Stop Sign Flowers
Many of you know that I have been very vocal about my support of the stop sign flowers, also known as yarn bombs, in our community. This guerilla art project started popping up all over Clairemont a few months ago, and at one point, they dressed up 100 stop signs. As the media became aware of what was going on, multiple news stations covered this fun, unique development in our community.
As their notoriety has grown, these yarn bombs have attracted the attention of various staff members in the City of San Diego, including our city attorneys. They have determined that the yarn bombs are illegal and must be removed from city property effective immediately. Unfortunately, this is a result of a state law which mandates that nothing can be placed on official traffic signs. This includes garage sale signs, stickers, and, apparently, yarn.
I have received hundreds of emails from San Diego residents and public art enthusiasts from as far as Texas, New York, and the United Kingdom, urging me to help find new locations for these flowers. After meeting with the Mayor’s office, the Department of Transportation and Stormwater, and our City Attorney to see what could be done to save the flowers, it was determined that moving them onto private property is the only option.
My office has been in touch with “the Knitting Guy”, as he is called, to find suitable locations for the flowers. In the meantime, since there was no wiggle room with the state law forbidding them, they must be taken down.
City staff is not proactively removing the flowers, but they are directed to take them down if they come across them during their normal course of business, just as they would take down garage sale signs. I am aware that many of the flowers are being removed, but I do not know how many of those are being removed by the yarn bombers so they can be moved and replanted, and how many of those are being removed by City staff. I am hopeful that we will see these flowers bloom in other locations around Clairemont soon.
Instead of wasting time on yarn on STOP signs, Zapf would do her constituents a service to focus on some REAL community issues. Like the trash strewn, weed choked swamp eyesore of a median at the corner of Blaboa and Mt Abernathy. I have personally brought this blight in our community to her office's attention, all to no avail. I guess dealing with trivia is more within her scope of reference.
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