Think Empty -- blank billboards dot the Bay Area, reflect soft economy
Billboards were once the competing grounds for every dotcom worth its venture capital but now so many of them lie empty according to this San Francisco Chronicle story:
You're entering the city from the Bay Bridge along Interstate 80, and, suddenly, it hits you. White, white -- everywhere you look, more white. But it's not San Francisco's chilly fog that assails you, but rather signs of a cooling economic climate. Literal signs, I mean. Once serving as a battleground of boomtime San Francisco's overheated outdoor-advertising wars, the 80/101 corridor offered a billboard phalanx of color, flash and ever-morphing promises, all begging for your eyeballs' split-second attention.
...Being on the buying side of the equation, Comley is more forthcoming. According to a colleague of hers who regularly buys such billboards, prices for the spectaculars now go for between $20,000 and $40,000 per month, but she adds that during the boom, those prices could have easily doubled. "Easily," Comley says. "Stuff went to the highest bidder."