Giving The High Sign

THEY’RE CALLED STREET SNIPES, those ubiquitous posters slapped on telephone and utility poles to promote Black Eyed Peas’ newest release or Dr. Dre’s “Up in Smoke” tour. Climbing 10 feet in the air along major intersections and freeway interchanges, snipes, for better or worse, provide yet another layer of visuals to a cluttered urban landscape. Posting an entertainment enterprise’s latest message, they’ve made many a driver scratch his head and wonder: “How the hell did those get up there?”

Typically, a four-person “crew,” armed with a van, tape, 10-foot ladder, camera and film, “rolls” from dusk to dawn, fanning across the city to hit some impossible locations. Using guerrilla tactics and fueled by adrenaline, crews work fast to staple, tape and hoist posters on poles, targeting heavily trafficked streets for high visibility. Of course, all this sniping is illegal; crews are cautious but occasionally get busted.

When he isn’t on the road, Polo, with partners Frank V. and Javier, runs one such snipe crew, known as the Cali Kings. Polo, 27, calls his business a “street-marketing promotion company.” Composed of veteran/retired taggers (there are four guys Polo likes to use, although about 50 snipers operate in Greater L.A.), they work all of California, including the Bay Area, Modesto, Bakersfield and San Diego. (Some well-known groups, such as Cypress Hill, hire their own sniping crews.) The Cali Kings aren’t limited to posters. For instance, they’ll “burn Irvine” with stickers around a concert site so that a record company can promote its latest hit. Always on the lookout for new ways to post, snipers have been testing “Totem Poling,” the vertical positioning of multiple posters on a pole. Record companies savvy to the crews’ latest innovation have designed posters to be read in vertical sequence.

Polo prefers a six-month retainer from his music biz clients; payment is received when he produces photographs that document a completed snipe. Some are long lasting: a laminated poster snipe at 3rd Street and Highland Avenue looked down on passersby for more than three years. Most of the time, however, signs come down quickly, and it’s the Department of Public Works that is stuck with the task. According to a spokesperson, the DPW’s street service bureau removes 1,500 to 5,000 illegal signs a week. Fines are $194.20 for the first sign removed on any one day, $6.25 for every sign thereafter, more if snipers used paste or glue. Fines, says Polo, are considered part of the price of doing business and are billed to the client.

For Polo and his crew, sniping the four-level “Stack” interchange near downtown, with its heavy traffic and police presence, is their biggest challenge. “Once we were chased by police at the Stack,” he recalls. “We dropped our ladder, hopped the fence and hid in the laundry of some apartment for two hours while the cops tried to sniff us out.” A handy cell phone brought friends to pick them up and get them back to their van.