This is the new skool: Lyman Hardy, Jason Austin, Craig Oelrich, Lee Bolton, Lindsey Kuhn, and a small handful of others. And this is one reason why you can't find their work on the street where, presumably, it belongs: From the Austin, TX Land Development Code, Section 13-2-864....

"No person shall either directly or indirectly cause or authorize a sign to be installed, used, or maintained on any utility pole, traffic signal pole, traffic signal controller box, tree, public bench, street light, or any other structure located on or over any public property or public right of way located within the city's planning jurisdiction, except as authorized by this article. The primary beneficiary of any sign installed in violation of this section ... shall be guilty of a violation in this Land Development Code. [Violators will be punished] by a fine not to exceed $2,000 in cases arising under code, ordinance, or other city regulations ... or $500 in all other cases."

"It's against the law, and they actually enforce it now," says Hardy. He's right. After passing the resolution four years ago under then-Mayor Bruce Todd, the City of Austin has swept the streets clean of any and all poster art. Venues such as Sound Exchange and Waterloo Records are more than willing to put up a few posters in their windows, but the Drag -- once a source of some seriously collectible eye-candy -- is as barren as Tranquility Base.

The odd thing about the clean-sweep resolution -- and one that still galls most of the poster artists involved -- was that it came mere days after Mayor Todd and others honored those same artists with certificates, lunch, and limos, proclaiming their work to "beautify the city."

"It was Poster Artist Day, and we got all these certificates for doing this thing that was allegedly against the law," recalls Hardy. "At the time, no one really brought up the fact that it didn't make any sense. I guess we were all just stoned. They had this limousine that they brought to drive all the older guys in, and so I guess they were all charged up about being in the limo and forgot to ask what was up. It was kind of weird."

The restrictions on placement of posters has been more or less of a boon to Motorblade's Blau, though, who makes it his livelihood to get posters out and maintains concise records of what can go where, how, and when. "I have all these different bulletin boards all over town, in theaters, coffee shops, bookstores, Magnolia Cafe, Kerbey Lane, Amy's Ice Cream on Sixth and Lamar, and stuff like that. I just keep my eyes open looking for places to go." And has the long arm of the law knocked Blau on his RollerBlade Co.-sponsored butt yet? "Well, no. I've never been fined, because I never put them on sign poles. I think [the enforcement] comes and goes in waves, though. They enforce the postering law really heavily in the Fall -- when kids are coming into UT -- and make sure everybody's kind of scared and that they've handed down a few fines, and that's usually enough to keep people real cautious. I mean, I don't have any proof of that, but it sure seems that way. "Also, along the Drag, there's a lot of store owners who help the police harass posterers who are doing it illegally. And a lot of store owners will just pull the stuff down from the poles, too. They help take care of the policing themselves."

According to Priest, this isn't the first time the City of Austin has passed ordinances prohibiting street art. "I want everyone to know that this is the third time they've done that," he says. "About every six years or so, they would come along and come up with some new ordinance to bother us with. One of them was that you had to register the posts you wanted to use, and you then had to pay them in advance. For the telephone poles!"

Artist and former Sincola skin pounder Terri Lord remembers the good ol' days of postering. "It would be a three-hour walk up and down the drag," says Lord. "It was entertainment, really. I never got stopped, but you know, we always took a good look around before putting stuff up. Eventually we graduated to using the PET Milk.

"I think the city council types that want to turn Austin into the next Dallas or whatever, I think they think it looks ugly, but then, I think Ben White Boulevard is pretty ugly, too. I always thought of it as a continually changing mosaic. Having been on tour to so many different cities, it shows that you have a lively cultural scene when you have a lot of posters in a certain area. Dallas, I think, passed a law against postering, and then they were inundated by people putting them on cars. I'll bet they've passed a law against that too, by now."

Jason Austin, who's recent showing at the Hyde Park Bakery drew accolades and interested (and hungry) viewers from all over town, regrets that the city's intolerance towards street art has forced himself and other poster artists into the galleries, thereby taking the art out of its natural environment.

"Over in Europe," says Austin, "posters are still a big part of advertising. And, I think if they're not used for advertising, then what's the point? That's what it's all about to begin with, you know? It's advertising on the street level where people actually see it, and that's the beauty of the art, that's how the art gets so widespread, instead of being seen just among the select few people who go to galleries. Art on the street is cool. Anyone walking down the street can see it and pay attention to it instead of having to go seek it out at a gallery. Mainly, that's what it's about: advertising on the street, free, for people to see."

As Danny Garrett noted earlier, however, the value of poster art as advertising is not what it used to be. "These days, it's more of a novelty item," states Craig Oelrich. "I think that a lot of people deem it as being almost ... not necessary, from the clubs on down. These days, it's become the sort of situation where it's less of the clubowner and promoters trying to advertise the show, because they know that it's more than likely that the bands themselves are going to provide posters for the shows, or handbills, or whatever. As long as they get the listing in the Chronicle, they're okay."

Clubowners, too, are reluctant to let bands and poster artists run riot in the street. Under the city ordinance, they can get slapped with a hefty fine as well.

Eric "Emo" Hartman's club is as much a pillar of the poster art community as it is of the rock & roll ethic, but these days, Hartman explains the massive collection of posters that cover the venue's ceiling is expanding much slower than before.

"The biggest thing that I've seen," says Hartman, "even bigger than the ordinance, is that the artists themselves are leaving town, you know? They're not making any money here. Kozik lived here and I started working with him back in '91 at the Emo's in Houston. Both him and Lindsey Kuhn have left now. Everybody else kinda floats in and out. But people have a tough time doing [poster art], and they start branching off and doing other things. Lindsey's up in Dallas with his skateboard stuff, Kozik's out in San Francisco doing his record label and whatever else he's getting into. "I don't know if it's the ordinance so much as it is the times, like a lull of sorts. Live music in town hasn't been doing that well all across the board, from the Music Hall all the way down to Jovita's or whatever. It's down all over."

Obviously, the city ordinance is at least in some ways responsible for the decline of Austin poster art, but just as likely is Michael Priest's notion that these "lulls" come in waves. There may be a decade or so between each upsurge in the success and notoriety of the poster artists themselves, but peaks and valleys like that have buggered artists since Day One. The real question is: What next? "Technology has moved on," says Priest, "and as a communications medium, the poster is no longer the best choice or the most effective. But it's now recognized to be high art, which it wasn't seen as back in the beginning. In other scenes, in other countries, in other centuries, it certainly got that way. We always kind of railed against galleries and stuff, because they usually close about the time that people with checkbooks get off work. None of our audience would ever get to see anything in a gallery, so we always ended up hanging in rock & roll halls.

"I think what's going to be the next thing for us -- and I'm hoping the young cats will do this, too -- is to start doing tour shows of the posters. Like a music act, with the artists going around and talking about it.

"You see, the thing that none of us really realized while we were doing this was that we had created an incredible kind of historical document. Everybody that looks at a poster has all these incredible associative experiences tied to it. We certainly do, anyway.

"No matter where it goes, though, it's going to be a very Austin progression. I mean, this town may be the biggest collection of attention-deficit-disorder kids in the world. I've always thought it was the place that had more people that `can't help it' than any other place I've ever been. Those kinds of folks end up doing all the creative stuff; I mean they can't concentrate on anything they don't feel. So, the stuff that they do make is definitely from the heart and it's got a lot of juice in it. And if a bunch of people do this, it creates a feedback loop, and becomes more than the sum of its parts, and that's why Austin's famous, for Chrissakes."