Living in the Mission District in San Francisco is a kaleidoscopic experience, full of elaborately painted murals, colorful and fragrant taquerias, and trendy thrift shops. Yet all Steve Lambert notices when he walks out of his door is a mess of outdoor advertising – looming billboards, repetitious flyers and posters covering telephone polls, bus shelters, bus sides, and bus interiors. Overwhelmed by images of glamorous people smoking cigarettes and the newest, shiniest cars, Lambert searches desperately for an escape, but where is he to go when it’s impossible to change the channel or turn the page on outdoor advertising?

The abuse of public space by advertising sickens Lambert. He argues that outdoor advertising big wigs use public property to infiltrate the masses with messages, products and desires. Space that is intended for public domain is bought and sold at the public’s expense. In an effort to “take back” public space, Lambert founded the Budget Gallery – a makeshift, semi-regular art installation where Lambert and his crew show and sell art on the street. Using artwork donated by local artists, Lambert and his crew set up galleries on empty wire-link fences or paint over walls with paste-up posters. They also set-up proper art openings with refreshments and music right on the street. Anything that failed to sell that day would be left up, as a testament to public art, until someone would come along to defile or steal it.

In his work with the Budget Gallery, Lambert came to know many artists who feel that public space is meant as a pulpit for art and expression for the people who experience that space on a daily basis. In 2004, Lambert established the Anti-Advertising Agency (AAA), a publicly funded organization dedicated to the public awareness of outdoor advertising over-saturation. AAA is what Lambert calls one of his “practical utopia projects”. In conceiving AAA, Lambert asks himself, “What if outdoor advertising was done differently? What kind of world would we be in?”

For AAA’s first campaign “Ad Lib,” San Francisco artists and residents are given an image of a blank billboard and asked to depict whatever message they want on the billboard; whatever message they want to get out to the world. Lambert’s favorite interpretation of the project features cut outs of young starlettes and tabloid princesses like Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Jessica Simpson and Lindsay Lohan. The words “Who needs school?” are carved on the white paper with a bright pink crayon.

“These people have no disincentive to spam the world,” says Lambert, complaining about the current state of outdoor advertising. “Now people are starting to understand that there are these messages all over the world and you can put yours out there too.”

MAKING A POINT: PEOPLEPROJECTS123

Just weeks ago, AAA launched a new project called PeopleProjects123, conceived by Lambert’s artist friend Amanda Eisher. The two met during Lambert’s Budget Gallery days. The project serves to, “reconnect the people who make the products we know, with the advertising for those products,” says Lambert.

For example, AAA will produce a fake Coke can label that looks just like a Coke can, except they are hand-drawn and colored, with depictions of Salvadoran youths working in the sugar plants that supply the beverage company. The idea is that people will print out these labels and slip them over soda cans at local grocery stores, a tactic called “shopdropping,” or leaving something in a store, rather than taking or buying, Lambert adds.

The project does not serve to either criticize or celebrate the harsh conditions that exist in other countries, says Amanda Eisher. As a working artist acquainted with Lambert through his work with the Budget Gallery, Eisher was approached by Lambert to conceive a project for AAA.

“It’s more about awareness and knowing of the production side of the products we buy. It’s about the human aspect of making a product,” Eisher adds.

The idea for the project came to Eisher during her trips to El Salvador. Since 2002, Eischer has gone to the rural town of Colima with a small group of art students from SF State College of Extended Learning who teaches art to the people there. In this very rural town, a settlement of about 500 families subside on local sugar production, with most making $2 a day, luckier workers can make up to $5. Everyone, including children, work long hours, from dawn until dusk, with the air reeking of pesticides and sewage; the long days cause dry hands and hunched, sore backs. Most streets are unpaved and no one goes out at night, for lack of streetlights.

Eisher, who originally went to Colima as a student, now directs the program. So far, her group has assisted in painting over 10 murals, created a library and participated in road building projects.

Every summer, Eisher and her crew drive up the dusty road to Colima and are greeted by a large crowd of people, the air filled with thrilled wails and tears of excitement. The locals adopt the SF State students as their “tiernitas” – little brothers or little sisters – taking them into their families and homes and showering them with attention. When Eisher’s trip is over, the same crowd that greeted them has multiplied to see them off, many have been crying all-day long.

It was in Colima that Eisher met Yaneth Segovia Martinez, a 21-year-old woman who is featured on a fake two-liter soda can label. After Martinez’s brothers and father left for the United States, she dropped out of school to oversee her family’s farm. She drives an ox cart to work everyday to oversee the planting and harvesting of corn, sorghum (a grain used to make molasses and alcoholic beverages), cane and vegetables. The label featuring Martinez depicts a young woman who likes to read and write poetry, and who hopes to move to San Francisco some day to become a waitress.

“The ad world does a good job of simplifying everything it touches,” says Eisher. “As an artist, I create work that provokes and promotes thought.”

WHERE DOES COKE COME FROM?

In asking someone, “where does Coke come from?” the reply is likely, “from a store.” In actuality, the process of making soda comes from so many places before it ever reached the store. Coke’s iconic metallic red label with white, billowy writing at once reminds most consumers of a dark, sickly sweet, sparkly beverage. With the work of AAA, some careful observers will remember stories and lives of the people who planted, harvested and prepared the sugar before it was ever a gleam in the eye of a Coca-Cola ad executive.

AAA’s tactics are, no doubt, less “in your face” than other organizations that seek change in the world. As opposed to people reacting with intense emotions of disgust or anger, Lambert says most people just nod their head, saying, “Oh, yeah, I get this.”

“We’re trying to get the idea out there that the world is not set in stone,” he continues. “There are things you can do.”