• Los Angeles Times, Wednesday, May 2, 2007 11:30 AM

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. It is the home of "human directionals"--an industry term for people who twirl signs outside restaurants, barbershops and new subdivisions.

Local spinners have cooked up hundreds of moves and--thanks to growing demand--the business has turned cutthroat. There's a frenzy of talent poaching. Some of the more prominent spinners compete for bragging rights by posting videos on YouTube and Google Video, complete with trash talking. Rapper Snoop Dogg flew Randy Jenks, a 20-year-old kingpin in the industry, to Atlanta to spin a sign advertising his new album at the American Music Awards.

The outdoor advertising industry does not recognize sign spinning as a bona fide way of reaching consumers, regarding it as a form of guerrilla marketing that commercializes public space.

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