SACRAMENTO, California: TikToker Logan Ivey creates playful videos that often feature the quirks of living in Sacramento, but one of his lighthearted videos centered on the city received serious attention.
On Aug 22, Ivey posted a video documenting the derelict state of several broken or missing street lamps in the city of Sacramento. In his video, which has been viewed 1.1 million times, Ivey first notes that an orange cone has covered the remains of a broken street lamp on 14th and O streets for the 193 days since it fell on Super Bowl Sunday.
“Maybe the city just forgot to replace the lamp with an actual lamp,” he says. “It happens. Cities aren’t perfect.”
But Ivey continued to notice bolted cones in the place of fallen street lamps around the city. After a few orange sightings, Ivey says that he is all in on what he has dubbed #conegate.
He identified four other sites across the grid in need of replacing. Through personal documentation and Google Earth archives, Ivey is able to deduce just how long some of these orange cones have stood in the place of street lamps (as many as 591 days in the case of the one at 19th and I Street).
“So Sacramento, why is a cone your solution to lamps falling down?” Ivey playfully asks in his TikTok.
At the end of the video, Ivey shows off his solution to a half-broken lamp which has not yet been coned: a beaten-up orange plastic bollard placed haphazardly atop the base of the lamp.
“Don’t worry, I got you covered,” he says.
Two days later, the cone at 14th and O was replaced with a brand new street lamp. He also found that a lamp had been erected at 18th and J streets, another problematic spot that he identified in his video, and the half-broken lamp he pointed out was removed and replaced with a bolted down cone.
In a follow up video posted Aug 25, Ivey concludes that the three fixes made by the city within two days of his video was enough evidence that it was acting in direct response to his viral video.
He was right.
Why so many cones?
City spokesperson Gabby Miller confirmed in an email to the Sacramento Bee that city staff were notified of the video and were able to dispatch crews to some of the locations identified. Each of the lamps had been previously flagged for repair by the city but were delayed by logistical factors, not least of which was the damage from the January 2024 storm that rocked the region, Miller said.
“These include extensive storm damage, difficulties in acquiring the necessary parts and equipment, and staffing shortages,” Miller wrote. “Given these circumstances, the City has prioritised emergency repairs and is addressing issues as quickly as possible.”
According to emails obtained by a public records request, emergency repairs, including situations where a street light is knocked down due to a vehicle collision or storm, are prioritised to remove the obstacle and secure any loose electrical wires or protruding remains of the pole. Street light repairs often also require underground work, which is more labour intensive and time consuming.
According to records obtained by the Sacramento Bee, it cost US$5,086.92 in materials and labour to replace the street lamp.
In addition to obtaining replacement parts, staff availability is one of the most limiting factors in fixing broken street lamps. The city has 10 staff members maintaining 40,000 street lights and 850 traffic signals and has started to collaborate with contractors to catch up on the remaining repairs, which sits at about 400, Miller said.
The city encourages residents to report damaged street lamps and traffic signals to 311 so that crews can assess and prioritize appropriate repairs.
Ivey had mixed feelings upon being informed that his speculation was correct and that the city did act in response to his video.
“At first I was excited, but then I realised that it is actually kind of just sad. People had commented they had reported these broken lamps and cones to 311 (the actual proper way to get the city to take action) and they were not fixed,” he said. “It taking a viral video to get the city to fix the lamps is a little silly. If it takes two years and a viral video to get a simple lamp fixed, what does it take to solve more major issues?”
TikTok as civil participation
Ivey grew up in Colfax, attended UC Davis and then moved to Sacramento, where he has lived for nearly a decade. It only takes a few minutes of scrolling through Ivey’s TikTok account (heckinsick) to see his affinity for the city, which is often featured on his account as either a backdrop for a curiosity-driven adventure or the subject of investigation, as in the #conegate posts.
In one of his most popular videos, Ivey documents the process of turning a US$16 mirror from Facebook marketplace into a selfie station located in Old Sacramento. In another, he holds a flag design contest to replace the one he says the City of Sacramento is too embarrassed to fly at city hall, and makes stickers out of the top four submissions.
Ivey has also dug into some local mysteries, from piecing together the history of the recently disappeared coffee cup statue on top of the Alhambra Boulevard Starbucks to investigating the law behind a Sacramento burger restaurant’s signs that urge customers to park in nearby lots despite neighbouring businesses’ signage prohibiting it.
Many of his videos take a closer look at what some residents may take for granted, but Ivey doesn’t think of himself as a journalist and said that it is not typical for him to push for civic accountability through his platform. He said that he pursued the video about cones because he found it funny that the broken lamps had been ignored for so long, but that he doesn’t wish to be the one making the city answer for itself.
“I want the content I make to be positive — whether it be a fun project I created, or about something cool or underrated Sacramento has to offer,” Ivey said. “But I should not be the one having to put pressure on the city to fix things. That should be left to 311, and the Sac Bee and other local news organisations (or ideally the city just doing it without pressure). My efforts should be focused on making scarecrows and scavenger hunts and silly Sacramento t-shirts.”
Still, Ivey concluded his follow up video on the cones with a question: “what else does the City of Sacramento need shaming about?”
The content creator said that beyond classic issues like homelessness and abandoned properties, there needs to be more attention given to “what the heck is going on” with the bike trails in Sacramento, citing ongoing issues with major closures and an uncertain schedule of when they will reopen.
“The bike trails in Sacramento are my favourite part of the city, and they will be what I miss most if I ever leave,” he said. “I can’t seem to bike anywhere without getting blocked and having to turn around. … I was once blocked on a bike trail while biking when it was 100 degrees out. If I turned around I would’ve had to bike another 10 miles to get home, if I kept going I would’ve had to bike on the freeway, so I called for a ride instead. I get that trails need maintenance, etc but if this was a freeway or any sort of road for cars, they would only close half of it at a time so you could still get through.”
He was working on a video about it, but has had trouble figuring out what is actually going on.
“Maybe a job for the Sac Bee!” he said.
Ivey’s quirky pursuits on his TikTok channel have led him to a full time job making videos for a startup, which he juggles with being a first-time father to a newborn. He also sells Sacramento- and Davis-themed merchandise, including T-shirts that feature local signifiers like the capitol building, the Tower Theatre and, of course, an Anh Phoong billboard. – The Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service
