Short version: The city is dropping some cash to put up signs all over the place that point to various places of interest like famous restaurants, neighborhoods or attractions. Some are whining about this though when they found out that the signs will only be leading the way to attractions that have paid the city for the sign placement.

There are lots of problems people can, and should, be complaining about, but this isn’t one of them. The whiney business owners need to just shut up and pay for the advertising or don’t. You don’t expect to get free billboards from the city, and you shouldn’t expect to just get on the signs because you think your restaurant is special.

Fritz Clifford Jr. is president of the board at the Campbell House Museum, a preserved mansion from the Gilded Age and another historic downtown landmark. The museum makes less than $200,000 annually, but it would have had to pay more than $27,000 to get listed on the signs.

“The program really seemed geared towards the large organizations,” Clifford said. “You’d really need to have revenue of a million dollars or more to justify this.”

Ok kids. Time for basic economics! The total estimated cost of the signs is said to be $1.7 million dollars. St. Louis doesn’t really have that money to burn since it’s already cutting a police force budget that desperately needs to be raised and paying for city fire fighters to retire just after puberty. So where is the money from the signs going to come from? The same place any advertisement money comes from: the business that wants the advertisement! What?! Why won’t the city give you something for free?! That’s so unfair! We should have free signs so everyone can know where stuff is…oh wait, my car just got stolen. Nevermind. Screw the Campbell House Museum.

In fact, you should know that the commission in charge of the signs, the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission, tried to get the tax payers to foot the bill, but were wisely shot down in there attempt. Finally something we can agree with the city on! …but not quite, because we say they don’t do enough of stuff like this. Go balls out St. Louis City! I see some room on the back of those police uniforms for some NASCAR-like advertiser patches. What about that free zoo everyone loves so much? It would start paying for itself if you let Schuncks start to sponsor the elephant cages. “Oh honey, that giant elephant penis reminds me, we should pick up some tube steak for dinner this week.”

Expect to start seeing the signs popping up around town by June of this year.

via STLToday

Everyone knows those Dirt Cheap ads with that dumb Chicken jumping around. What you didn’t know is that Dirt Cheap has spent upwards of $9.2 Million dollars in advertising between 1993 – 2009!

That little detail was a nugget of WTF information embedded in the court documents about the trademark lawsuit between Dirt Cheap and competitor Cheap Cheap.

Dirt Cheap, a chain of 12 St. Louis-area discount liquor and cigarette stores, filed a suit this week in federal court in St. Louis against the owners of stores called “Cheap Cheap,” alleging trademark infringement.

“Dirt Cheap’s success attracts opportunists seeking to pirate its famous trademarks for their start-up retail establishments,” according to the suit. “Defendants are unabashedly infringing and diluting Dirt Cheap’s famous trademarks.”

$9.2 Million! Jesus. For that amount of money, you could buy Adam Wainwright’s current contract with the Cardinals 6 times or get us to blow you 184 Million times.

How much do chicken suits cost?

via St. Louis Business Journal

Editor’s Note: As noted and verified, the actual number is “nine point two” million, not “ninety-two” million. Big difference! The post has been updated above (in red) with our apologies. We’re not sure if we copied the original article wrong, or they had it wrong initially as well. Point being, our numbers are off for the things you could buy with that money. You could not purchase Wainwright’s contract 6 times over. The part about us blowing you 184 Million times is still correct however as our prices have dropped since the original time of this writing.

We’ve had our little Advertising link up on the top of the site since day one, but really it had nothing there. We were playing it cool, as if we were leaning on the hood of our website with an unbuttoned jeans jacket and one leg up on the car.

Now we’re actually making a go at this.

A trip to the advertising page now gives you sample ad sizes and prices for a month of advertising on a site that’s just too cool for  your competitors. We’re talking as low as $20 a month. For our sexy readers we think about when we’re lonely because we love them so much it hurts our special parts, don’t worry: There will be no more space on this site taken up by ads than there is now. Which is good for you, the readers, and for you, the advertisers, since your ad won’t get lost in a whirlwind of blinking crap.

Interested? Check out the full details and then contact us through all the usual channels, email: editor@punchingkitty.com or phone (leave a message on the tip line): 314-766-TIPS

We seriously want to have some awesome advertisers on this site that can ad to the Punching Kitty vibe, and allow us to not only just keep doing the site, but also add to it in a meaningful way with some plans we’ve been cooking up in the lab!

- The Editor

“Johnny Londoff, Chevrolet!”

Johnny Londoff, Sr., the long-time car dealer that had one of the catchiest jingles in St. Louis history has died at the age of 86.

Londoff founded the Chevrolet car dealership in Florissant on Dunn Road.   Londoff started the dealership in 1960.   Before that, he owned a dealership in North St. Louis which he had started in 1946.

Londoff was well known for his catchy advertising jingle and his talent for promotion on billboards, radio, TV, and newspapers.

Londoff is survived by his wife of 57 years, Sylvia Londoff, his children Laura, Linda, John Londoff, Jr., and Jacqueline Hope Londoff.

Fear not jingle lovers, the advertising lives on as the dealership is currently in the care of Loondoff’s son…Johnny Londoff, Jr.

Also, and maybe you weren’t aware, but he owned his own building and lot…and now a plot.

via KSDK

The city of St. Louis is launching an advertising campaign to help with the chronic issue of car break-ins within the city limits.

The crime has blossomed in recent years, with the advent of GPS devices and MP3 players. The thrust of the new initiative is to alert motorists to not leave anything in sight inside their cars. The campaign will be managed through window posters and billboards paid for by the police department, a total of about $7,500.

The campaign announces “free beer,” or “free food,” or “free smokes,” indicating that’s what motorists offer when they leave valuables in sight.

The St. Louis tourism board must be thrilled.

Other aborted slogans for the campaign included “I hear the Royals are getting better, go park in Kansas City” and “Please police yourselves, because we’ve run out of options.”

Things like this make our city look horrible and more importantly waste funds that could be helping in other areas.  Clearly our fair city has a crime issue and we at Punching Kitty see no better option that creating our own Robocop!  He could patrol the streets 24/7 eating baby food and cracking down on car thefts and random ass shootings.  This is the perfect plan.  We realize the money on the table here is only $7,500 so the initial Robocop version would be more like a gun duct taped to the top of an radio controlled car toy than the movies Robocop, but look thats just version 1.0 dude.  Give the city a little more jack and soon enough we will have a robot with a human face walking around the city that can kill everyone but Mayor Slay and hopefully us for thinking of the idea.

via KSDK

I’m not here to be that guy that tells everyone that racism doesn’t exist any more.  It totally does and seen plenty of it with my own eyes.  This however, isn’t it:

When Sonja McClendon searched for senior housing for her 87-year-old black father in St. Louis County, she spotted advertisements for housing centers that didn’t feature any black people.

“That’s offensive,” she said. “It says that’s who lives here and maybe that’s the way we want to keep it.” She kept looking until she found ads, and a skilled-care housing option, that included black people.

Maybe these people are racists, maybe they really do hate black people and they went through the trouble to actually pick out white old people for their ads, but if thats the case, bring it forward!

In case your were wondering, the actual racist lady looked through ads until she found one with a black lady in it and put her father in there.  I hope she remembered to check if there were any old people with stupid, fame-whoring daughters in the ads, because if not, you have another chance for your name in paper one more time!

via Columbia Missourian