Before heading off to college, I joked with my cross country friends that I would start a parody of Humans of New York called Street Signs of Greater Boston. Here’s what I have so far:
Neighbor–
Please stop feeding grapes to turkeys.
(Please stop feeding them– it is not good for them and feeds the rats)
Grapes + raisins are poison to dogs and my puppy has almost died.
The first and only sign from Greater Boston. It is all caps Sharpie on printer paper nailed to a telephone pole. Good thing it is DIY laminated with clear tape because it is rain-wet.
I doubt the author’s concern for the wellbeing of turkeys (or rats), relative to their puppy. Still I’m glad they mention turkeys because it suggests they learned the provenance and purpose of the grapes by snooping. Were they too shy or cowardly for a confrontation? Maybe the neighbor was a child?
Of course I’m sorry for their dog, but I’m thankful it was serious enough to warrant a sign. There’s so much earnestness in a desperate plea. Compare to another telephone pole request, this outside a library in Seattle. It is also in all caps but in 3 different colors of marker (no lamination),
$55 Dollar prize!! Send me your best Gru impression {Seattle area phone number}
Come on, too zany! They must be aware that 55 is a funny number.
Not that it’s always about humor. The first picture I took of Seattle was of a sign on the Fremont Bridge. It says:
NO JUMPING FROM THE BRIDGE
The Consequences of jumping from the bridge are fatal and tragic
SMC 12A.06.050 Reckless Endangerment
A blunt concision. It’s not a “Warning”, “Danger”, or “Caution”. The law forbids jumping but delegates the punishment to Physics and Biology. Who wrote it? Who injected it with heart, and how many layers of higher-ups approved it? Did they notice?
Maybe they did it for the person who Sharpied a thought bubble reading “Just keep swimming til our Death” onto a picture of a school of salmon in murky water at the bus stop I took to work. Which is pretty much how it feels to squeeze onto a crowded bus some mornings.
On the way home, the building across from my stop advertised new units with the slogan, “More of a good thing is always a good thing”. This is how I imagine that happened:
EMPLOYEE: Hey boss, have you ever heard the phrase “too much of a good thing”?
BOSS: No, what are you talking about?
EMPLOYEE: Nevermind. I’m done with that slogan you asked for.
A more modest claim about “more” comes from next to the Paramount Theatre: “FastSigns. More than Fast. More than Signs”
There’s some kind of sleight of tongue going on here. At first glance, FastSigns looks greater than the sum of its parts, but a simple substitution (“3. More than 1. More than 2”) reveals that it’s merely greater than each of its parts. All I can say is that I’m sure Fast and Signs have been quaking in their boots since these guys came on the scene.
Trade those 2 comparatives for a superlative in “The person with the most shoes wins” which was a license plate frame I followed for a couple blocks. Disappointingly, it may be a popular sneaker collector catchphrase, but I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of imagining this driver publicizing their little game around town. I wish them many shoes.
Honorable (non-street sign) mention goes to the spookiest pair of books I’ve ever seen in a Little Free Library, Look 10 Years Younger, Live 10 Years Longer: A Woman’s Guide and How To Investigate Your Friends And Enemies. It’s one thing to know they exist, but it’s another to know someone in your neighborhood had both and no longer needs them.
The blue ribbon goes to a strip of packing tape stuck on my old outgoing mailbox which (for no reason) had just been moved above the inboxes. It reads:
Mailman is 5’2” My arms are not MONKEY movable please lower
I have to exercise considerable restraint not to explain everything I love about this, but nothing I would say could improve it one bit. Pure poetry.
I’ll leave you with one question, chalked onto a bridge in Harrisburg, PA:
Why didn’t anyone learn Greek ▴