We live today in a scape of solicitations. Since the mid-nineteenth century, everyday life, particularly in the industrialized West, has been shaped primarily by "private" interests occupying "public" space; the way such interests signal their presence and their designs on potential customers is to attract attention by means of signs. John Berger, discussing the social impact of geography, has described what he calls "the address of the landscape "-- "the background of meaning which a landscape suggests to those who are familiar with it.î For those living in dense urban milieus, the address of a cityscape is complicated by the presence of countless signs directly addressing the viewer, building up a worded environment of mute yet deafening solicitations and signatures. Ephemeral or long-lasting, these signs inescapably alter native interpretation of a locale's "background of meaning" by foregrounding meanings that occupy public space without being part of it. Taken together, such meanings constitute a silent system of promise and referral, pointing back to a hidden space of exchange where private desires may be satisfied individually, apart from the common. This space is not physical but imaginary; it appeals to a desire for exemption from public embeddedness and relationality, constructs an interior where the unattached self may truly be itself, free from obligation and the need to think through its relations. That public space is riddled with signs pointing toward another, more "appealing" space creates a complex and contradictory address for the cityscape -- it is the place where meanings and desires are advertised and against which they are defined, both a positive destination and a negative backdrop.