![]() He turned the footage into a 10-minute video, which has more than 314,000 views on YouTube. At that point, new, reflective Caltrans panels were installed, and they copied his 5 North shield - the sincerest form of flattery.Īnkrom had hoped to snag his original panel when it was hauled down but didn’t get there or to the scrap yard in time. His panel was left in place for eight years. Ankrom did a fantastic job,” a spokeswoman said at the time. They even complimented Ankrom on the realism of his work. Local TV, radio and newspapers covered the story, as did “NBC Nightly News,” “Good Morning America,” People magazine and NPR.Ĭaltrans officials were surprised but admitted the sign was useful. It just blended in,” Ankrom said.Īnkrom planned to contact the press, with photos and video of the preparation and installation as evidence, after a year. The hope was that the agency wouldn’t - not because he wanted to avoid trouble, but because if the sign was done right, it wouldn’t call attention to itself. ![]() He bided his time to see if Caltrans would notice. He didn’t trumpet the freeway art upon its completion. ![]() He’s seen here in November in Pomona with Paul Greenstein, repairing a Grauman’s Chinese Theatre neon dragon. ![]() Richard Ankrom, left, jokes that his claim to fame is the long-ago stunt in which he fixed a Caltrans sign. “That’s my claim to fame,” the easygoing Ankrom, 62, said with a laugh. Caltrans was working on the freeway at the time and everyone apparently assumed he was with one crew or another. Then he descended from the Third Street bridge to the sign gantry, leaned a ladder against the sign from the catwalk and installed the pieces in about half an hour as friends took video and still photos. In case anyone asked to see his paperwork, he’d created a phony work order. 5, 2001, he attached a magnetic contractor logo (“Aesthetic De Construction”) to the door panel of his pickup truck and dressed in work clothes and an orange vest - this after cutting his shoulder-length hair short. He then fabricated an exact replica of an Interstate 5 shield, a North sign and a downward arrow from sheet metal, down to the reflectors. To do the job right, he measured the elements of freeway signs and held up color swatches, all on the sly, then read up on the signs’ standards and specifications. In the middle of the Iran-Contra hearings, he commented on the media frenzy around Oliver North by once again vanda- sorry, environmental artisting the sign to make it say " Ollywood.Sleepy Hollow community in Chino Hills retains quirky spirit at 100 Though it's easy to picture Finegood as some giggling Adam West Batman villain, he actually saw himself as an "environmental artist" and wasn't afraid to use his personal canvas to make political statements. The stunt was repeated in 1987 in honor of an upcoming papal visit. woke up with a big "Holywood" awkwardly staring at its face. Finegood had found his calling: on the next Easter weekend, he used his magic drapes to cover one of the L's in the sign, and L.A. It all started when, armed with a few friends and some tailored plastic sheeting, the 21-year-old art student set about turning the Hollywood sign into a giant pot joke for a class project, which of course earned him an A (for "Acapulco Gold"). No, that "Hollyweed" sign wasn't a collective hallucination - it was the work of Danny Finegood, best known as the man who kept making L.A.'s most famous landmark his bitch. All Oscar statues suddenly started looking like Tommy Chong, too.
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