Yellow arrow points to marketing opportunities.

Its presence is hardly ubiquitous, but the creators of Yellow Arrow are hoping that their hybrid game, graffiti, grassroots city tour and guerrilla marketing effort will soon swamp L.A.

Launched in New York in late summer, the interactive "an project" debuted recently in Los Angeles with 1,000 yellow arrow stickers dropped at local bars.

Easily removable stickers in the shape of yellow arrows are printed with a unique identity, code and instructions on the back. Once the sticker is slapped onto a wall, sign or any other point of interest, the user sends a message and a digital image to the Yellow Arrow Web site describing the site's significance. The messages and images can be sent either via text messages from a cell phone or from a home computer.

When pedestrians clued into the yellow arrows see one, they can dial a number on the sticker and receive a text message with the significance of the site. The information is also available on the Web.

Thoughts posted so far wax poetic about staircases, public restrooms and the like, but they are taking on a more promotional tone, too.

The Yellow Arrow Web site had only seven L.A. locations late last week, including a photo of a sticker near the Dresden Restaurant, a Los Feliz bar well known for its long-running open mike nights for amateur singers. The sticker's message reads, "Lots of people here think that they are stars. Go inside any tuesday night @ 10:00pm and let Marty and Elaine show you some."

Michael Counts, founder of Counts Media Inc., the startup New York entertainment media company behind the project, said there is no direction on how the arrows are to be used, but he acknowledges their potential as vehicles for marketing and promotion or entertainment.

"The arrows are about individuals marketing themselves," said Christopher Allen, the firm's creative director. "You get to own it. A lot of people (in New York) have already used it to promote their Web sites or their businesses. It is open to that."

The first business in L.A. to embrace Yellow Arrow and become an unofficial local headquarters of distribution is Snake Pit, a bar on Melrose Avenue. Snake Pit's owner, John (he only uses his first name) said he wanted to support the project because it was a perfect match for the atmosphere on Melrose and hoped it might entertain his clientele.

"Because of where we're located, we need things that are cool, unusual and hip," John said. "When the stickers came out, people in the bar went crazy, they were putting them up everywhere, on table tops, chairs the walls. We had to remove some for practical reasons."

Under both Los Angeles city and county laws, the Yellow Arrow stickers are considered a "graffiti implement," and placing one on public properly is an "act of graffiti." First time graffiti violations can reach $1,000 per incident, depending on the cost of removal.

To address that, the stickers are designed to be easily removable, Allen said, and the Yellow Arrow Web site bears a disclaimer stating, "Do not vandalize public property or the private property of others. Graffiti is illegal," which is in line with the project's stated intention of not directing people how to use the system.

An arrow placed outside the Roy and Edna Disney Cal Arts Theater, known as Redcat, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall turned out to be short-lived.

The message associated with the sticker read "Most cat's (sic) do whatever they want. This one wants to try and teach you something."

Redcat Executive Director Mark Murphy enjoyed the project and the message, which remains, with a photo, on Yellowarrow.org's archive.

"To me it means someone recognized that one of things we do is to merge new technologies to invent new ways of telling stories," Murphy said. "It's a good match."