This morning my bike, my utility knife, and I visited the Steele Street/First Avenue Area.

A questionable company called Three Week Kitchens plastered the area with 6 or 7 signs. They were tough to do, but eventually we sharked out their phone number and part of their web address.

They will probably reappear. If you happen to be in the area your assistance would be appreciated.

In the meantime, the current signs will not be generating much phone traffic for them.

Hey, good that you found them. I was in NE Denver yesterday and found only two roofing signs.

All of the pervasive We Buy Junk Cars wooden signs have been removed by CE or have been painted out.

Take care,

DenverShark

They are still there, being litter. Why not just remove them?

>They are still there, being litter. Why not just remove
>them?

That's the city's job. And if they are removed, the business will just plant more signs.

This way, they know that someone is onto them, and they might (correctly) guess that their signs will be hacked again. They might not want to waste the money.

That might send them a message.

Plus, it's gotta piss off the spammer, and that's a good thing!

Trust me... "The City" probably does not expend the manhours on things such as this, and the sign spammer definitely knows that someone is onto them when their signs disappear daily. It's just litter... pick it up and they get the idea! Pick it up again, and they really get the idea.

Hi, sharks:

Actually, Denver Code Enforcement got very aggressive about removing the illegal I Buy Junk Cars wooden signs. And a few years ago, I was trying to remove one and a cop pulled over and helped. What fun!

The problem is that these are nailed to telephone poles with heavy nails. So it is much easier to use a sharky painter - a spray can on a stick - see the tools section of the website. In fact, it's very fast and very effective. It takes about 10-15 seconds per sign.

CE alluded to the fact that they have a sprayer in their arsenal.

As for CE's attitude on illegal signs like this, it often comes down to two things: budget and attitude of individual CEs. I have found that it really does help to call and talk to the folks there. Often they are not aware of problems until someone tells them about it.

Also, Denver has a 311 graffiti / neighborhood cleanup number. They were actually quite diligent about removing the We Hang christmas Lights signs this year.

DenverShark

I have a claw rake that I can skewer, tug and remove any sign below 13 feet... In seconds. A sign painted over is still litter.

Tomato Stake:

Then come to Denver and remove them. These signs are 1.5' x 2.5' 3/4" exterior plywood, 9' high on telephone poles. They are nailed with 6 or more 5" (40d penny) exterior galvanized (bronzed) nails, nailed with a pneumatic nail gun.

It took an officer and me 10 minutes to pull just one of these.

See you soon,

DenverShark

Newbie and one of the other Northern Dallas suburb sharks developed a quick and easy method to remove these type signs a few years back.

Only major problem was the 40d ferelled bridge nails and the heavy gauge 12x12 metal signs. Those signs had been up high for at least three to five years. All the local CE's were not about to tackle the problem. The CE's come up with several valid reasons for not removing the signs.

Newbie and his counterpart started about midday and used an eight foot ladder, a sheeps foot nail puller and a short bolt cutter.
The sheeps foot was used to get the nails out about an inch or so.
The 12" bolt cutter was then used to snap the nail head off.

A heavy duty hammer was used to knock the metal sign away from the nails.
After removing somewhere near 200 of the signs, they found a battery powered sawsall that worked OK, but later reverted back to the 12" bolt cutter because it was much faster to pop the nail head.

GW

Thanks, GW. Good to know.

In that case, I have a notched shovel the county gave me. It has a seven foot handle and will prise them off the pole from below. There is not plywood sign I cannot get.... destroy utterly in about 40 seconds. Seventy seconds should the need to stand upon my truck bed to reach higher.

In my seventeen years of sign removal, I have had to get the ladder and a pry bar out four times. (Only because these spammers knew and had watched me removed their signs, so they put them at 18 feet and really fastened them.)

First off, you apparently didn't read my post.
The signs were not plywood or any other wood composite. They were strictly heavy duty metal, thru and thru.

The ferelled #40 bridge nails are about six to seven inches long.
The 12x12 metal is at least 1/8" thick, don't remember the exact guage but its somewhere in the area of #8.

The 3/16 fender washers on the head end of the nail driven flush up against the metal sign would not budge, with a rake, sharky stick, high stick or the garden type tools shown on the forum.

In addition, the signs were up about 13' to 14' which requires a 10'extension ladder. There were some 350 to 400 scattered all over the North Dallas area. They were located at very busy, major intersections which made it even more difficult to get to.

We had about six or seven sharks working to come up with a removal method, that was quick as possible, safe and would not reqiuire power tools.

Two sharks working together might get one down in about 3 1/2 minutes. You sure would not make in 70 seconds. The biggest problem in timing was waiting until the traffic was clear and the sign didnt become a projectile when knocked loose.

GW

Sunshine... There is no sign metal, plastic, or plywood that has ever taken me much more than a minute to get. The height I carry tools to get is 13 feet. The worst I have to do is park my truck at the base of the sign and stand on it for 19 feet. If I have to go get an extension ladder, this would take a few extra minutes, but you really can not count that in sign destruction. (I have had to do that four times.) With a proper fulcrum, I can move the world with this lever.... Or just pry any sign off a pole. Lag bolts, heavy nails, or spikes, the sign is always weaker than the fasteners they try...

Do you really think the spammers have unique shark-proof signs there that are different than over here? I also do not go city-wide... I just stick to my 26 miles of road.

And the original posting was about cutting plastic signs! Just remove the litter!