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<DIV><A
href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spinners1may01,0,382892.story?track=ntothtml">http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spinners1may01,0,382892.story?track=ntothtml</A><BR>
<DIV class=body><I>From the Los Angeles Times</I></DIV>
<H4>COLUMN ONE</H4>
<H1>The fine art of making a point</H1>
<DIV class=storysubhead>'Human directionals' -- those guys spinning advertising
arrows -- can cost $60 an hour. Some of their best moves are filed in the patent
office.</DIV>By Alana Semuels<BR>Times Staff Writer<BR><BR>May 1,
2007<BR><BR>JEREMY White was holding a sign advertising $5 pizza deals at Little
Caesars in North Hollywood when two young men stopped their white pickup
truck.<BR><BR>After noticing his strong arms and athletic frame, they made him
an instant offer. "We can pay you $10 an hour. Give us a call," White recalled
the men saying.<BR><BR>A few days later, the 20-year-old met them at a North
Hollywood park where coaches with clipboards barked at dozens of teenagers doing
push-ups, part of a regimen preparing them to spin arrow-shaped signs for
tanning salons and new homes. Four days later, White quit his Little Caesars gig
to join the men's company, Aarrow<STRONG> </STRONG>Advertising of San
Diego.<BR><BR>The payoff was immediate: $10 an hour, almost double his previous
wages. During his second day on the job, a passerby was so impressed with his
spinning that she gave him a $250 Croton watch. Within a month, he got a raise
to $15 an hour. "I don't like to toot my own horn, but I'm one of the best out
there," White said.<BR><BR>White is part of the competitive world of "human
directionals," an industry term for people who twirl signs outside restaurants,
barbershops and new real estate subdivisions.<BR><BR>Street corner advertising
on human billboards has existed for centuries, but Southern California — where
the weather allows sign spinners to work year-round — has endowed the job with
style.<BR><BR>Local spinners have cooked up hundreds of moves. There's the
Helicopter, in which a spinner does a backbend on one hand while spinning a sign
above his head. In the Blender, a spinner twirls the sign behind his back.
Spanking the Horse gets the most attention. The spinner puts the sign between
his legs, slaps his own behind and giddy-ups.<BR><BR>Thanks to growing demand,
the business has turned cutthroat. There's a frenzy of talent poaching. Spinners
battle one another for plum assignments and the promise of wage hikes. Some of
the more prominent compete for bragging rights by posting videos on YouTube and
Google Video, complete with trash talking. One YouTube comment reads, "i don't
know if you stole my tricks or i just do them better." <BR><BR><BR><BR>SPECIAL
spinning moves are guarded fiercely.<BR><BR>Aarrow keeps dozens of moves in a
"trick-tionary," which only a handful of people have seen, said co-founder Mike
Kenny. The company records spinners' movements and sends them in batches to the
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. "We have to take our intellectual property
pretty seriously," he said.<BR><BR>Aarrow requires its 400 employees to attend
monthly boot camps, where their skills are judged and physical fitness tested
over three hours.<BR><BR>"It's competitive," said Randy Jenks, 20, an Aarrow
"spin-structor." Afterward, he ran up a tree and bounded off with a back flip to
pump up his students.<BR><BR>Aarrow charges clients $60 an hour — double the
industry standard — for the services of its most skillful employees.<BR><BR>But
Jenks, a kingpin in the industry, commands up to $70 an hour. Rapper Snoop Dogg
flew him to Atlanta to spin a sign advertising his new album at the American
Music Awards. Two years ago, Jenks won Aarrow's annual nationwide competition
pitting the best spinners against one another. His protege, who happens to be
his brother-in-law, won last year. Jenks was barred from entering because of his
status as a spinning god.<BR><BR>The outdoor advertising industry still does not
recognize sign spinning as a bona fide way of reaching consumers, much less an
art form. It regards spinning as a form of guerrilla marketing that
commercializes public space. Some municipalities are even beginning to make sign
spinners into outlaws. Riverside, Poway and El Cajon are among the cities that
recently banned the practice.<BR><BR>"They can distract people and cause
accidents," said Jim Griffin, director of community development in El Cajon.
