ROADSIDE HOARDINGS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 December 1939, Page 3

ROADSIDE HOARDINGS

BEAUTIFUL SCENERY SPOILT. Although New Zealanders find much cause to protest against some of the roadside hoarding which spoil views of scenery, the evil is not yet as exasperating as it is in America. Here is some terse editorial comment of the "Florida Magazine":— “Just how long are the people of Florida going to allow their beautiful highways and traffic thoroughfares to be cluttered up with nondescript signs and billboards? Big one, little ones! Old ones! Ugly ones! Glaring, screaming billboards! Ragged, battered and bent signs. They leer at you from trees and yell at you from ditches —they come rushing at you from over the hilltops and gnaw at your vitals from around curves —steam heated . . . . liver pills .... inner spring . . . . baffle cars .... b-o tonic .... the whatis hotel .... squirma shay ....

and by the time you've gone a few miles your head is in such a whirl trying to ignore the obnoxious things and keep from reading them, that before you know it you start dodging them as if they were racing toward you. “Billboards and signs on the highways are a menace to safety and a curse on our virgin forests and broad landscapes. Besides that, they are a travesty on the intelligence of the American people. Everywhere you go, these glaring illegitimate children of the graphic arts are practically ‘rammed down your throat' in a manner that is most distasteful to an intelligent person.”