MnGCA

[s4xton]

Figured this might be of interest to some people here...

One of my activities I used to do before geocaching was the targeted removal of "Street Spam," or illegal advertisment signs... You know what I'm talking about: Those "Lose 30 lbs in 30 days" posters stuck in the ground near busy street corners and "Have a PC? Make $$$" signs nailed to telephone poles.

Deal is, they're all illegal, either by means of city/county ordinances or by the scams they sell. Most importantly for me, these were litter that was making my neighbourhood ugly (I lived on the east side of St. Paul at the time - it was a *serious* problem there!).

Before I started caching, a friend and I used to go around on a lazy Sunday and pick up 500-1000 of these in a *day.* The spammers would go out and put new signs up again, and we'd remove them again... until... they stopped! Well, at least the big-time spammers stopped... there's always some small-time operation that shows up now and then.

Either way, I was just reminded about this when I was on my way out to my Mother's house yesterday for Mother's day and saw a few signs and out of habit stopped the car and took them them down... and I've cleaned some of that litter up while caching a few times as well.

If you're interested in learning more about it, some people organized a crappy website that has a strong community of people that also do this kind of clean-up:

http://www.causs.org/

So the next time you're caching or CITO'ing and see one of these illegal signs, feel free to take them down.

-Aaron

[KC0GRN]

I would do that sometimes as well, though not as much of a concerted effort. If I saw one and I was close enough to grab it, it'd be gone. Shoot I even pulled up to my local ATM one day and found one of those plastic sticky business card holders stuck to the ATM, full of "lose weight quickly" cards. Tore that off and chucked it in the nearest garbage receptacle.

I'll be on the lookout for them while out caching though, just another way geocachers can make a positive contribution to the area.

[King Boreas]

heh heh heh

sounds like fun

[s4xton]

In the end, it is a lot of fun. You get a lot of comments too... people thanking you and asking if they can help out.

In Lake Elmo a guy saw us jumping at some, and he pulled his truck into the ditch so we could stand on the back of it to get the signs down. Another woman in Maplewood saw us, waved, and started picking up signs on the opposite side of the street.

My friend and I also spent a day following someone around posting signs... He hung up about 500 and we took down 500 in the same day. This was in the area around Battle Creek Park, Saint Paul.

Tools of the trade:

* Small (or large) step ladder
* Large Hammer (one side to help knock things down with, other to remove nails)
* Black Spray Paint (If you can't get the sign down, at least block out the phone number)

It's a unique and fun way to clean up neighbourhoods.

Some people like to see how many they can get and take photos and post them... I suppose it could be counted as CITO as they're all mostly public areas (within a foot or two of public roads).

-Aaron

[Kitch]

I just hate the garage sale signs that stay up for the two weeks past the sale