Bent it on Becks

On the high traffic area of Hollywood Blvd. near Highland Ave. (with tourist draws like the Kodak Theater and next to the El Capitan Theater and especially Grauman's Chinese), not only are there billboards on top of buildings but also on the area above the storefronts. Coming out of the underground Metro station one's field of view is dominated by whatever billboard is above the stores directly across the street.

Last month, that billboard featured L.A.'s newest sports superstar, David Beckham, hawking Motorola cell phones.
Not only was he on that one, but also on the somewhat smaller billboard closer to the corner:
You can see the same Metro marker in both shots, so you get a sense of how close the two were. Total Beckham overload.

So whether or not the residents of L.A. were genuinely enamored with the famed footballer (who was barely playing), he was considered golden by advertisers wanting to appeal to visitors to Tinseltown.


Then this month, mere days after Becks suffered a serious injury that likely keeps him from playing at all for the rest of the season, the billboards still feature Motorola phones, but with a babes-with-knives theme:

I'm sure they were due to be changed anyway. Coincidental timing, no doubt.

It's not like he was playing enough to get Angelinos pumped up by his prowess on the pitch (even though the press tried to posit the possibility of his presence making sports fans care about soccer, which didn't pan out) that he suddenly became any less powerful as a pitchman for products by being hobbled by spraining his knee.

Still...