These aren’t magic markers: Real men try to keep up with the valley’s unyielding demand

Scott Dickensheets

Tuesday, June 3, 1997 | 11:32 a.m.

Willie Martinez is standing -- quite literally at the moment -- between the past and future of his profession, which is the making of traffic signs.

As he leans against a table in the city of Las Vegas' sign shop, the past, to his immediate left, looks like this:

B D F L A

O C S P J

E N K R T

... a whole wall of backward alpha-bits, each part of the old dye-cut process by which individual letters are cut out and applied by hand to the aluminum sign. Takes a good half-minute a letter just to cut them, after which you have to line them up and stick them down.

Meanwhile, the future is represented, as it always is these days, by a snazzy new computer, over there to Willie's right. You type in the wording of your sign and the thing just spits it out, cut into a sheet of adhesive film, which is laid in a single piece on the aluminum.

"It's a hell of a time-savings," says Martinez, senior signs and markings technician. "It's like day and night." More than 75 percent of the signs his shop makes are done on the computer.

In the fastest growing city in the galaxy, Willie and the poor boys over in Signs and Markings need all the modernization they can get. Day after day, they're cranking out Stop after Yield after Abraham Street. Or, today, Flood Water -- 45 of 'em. It's just him and Joel Hillhouse and Kirk Mullinax making the signs and three crews installing them. Of course, by "crew," Martinez means "one guy in a truck."

Street and traffic signs -- generally unremarkable, they are, of course, invaluable to the smooth flow (or, in Las Vegas, sometimes-smooth flow) of auto America. No one knows how many there are in the valley, although many people notice where they aren't. The calls come in daily: I swear there was a stop sign on my corner this morning! "Every day we get a call from someone saying, 'My street sign is missing,'" Martinez says.

"Vandalism is one of our biggest problems," Martinez says. Right now, "there is someone going around putting stickers on them." Others painting over them. Or, frequently, stealing them. After all, nothing spruces up the rec-room walls like a big red octagon or a street sign with the family name on it.

Replacing swiped or disfigured traffic signs -- particularly stop and yield -- is a top priority, and most entities keep stacks of replacement signs ready.

Because the computer produces whole signs instead of individual letters, even if just a single letter is vandalized, the whole sign has to be replaced. "Technology is helping us," Martinez says, "but it's also screwing us in a way."

"You want to know which areas are the worst for graffiti?" Joel pipes up as he feeds a sign through the rollers that press the adhesive material to the aluminum. "Rich areas. They're bored!"

"Our signs have a Teflon-coated film," says Harold Lefler, sign shop director at Highway Rentals, which supplies signs to Clark County, the state and other civic entities. "If you catch it within a certain amount of time -- within a month -- you can usually clean it up." Vandalism, however, remains a constant problem.

Most of the company's municipal sign-making involves turning out street signs for developers, and its five-person sign-making team can crank out hundreds a day. Say the county orders 100 stop signs. "That's an hour's work," Lefler says. His crew also makes all varieties of traffic signs, overhead freeway signs, you name it.

To help deter vandalism, Highway Rentals makes custom street signs. If your name happens to be Vegas Valley Drive, you can get a street sign with that inscription for $20 without taking screwdriver in hand. "We make a killing at Christmas," Lefler says, chuckling.

Theft and graffiti aren't the only forms of sign abuse; just being outside all the time takes its toll. Manufacturers of sign-making materials guarantee their products for 10 years, Martinez says, but "the sun here is so bad, six years is a good life span."

According to Mike Edwards, superintendent of traffic operations, Las Vegas spends "in the tens of thousands" a year on replacement signs. Clark County Chief of Traffic Operations Bill Sironen says the county has spent $105,000 replacing traffic signs in the fiscal year that ends this month.

Just as no one knows how many signs there are out there, no one is sure how many need to be replaced. How far behind are you, Willie? "I couldn't put a figure on that," he says. Back when time and manpower allowed, Martinez's crews would divide the city into sections, then methodically canvass each one for problem signs. Forget that these days!

"We're fixing 'em as we see 'em," he says.

Some of what he sees, of course, are misspelled signs.

"Hey, it happens," Lefler says. "When you're typing into a computer, there's sometimes a finger error."

"It's not a big priority," Martinez says, "but if we make a mistake, we like to cover it. We take a lot of pride in our work."

With the valley a patchwork of municipal entities, it's rarely easy to know who has jurisdiction over what sign. Take the intersection of Owens and Pecos: four corners, three governments (Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Clark County).

"On Smoke Ranch Road," Joel says, "depending on which side of the road you're on and which block you're on, the entity changes like four times." Each cooperates with the other, Martinez says, city crews sometimes putting up county stop signs and vice versa.

Most signs follow a strict, standard format, and while Joel says making them speaks to his artsy-crafty side, clearly he and his fellow sign-makers could make more elaborate pieces, get fancier, really wig out. The proof looms over Martinez's desk: Betty Bump, a large Betty Boop figure holding a familiar red diamond "bump" sign. Joel made it.

"We have more capability than the city can use," he says. "It's a very good system we have in here."

Now if they could only get some air-conditioning -- for the computer's sake, of course. The shop is swamp-cooled, not ideal for the temperature-sensitive future of sign-making.

"It's not that bad now," Martinez says, "but it's not August, either."