Mark Michael’s follows up his Orlando billboard
liberation with one of the largest billboard takeovers we’ve ever seen. Street
work of this scale doesn’t happen very often. And what we like most about Mark’s
hits is that he includes a terrific diary of what went it took to get the
project completed.

Here are some excepts of how he pulled it off, href="http://www.thelegendofmarkmichaels.com/">knicked from Mark’s
weblog:

“You know, if you don’t go through with this
you’re gonna be coming home with a seven hundred dollar poster of yourself.”
/>
That’s what Rachel said to me after an unsuccessful and disheartening
first attempt to bring the “The Legend” up to Atlanta.

In fact from
the moment we got there, there were all sorts of stresses and pressures giving
me doubts about the project. First of all, I didn’t have a billboard structure
picked out before I made the eight hour trip up to the “empire city of the
South”. I just figured if I made my artwork the most common billboard size (14’
x 48’), the perfect sign would kind of “pop up” the weekend of the project.
/>
Second of all, I was relying on the help of friends who were up there to
have a good time at the Midtown Music Festival. I knew if I didn’t make things
happen quickly and efficiently, their spirit of helping would probably melt
away.

So I spent my first several hours in Atlanta driving around in
miserable rush hour traffic, looking for this “perfect sign” (looking up in the
sky, instead of the treacherous roads ahead of me).

But that perfect
sign never appeared. I couldn’t find any blank, or out-of- service signs, and
all the other signs either seemed too risky, or too obscure. By the time the sun
went down my stomach was in knots (with thoughts like: what the fuck am I
doing?) and I had a few possible billboards picked out that weren’t that
amazing.

... But my big mistake was when I changed my targeted sign
at the last moment. As we were driving to my intended destination, I suddenly
spotted this fantastic blank billboard towering over the highway. It had the
best exposure of all the signs I’d seen so far, and there was just something
really bold and dramatic about it.

So I turned our mini convoy around
and hunted down the base of the structure. It was inside a contruction area of
some kind, but remote enough that we shouldn’t have been taken for looters.
After trudging through wet, red Georgia clay that that sunk down a foot with
every step I set my ladder up at the base of the sign. After the ladder, the
climb was really tricky since there was no safe way provided to get from the
sign’s built in ladder to the cat walk in front of the board. To do this I had
to climb Spiderman style on crossbeams that bounced with my weight, forty feet
above the ground. Because of the height and sketchinesss of the structure, my
only possible climbing helper said he wouldn’t be following. All the work in the
sky I would be doing on my own.

My artwork was printed on vinyl, the
same way the billboard companies do it. It weighed sixty pounds, and was
extremely awkward to handle. It took every bit of strength I had to pull it up
by rope to the catwalk. When it was even with me I had to flip it up and over
with my legs, without letting it flip me back to the ground below.

/>Once I had it up with me, I spent several minutes just catching my breath. My
chest and head was pounding and, after five minutes on the sign I was already
parched.

Once my vital signs were mostly back to normal I started
spreading the vinyl out along the catwalk. As it unstretched further and
further, I began to realize that there was something wrong. My artwork was about
8 to 10 feet too long for the sign I was on. It wouldn’t fit.

/>Fuck.

After several miserable moments of wondering what to do, (and
the appearance of an ominous truck on the construction site) I decided to give
up for the time being.

I told my friends to go have fun at the
festival, and in the mean time, I would measure the next sign I brought them
to.

Things went much better the next day, even though our hangovers
were now doubled in strength. I had scoped out (and measured) a sign north of
downtown that was just above the roof of a vacant building. We were able to do
most of the prep work on the roof of the building without being visible to the
traffic below. Once again we had our safety hats to give the appearance of
legitimacy. (But once again, the safety hats didn’t fit right at all. The bands
either sunk down over your eyes and completely blinded you, or the hat just got
in your way and fell off).

The second day had plenty of challenges
and nervous moments as well.

Despite the fact that this sign was
lower to the ground, it was still an extremely difficult climb to the top. There
was just a space of about 18” between back to back billboards, and most of that
space was taken up by crossbeams and cables. Once again I would be doing all the
climbing alone (which is only fitting).

I had this false hope that
wratcheting a fabric image to a structure would be a snap when compared to
hauling up all those plywood panels in Orlando—but such was not the case.
/>
A couple of hours into the installation, these incredible winds began
ripping over the rooftop. There were gusts of 35 to 40 miles and hour, and for a
while I thought my sign would be ripped to shreds, or blown out into traffic.
Then to make things even more interesting, it started pouring down rain. After
that all the crossbeams were soaked and slippery. Then the sun came out again
full force and baked us up on that roof.

And so on, and so on…
/>
All in all the installation took about five hours (a long way from the
90 minute estimate I had given to my festival friends).

When at last
it was done, there wasn’t much time for sitting and appreciating. We had an
eight hour car ride back to Florida ahead of us. Me and Rachel were both sweaty
and exhausted and stinky, but having checked out of our hotel room already, we
had to suffer with ourselves for the next five hundred miles.

But
first, we stopped off at this awesome Jamaican Restaurant downtown. We must have
looked like we were dragged through the streets by a bus to the waitress there.
But we didn’t care, we were just starving and tired and wet and sun burnt and
ready to relax.

“What would you like to drink?” she asked me.
/>
“A heineken,” I said.

A very special thanks to:

/>rodney
the goatbelt
and Rachel (xxoo)
/>