With Lightning out of playoffs, homeowners association dispute over sign fizzles

Article Courtesy of The St. Petersburg Times

By Biz Carson

Published June 2, 2011

BRANDON — When Steven Paul placed the "Go Bolts" sign in his yard two months ago, he was just another proud fan celebrating the Tampa Bay Lightning making the playoffs.

Then members of his homeowners association saw it. They were not pleased over the rule violation. The result was a fight that went viral online.

"It's kind of surreal," Paul said. "Just really surreal how big it got."

After all that, it appears the stalemate is sputtering to an end now that the Lightning lost to the Boston Bruins on Friday and is out of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Nearly a week after Paul put the sign in his yard, he received an April 5 letter from the Providence Lakes Homeowners Association citing a violation of its policies: "absolutely NO signs are allowed except security signs."

A meeting in which the association planned to discuss the matter has come and gone, and Paul said he hasn't heard from the directors. The homeowners association did not return messages.

Paul, 28, has been a Lightning fan for only two years after he and his wife moved to Florida and bought season tickets. Now he has Lightning stickers and a Lightning license plate on his car. He even grew a "playoff beard" to raise money for charity.

He got the free Go Bolts sign as part of a prize pack. He put it in the ground in late March. And he was mystified over the association's response.

Paul posted a letter about the fracas on Reddit.com, a popular social website. The site's readers started posting suggestions for getting around the rule.

"I was venting about it online and then one guy suggested I make it into a security sign," Paul said. So he scribbled "property of" and "security" onto the sign with a Sharpie and then hung a large Lightning flag, another free giveaway, over his garage door — because flags are not prohibited.

His online updates soon drew the sympathy of fans who started calling the association. The story circulated on other sites and he started getting fan mail from Detroit and Canada.

"A guy who wrote for Yahoo called me in the beginning of May and suddenly my house is on the front page of Yahoo," he said.

FastSign, the company that produced the Bolts signs, sent him a new one that read "Property of Bolts Security."

Now with the loss, Paul has shaved his beard and taken down the flag and the sign. But he did notice a change on the homeowners association website.

It reads "Go Tampa Bay!" with logos of the Rays and Lightning. 

Bay area hockey fan battles homeowners association over Lightning sign