Feature

Navigator

By Sarah Bernard

Q: In this age of media saturation, I sometimes find it hard to get my message across by conventional means.

A: Whether you're proposing to your girlfriend or flogging a Website, there are always ways of making sure your message won't be missed.

For $1,000, the Skytypers at La Guardia (718-507-5220; www.skytypers.com) will dispatch their air-show team -- five planes flying 250 feet apart -- to "type" a 30-character message in a dot-matrix-like pattern that will be visible for fifteen miles in any direction.

To snag the attention of diehard Yankees fans, a $45 check to the New York Yankees Foundation turns the DiamondVision screen in right center field into your own personal chalkboard (718-579-4464). Your message will be displayed in the middle of the fifth inning.

For those with dot-com lucre to spare, Artkraft Strauss (212-265-5155) is the answer. A cool $40,000 will get your sign digitally printed on flex vinyl and displayed for a month on a 60-by-40-foot wall at the corner of 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue, just to the right of Joe Boxer and the Concorde. An adjacent 60-by-30 illuminated billboard costs only $10,000 more.

Less-ephemeral missives can be conveyed by purchasing individualized tiles embedded in Madison Square Garden's front steps (212-465-6080). Proceeds for the $320 four-by-eight-inch tiles, and a limited number of $5,000 twelve-by-twelve tiles, benefit the Cheering for Children Foundation. Whitney Houston, Billy Baldwin, and Chris Rock have already immortalized their messages, as has a guy named Joe who used his block to propose to a girl named Donna.