Originally published at: The Hollywood sign is 99 years old today | Boing Boing
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So, most of the sign is 99 years old.
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I finally hiked up there last year. It’s a great view of L.A. spread out before you, so the sheen the sign has for the aspiring movie star is kind of appropriate. The vestiges of the original development the sign advertised are up there too, incorporated into another neighbourhood.
Local residents do their best to get Google Maps to move the sign’s location so that their streets don’t get overwhelmed with parked cars.
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I’ve hiked up to the sign and it is pretty neat up there. You can’t legally get close enough to touch the sign any more, so please respect the trails and fences if you are up there.
It’s so America that a treasured landmark is a sleazy real estate developer advertisement, though.
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99? meh, this will seem more meaningful a year from now.
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Isn’t there some legal requirement in place that you can’t show the sign in any movie or TV without paying a licensing fee ? What a great scam. Put up some massive letters you can see from space, then expect to get paid.
You know what they say: as above, so below.
…on Earth, as it is in Hollywood.
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What IP laws would they enforce that under?
Any copyright should have expired, and I don’t know if that’s been fully tested in court.
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Trademark law:
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Send them a bill for being forced to digitally remove their trademark from film shots of the public space of Los Angeles.
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I’d bet none of it is 99 years old. In the 70s the sign was mostly ruined, and they completely refurbished it.
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Theseuswood!
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https://blogs.chapman.edu/huell-howser-archives/2007/08/12/the-hollywood-sign-huell-howser/
Huell Howser’s Calfornia Gold : The Hollywood Sign, 2007, 56 mins.
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Huell Howser was California Gold.
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You don’t reach 99 in Hollywood without having some work done.
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Well golll-y! I’ll never forget his voice and incomparable enthusiasm for local trivia. 
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Until that secret Nazi villain in The Rocketeer had his comeuppance.
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I seem to vaguely recall an early um hopeful starlet leaped to her death from the sign?
Been quite awhile since I read Hollywood Babylon.
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