The thing about human beings, and Filipino billboard owners in particular, is that we never seem to be able to do anything in moderation. Things have to be done in superlatives, or to put it more succinctly, extremes.
I'm actually a fan of billboards, to an extent. I like seeing really cool movie posters up on the sides of buildings, larger than life. Maybe they're dangerous and should be taken down, and that's fine, but I won't pretend that they aren't easy on the eyes, as are the ads of a scantily-clad Bianca King.
But the makers of billboards aren't really concerned with giving commuters and motorists particularly pleasant images, only with occupying as large a field of vision as they possibly can. Check out the obscenely large billboard on Guadalupe.
I was actually a fan of the first casualty of the billboard collapses; the Amanda Griffin billboard which crashed onto the Boni MRT station, which fell all by itself, without the benefit of a typhoon.
That alone should have started the inquiries and the MMDA ball rolling, but as usual, they needed the traditional kick in the pants, which 'Milenyo' certainly provided.
Billboards don't have to the be the bane of EDSA that they have been branded as, but because some people just can't have enough money, an entire industry is quite literally being dismantled. I'm not exactly mourning their loss, but I really can't help but shake my head at the thought that things simply didn't have to happen this way.
Some billboards can actually be a pleasant distraction when you're crawling through EDSA traffic at around six thirty or seven in the evening. I'd be the last person to complain about a fifteen foot long Francine Prieto staring lustfully at me and every other motorist grumbling through traffic, but I'm not crazy about having her crush me underneath tons of canvas and steel.
I confess that without billboards, EDSA will seem a tad drearier, but the owners of these metal monstrosities only have themselves to blame, really.
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