By George Schulz

SHOW FLYERS ARE as ubiquitous in San Francisco as the artists and musicians who distribute them. It's no wonder that some people have managed to turn flyering into a full-time job. But the flyers don't appeal to everyone and are considered by many (including the city) to be a nuisance rather than a part of the city's charm.

Boom King, a KUSF DJ who also books bands at Kimo's, defends the right to flyer with religious devotion. The only time he leaves his flyers at home is when he's going on a date. King is up against the city's Department of Public Works, which regularly scrapes and paints the poles. He also battles quasi-vigilantes who view the flyers as graffiti and conduct their own cleanup efforts.

As if that weren't enough, Sup. Fiona Ma proposed an ordinance last month that would ban the posting of any flyers on power poles. "[The ordinance] would kill me," King said. "I'd have to work my way around it and put my flyers in Bay Guardian boxes."

A 1999 ordinance already regulates the size of flyers, the length of time they can be posted, and what kind of adhesives can be used to attach them. But Department of Public Works spokesperson Christine Falvey said the current ordinance is too difficult to enforce. "Considering how confusing the existing ordinance is, the most effective thing right now would be an all-out ban," she said.

Falvey said the city currently spends half a million dollars a year cleaning the poles, but she insisted that city workers knew which flyers were in violation of the rules and which were not.

The city's cleaning crews are King's primary obstacles. His second is a notorious flyer distributor, well known in the neighborhood, who tears down competitors' posters and replaces them with his own. Our attempts to reach this distributor were unsuccessful. But we were able to determine that "Nick the Dick," as he is affectionately known by more than one Haight Street worker who testified to his existence, is no urban myth. Several merchants and flyer distributors in the Lower Haight told us stories about run-ins with Nick, who is rumored to be ruthless in his efforts to tear down all flyers but the ones he's paid to post.

"It used to be that there was a friendship code [between flyer distributors]," King said. But turf wars are cutthroat now, and keeping a flyer up long enough to attract anyone's attention is the ultimate test for those too broke to afford extravagant publicity.

"If I can't put it up with tape, me and my friends will just wheat paste," one Haight Street worker said. "It's a journal of what's going on in the music world," said another guy who was flyering for his band near Haight and Fillmore. "We're just a band trying to get the word out."