The City’s order to remove a Coca-Cola sign in the Bernal Heights neighborhood is just a taste of the ongoing fight against outdoor advertising in San Francisco.

But this fight is a little different than the typical billboard battle in San Francisco, a city famous for opposing corporate chain stores and commercialized communication.  In this case, locals are actually hoping to preserve an outdoor ad that promotes a product made by one of America’s largest corporations.

Bernal Heights residents are contesting The City’s decision to remove a vibrant 15-by-7-foot Coca-Cola sign on the side of a home at 601 Tompkins Ave.

While The City says the sign violates its billboard regulations, residents say the sign is not a billboard, but a piece of history.

“It’s vintage commercial art,” said Todd Lappin, a Bernal Heights resident who has written about the attempt to eliminate the sign on his blog, Bernalwood.

The sign is red and features a sun-like image in the top-left corner with the silhouette of a woman drinking from a Coca-Cola glass bottle.

Lappin said he has learned the sign was part of a store dating back to the 1940s. He said it’s believed children would place their lunch orders in the morning there and then pick them up later in the day. At some point, he said, the sign was covered up with asbestos siding. In 1991, the siding was removed and the property owner was going to paint over the sign, but neighbors intervened. The sign has been touched up and cared for ever since, he said.

Lappin is working on collecting evidence to prove the sign is old enough to be grandfathered in, or to convince The City it is not a billboard.

“This is a historical part of our neighborhood. It’s a way for people to connect to the past,” said Lappin.
The dispute erupted last month when someone e-mailed a city planner to complain about the sign, which is across the street from Paul Revere Elementary School. The complainer’s identity has been redacted from city records. City planners later inspected the sign and ruled it was illegal.

The property owner at 601 Tompkins has until Thursday to remove or contest the ruling. The owner could not be reached for comment.

In 2006, the Planning Department launched a program to enforce advertising-sign regulations, following voters’ approval of Proposition G in 2002 that banned new billboards in The City.

City Planner Dan Sider agrees the Coca-Cola sign looks “cool” but the code doesn’t allow for any exemptions. “At the end of the day, the sign very much appears to be illegal no matter how you cut it.”

The City is currently in a legal battle with two companies that are accused of putting up illegal billboards and have racked up combined daily penalties of $7 million.

After three years of billboard enforcement, The City has documented the existence of 1,672 signs and taken action against illegal ones. Nearly 600 were removed for being illegal. Another 192 billboards have been deemed illegal by the department but are being fought, including the Coca-Cola sign in the Bernal neighborhood.

jsabatini@sfexaminer.com

Signs of the times

San Francisco has been cracking down on billboards since 2006. Here is the result of the work:

1,672 Billboards in The City’s inventory examined

588 Billboards deemed illegal and removed

98 Illegal signs installed during the last reporting period

Source: Planning Department