Some sidewalk sign holders try to spin when no one is looking, so Griffin hired
weekend staff to catch and ticket them.<BR><BR>It takes a discerning eye to know
when to lay down the law, he said. "If a sign is moving, they're spinning. If
their leg goes to sleep and they're jumping up and down, they're
not."<BR><BR>But one person's crime is another's livelihood. Almost anyone can
qualify for the job with most of the firms. Although some bring along an iPod or
a cooler with drinks, the basic requirement is patience, lots of it. "If you're
able to stand in a closet for six hours, you can do this job," said Jeff
Triesch, a supervisor with MJAD Directionals, a San Diego
company.<BR><BR><BR><BR>IT'S not easy money. Sign holders sometimes swelter in
110-degree weather and must master the physical challenges of throwing and
catching a 6-pound plastic arrow. Some recount being pelted with pennies, eggs
and insults from car windows.<BR><BR>Standing at the corner of West Alameda and
North Pass avenues in Burbank, MJAD spinner Elliott Forte waved a sign
advertising new apartments in Burbank. He cringed as a Vons truck made a tight
right turn, inching perilously close. "Someone could lose control and run right
into me," he said.<BR><BR>Forte, who sports square cubic zirconium earrings and
a yellow MJAD cap and T-shirt, composes hip-hop lyrics in his head while he
stands on the corner. <BR><BR>He says he recorded 136 songs last year under the
stage name Razzaq.<BR><BR>Forte hopes this job down the street from movie
studios and record labels leads to stardom. "You never know who's in the car
driving by," he said, keeping his eye peeled for any erratic drivers.<STRONG>
</STRONG>"Anything could happen."<BR><BR>He boasts that Jay Leno once stopped to
compliment him on his spinning.<BR><BR>"If I ever make it big in the music
industry, just remember where I met you," Forte recalled telling the late-night
host.<BR><BR>Many companies say spinners make a difference in attracting
customers.<BR><BR>Jody Piccinino, community manager for Lofts at NoHo Commons in
North Hollywood, said that the day after she switched from a sign holding
company to Aarrow's spinners, the number of prospective buyers doubled to
18.<BR><BR>"We wanted something that was eye catching," she said. "And we've
seen direct results."<BR><BR><BR><BR>DEMAND from people like Piccinino is
forcing sign companies to recruit aggressively or steal workers from competitors
to bolster their labor supply — often by just driving up and offering the
spinners $5 or $10 more an hour.<BR><BR>"We've had workers that have dropped
their arrows on site to go and work for another company," said Mike McCullough,
vice president of sales and marketing at Eventz Extraordinaire. The Lake Forest
company says it invented sign spinning two decades ago, after noticing that
cardboard arrows were effective in getting people to check out
businesses.<BR><BR>L.A.-based Sign Sale Promotion Inc., which bills itself as
the largest sign promotion company in the United States, says its subcontractors
hire day laborers, high school cheerleader teams, inmates from women's
prisons<STRONG> </STRONG>and homeless people at shelters.<BR><BR>Pastor Jeff
Mahle, of the Yucaipa-based Set Free ministry, said the sign company had hired
countless people in his rehab program, from battered women to homeless
people.<BR><BR>"It has given people an opportunity to support themselves as they
go through rehab," he said. "People see that they're hard
workers."<BR><BR>Others are more cautious about who represents their
clients.<BR><BR>Derek Masar, MJAD's co-founder, said he started hiring his own
spinners after he became frustrated with spinners who showed up late, smoked
cigarettes and didn't take the job seriously.<BR><BR>"They would send us someone
who literally looked like they woke up from behind the building they were
spinning in front of," he said. "We need people that are image conscious, clean
cut."<BR><BR>At the Aarrow Advertising boot camp, young spinners dress in
uniform, with red Aarrow shirts, and do push-ups and running exercises without
complaint. <BR><BR>A pudgy boy in plastic glasses crab-walks backward in one
drill while a thin teen wearing batting gloves grunts as he throws a sign into
the air.<BR><BR>To the crowd that has gathered to watch, the practice seems
thankless and grueling. But Bryan Penate, a 21-year-old rookie, said it beats
his previous job as a fry cook at McDonald's.<BR><BR>"There's less pressure," he
said. </DIV></BODY></HTML>