KEY POINTS:
For years now, each time the billboard at the corner of Ponsonby Rd and Norfolk St became obscured by the regrowth of the adjacent street tree, along came a mystery nocturnal barber, chain-saw abuzzing, to inflict another short back and sides.
Just who the culprit is, no one knows. For all anyone knows, it could have been the painted apple moth or the Exclusive Brethren. The sign owners insist it wasn't them.
Now the tide is turning.
All going well at tonight's meeting of Auckland City's planning and regulatory committee, the next thing to get the chop at that particular corner could well be the billboard - it and the 14 others that have long blighted the popular Ponsonby Rd heritage strip.
And I'll be delighted if that were to happen. It's hard to imagine a more effective and instant way of improving the visual environment of central Auckland than this proposed bylaw banning billboards from much of the CBD and surrounding commercial areas.
Back at the turn of the century when the scourge of sandwich boards was finally removed from Queen St, the commercial world was screaming the end of the world was nigh.
They fought for their right to block the pavements with their signs.
Billboards are just sandwich boards writ large, and deserve a similar fate.
I guess everyone has their price, but how the owners of the Downtown Shopping Centre, for example, allow their prime site building to be wrapped inside a Rugby World Cup billboard is mystifying.
Then there's Television New Zealand, which not only obscures parts of its impressive landmark building with tatty house advertisements, but also drapes huge likenesses of its passing parade of newsreaders on an adjacent apartment building.
The mark of a civilised city is the way it protects its visual landscape from such crassness. Every councillor who votes for this reform deserves our thanks.
Could I also suggest councillors lead by example and remove, as soon as possible, the billboards obstructing the busy footpath under the Victoria Park flyover.
