What's Your Sign? - Out to Lunch - It's Baton Rouge

If you re driving down the highway almost anywhere in this country
you re likely going to see a Lamar Billboard. And while you may
know that Lamar is one of Baton Rouge s biggest companies, you
might not realize it s also one of the largest outdoor advertising
companies in the U.S. Lamar has more than 144 thousand billboards
in the US, Canada and Peurto Rico and more than 1.8 billion last
year in revenue, and it all started out as a little family business
in the deep south. The 4th generation of the Lamar family business,
Sean Reilly, is the company s CEO. Stephen St. Cyr, also knows a
thing or two about the sign business. Any time you walk into a
Circle K and see a big lifesize cutout propped up on a cardboard
frame, it s an image that likely rolled off a large format printer
at St. Cyr s print shop Vivid Ink Graphics. The company has been
growing exponentially in the past three years and recently move
into the old Circuit City building on airline highway because it
needed more space. Stephanie s special guest on this episode of Out
to Lunch is Billy Tamm, one of the last neon sign repairmen in the
area. Billy has produced neon for everything from small beer signs
to the billboard of Shamu at Sea World in Orlando to the neon Coca
Cola Bottle at the new plant here in Baton Rouge, which, by the
way, is one of just two neon coke bottles in the whole world.
Photos at Mansur s On The Boulevard by Ken Stewart.

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