Telephone poles

I snapped this photo a few days ago. I found it annoying that on this beautiful 80+ degree day at 2:00pm the street lights were on. We obviously need to conserve energy and I constantly see fire hydrants leaking, cars and buses parked and idling for hours with some cop, bus or ambulance driver sleeping behind the wheel, faucets and toilets dripping, lights that shouldn't be on shining brightly. The amount of waste is incredible. Drives me crazy.

Speaking of electricity, I was in Queens and noticed this telephone pole with a bunch of staples from years of yard sales and lost pet flyers. I've seen many poles with more staples but this one caught my eye.
On the other side of the pole were these inspection tags. Do pole climbers nail inspection tags to the pole after going up them? Does each inspector have his own special tag? I started thinking about when the last time I saw a guy climb up a lightpole. When I was a kid I saw them all the time...wearing those boots with the spikes on the side. They'd shimmy up the pole...do some electrical work and shimmy back down. The poles were always sticky and smelled of creosote. I tried to climb one once in front of my house but my pants got all oily and was worried about getting electrocuted. I made it up about 10 feet before fear and that tar-like smell brought me back down.