sounds. “Hey, retarded men, go to Jared and be completely unoriginal this Valentine’s Day - we have blood diamonds for thirty percent off!  Remember, the more you spend on her the more she knows you love her!”
</read in Lewis Black’s voice>

Sheep.  All of them sheep!

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