In order to campaign for bilingual Welsh/English signs in downtown Beverly Hills, the two goals we operated under were to inform and to guide the process. This consisted of posting flyers containing our political purpose and goals, and suggested amendments to various public signs.

The Walrus' Story

I started by writing out a simple protest in English: "Welsh speakers make up a surprising 45% minority in this area. Surely we should be afforded the same courtesies as the English-speakers and be permitted street signs in our own language. Later we hope to campaign for these same goals in restaurants and shopping malls. Thank you for your time and interest."

Then I ran that through InterTran, an online translating service. The flyer I made from that seemed to lack something, so I decided to test the efficacy of InterTran. I ran the Welsh translation InterTran had given me back through the translator. The subsequent English statement was much more outlandish and interesting:
"Welsh speakers do up I go marveling 45 minority in this surface. ' heartburn unfailing we should be afforded the same courtesies like ' group English speakers I go be permitted street becks in ' heartburn confess speech. ' heartburn more recent we hope to campaign because this any goals in restaurants I go shopping to cripple. Thank ' dogs because ' dogs I time I go I interest."

(Deeply puzzled by the frequent use of 'heartburn,' I played with the website for a while and found an interesting variety of adjectives which re-translate as 'heartburn.' I don't even have such a sketchy explanation to help illuminate the significance of 'becks'.)

Using the Welsh and the second translation, and with advice and opinions from Mr. Cheerio, I added a map of Wales and a background of the Welsh flag, and had created our flyer prototype.

We had the idea of also translating specific street signs into Welsh as well, and armed with flyers, signs, tape, and camera, we were ready to go.




Mr. Cheerio had forgotten his trademark hat, so requested that I only take pictures of the parts of him that were properly dressed.



We put signs and flyers in places we hoped people would look at them.


Finally, with most of our signs used, we went into a Starbucks and cajoled the guy taking our orders to let us take a photo of him holding a Welsh translation of "Coffee Shop"


We left our remaining flyers on a table.

Waldo's Story

While the Walrus had rather handily covered the public-relations aspect of our campaign, I wanted to ensure the campaign was well-received by the powers that be in Beverly Hills. The first step would be to ensure our request was heard by an elected official in a position to do something about our request.



The Office of the Zoning Commission seemed rather well-suited to hear our recommendation for city signs becoming bilingual in nature.








A copy of our request was also sent to the Town Council and to the Human Relations Commission. We chose the HRC because of their stated duty pursuant to Sec. 2-2.1402 of the Municipal Code, that the Commission shall "...advise, recommend, assist and encourage activities and programs to be undertaken to promote positive human relations in all aspects of community life in Beverly Hills. The Commission shall actively promote a just and equitable multi-cultural society; and will endeavor to reduce conflict and tension, as well as discrimination, prejudice and stereotyping based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, or any other arbitrary factor."

While no response has been sent from a city official to our account with the city's website, we did catch an amendment made to an official city agenda since beginning our campaign. The Recreation and Parks Commission amended it's agenda since we began our campaign, adding a final action-item within the purview of Commissioner Marc O'Krent, who serves on the Zoning Commission and likely received our "request". See Item 6-m.


It should be noted that our chosen locations for posters were all within a block or two of Beverly Hills High, which is why we suspect our efforts have been seen as some joke by high school students.

Finally, I did some research into the legality of our campaign procedure, to ensure it is in compliance with local ordinances and codes. With a little research, the applicable city ordinance was as follows:

• 10-4-302: UNLAWFUL SIGNS:




• A. Posting On Public Places: It shall be unlawful for any person to post, suspend, print, stick, stamp, tack, or otherwise affix, or cause the same to be done, any notice, placard, bill, card, poster, sticker, banner, sign, advertising, or other device calculated to attract the attention of the public to, over, or upon any street right of way, public sidewalk, curb, curbstone, lamp post, hydrant, tree, railroad right of way, electric light pole, telephone pole, telegraph pole, or upon any future of the fire alarm, police, or telephone system of the city, or upon any public building or utility, unless permission so to do is first secured from the council.

I had a good deal of fun with this provision -- including pondering what it means to post a sign "upon any future of the fire alarm, police, or telephone system." I suspect the Chrononautic Exxon will need to investigate this tangent on their own. However, the language in general was so over-broad that I felt my first amendment right to freedom of political speech was infringed by the language.

To save you all the frivolities of legal research, the conclusion was that a city's interest in maintaining a litter-free and aesthetic public space justified a local prohibition on leaving posted signs or scattering flyers, so long as distributing flyers or carrying signs was still allowed (MEMBERS OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF LOS ANGELES v. TAXPAYERS FOR VINCENT). As this was the stated purpose of the ordinance, I supposed the city was within its rights to so decree.

On that basis, I had to scrutinize the decree itself. Lo and Behold, they had neglected to identify that posting signs upon other signs was a violation. Lamp posts and light poles, trees and fixtures, sidewalks and curbstones, none of the prohibitions restricted use of street-signs themselves.

We must post our flyers upon the offending monolingual signs themselves! And so we did.