Penn State football ticket scalpers were really getting out of control at the turn of the century. On our end of town, many scalpers would take advantage of main routes, slowed traffic and any parking lot to wave folks in to sell their tickets.I can remember being really annoyed one Saturday in 2002. Jim was driving me down to work at the ballet school and scalpers were thrilled as they waved us into the parking lot. They thought we were interested in what they had to offer but were an annoyance and getting in the way of anyone who had ballet class that morning.
Jim and I came up with a project that was a little questionable. We got a large piece of cardboard, black and bright orange paint and designed a "Scalpers Ahead" sign to post 1/4 of a mile before where these folks had taken to hanging out on home football Saturdays. This was one of our first Guerrilla Art projects.
Because we knew displaying a phony alert traffic sign was illegal, we were very careful about never taking any photos of the project as we created it. I really regret that now because it was AWESOME! It was to scale, we matched the color of orange traffic signs, the font, black board, curved corners and the placement was so convincing.We quickly put the sign up very early one home game Saturday morning. I took a parting shot in the poor morning light as we got away from it as fast as we could. We drove by it and I got one more shot from the car. It looked SO GOOD!
By the end of the day, someone had taken it down. We hope that it gave the slowed traffic some smiles on their way to the game. Maybe our sign brought some unwanted attention to them on our end of town. We aren't sure of all of the reasons but scalpers aren't nearly as bad now as they were those years.
