Around Town: Signs of a downward trend

Have pity on the political yard sign industry. If La Cañada Flintridge is the bellwether, then yard signs will be obsolete by 2020. As the yard signs go, so goes the nation.

Yard signs are like Girl Scout cookies. They are supposedly for a good cause, your friends pass them around, and people take them without permission.

This year, it’s different. There are hardly any political yard signs this year.

There are a few yard signs in town, but there are fewer than last election. Sure, the local Jo-Ann Fabric store has both Portantino and Antonovich signs in front of it (how smart is that?), but it’s the exception.

So many candidates, so few yard signs, and poor La Cañada Flintridge is ground zero for this alarming new trend.

Face it. La Cañada is so far outside the beltway that our freeways wear suspenders.

Here’s the proof. Every morning, like many Americans, I log onto Facebook to see how my friends plan to vote, to find out if they agree with me, and to see who they’ve unfriended for expressing the wrong opinions.

Who needs a yard sign when you’ve got Facebook?

Then, I go to Twitter to see what other journalists are tweeting. After that, I run the Wikileaks search engine to see if anyone I know emailed those guys. I run multiple key word searches — “Foothill Blvd.,” “91011,” “Dave Spence,” “Mayor Dave,” “Mayor Jon,” and “Descanso Gardens.” I’ve tried everyone I know, even my editor, but, so far, not one La Cañada acquaintance has appeared in the emails.

It’s a humbling experience.

Equally humbling is the decrease in the number of yard signs in the 91011. Four years ago, there were yard signs everywhere. People would steal them. The police would be called. There’d be an article in the Valley Sun about the thefts.

These days, the only thing getting stolen is your identity and your Amazon Fresh packages.

Those were heady times, four years ago. Right after the 2012 election, Occupy L.A. came to La Cañada on two buses, but they didn’t talk to anyone. The buses had signage. Those were the good old days for the yard sign industry.

Don’t blame the downturn on the candidates. It’s a trend beyond their control. Also, Amazon is undercutting the entire election yard sign industry. Amazon sells signs for every presidential candidate, plus signs denigrating every presidential candidate. Amazon even sells a “None of the Above 2016” sign for only $13.95, plus shipping.

So far, none of the Amazon signs have surfaced in the 91011. Reasonable minds will differ, but the answer may lie in the proliferation of devices. What’s the point in spending money to purchase a sign, when you can screen shot the image for free and upload it as a profile photo? Maybe that’s why there are so few yard signs this year.

The downturn in the yard sign industry has forced the yard sign specialists to expand their reach. Want to run for office? One vendor provides an immediate download of the “How to Win any Election Kit,” which is “a collection of five e-books, plans and samples.” There are sample political press releases, fundraising letters and a guide for something they call “building momentum.”

One problem — the momentum disfavors yard signs.

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ANITA SUSAN BRENNER is a longtime La Cañada Flintridge resident and an attorney with Law Offices of Torres and Brenner in Pasadena. Contact her at anitasusan.brenner@yahoo.com. Follow her on Instagram @realanitabrenner, Facebook and on Twitter @anitabrenner.