Two years ago, in a commendable combination of good citizenship and individual initiative, the Los Angeles artist Richard Ankrom decided to clarify a previously confusing exit to I-5 North. Ankrom carefully created some new, improved signs, making sure they were identical to those erected by the government, then installed them. The process was completed this month. (If two years seems like a long time for a project like this, think about how long it would've taken an authorized road crew to do it.)
Surreptitious sign alterations are nothing new. Most are crude, but some, like Ankrom's, are rather complex operations. A decade ago, when politicians in Portland, Oregon, were thinking of changing the name of Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue, a covert work crew descended on another road one night and changed its name on each sign to Malcolm X Street. In Philadelphia, an anonymous driver, apparently unhappy with a parking ticket, carefully revised a No Parking sign to include what the local City Paper delicately referred to as "the f-word."
More commonly, pranksters simply steal their street signs, an activity that can have deadly consequences. There are those who take, and there are those who give. Ankrom, whose handiwork still hangs over Highway 110 in L.A., is a giver.
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