Billboard Blight

* As an artist/retired art professor, I have been aware of the billboard blight seen along our freeways and near our cities for the past 50 years. The market-driven economy of Southern California has allowed this to happen. There are certainly still areas free of billboards. In some parts of California, billboards are not seen so often. Santa Barbara’s city center is not only historic but aesthetic because it allows no billboards or tall edge-of-the-road signs. Some states, like Oregon and Washington, have almost no billboards--people can drive there endlessly and appreciate the mountains, forests, rivers and lakes without the intrusion of outdoor advertising signs.

If California citizens became more aesthetically aware of our magnificent natural landscape and what outdoor advertising has done to destroy that beauty, perhaps a public protest could change this.

NANCY FAUST

San Dimas