That was the point of the original artists 'art' - he made the sign old and dirty, so people would assume it had always been there and they had never noticed. It was about what people notice in their surroundings.
If you passed an old broken down house on a lot you had never noticed before, would you assume you had somehow missed it - or that somebody had created a mock broken down house?
It doesn't help that in LA the signs are put up by different state, city, county and municipal authorities that don't seem to ever work together.
"Ankrom eventually leaked the story to the Downtown News, stunning millions of duped commuters, and effectively coming clean to Caltrans. But Caltrans knew Ankrom was right. For eight years, the sign remained."
If you passed an old broken down house on a lot you had never noticed before, would you assume you had somehow missed it - or that somebody had created a mock broken down house?
It doesn't help that in LA the signs are put up by different state, city, county and municipal authorities that don't seem to ever work together.