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Signs of Various Times On:2008-10-02 17:00:55

Secret.jpgsmokeFreeBingo.jpgIt's been a long time since I've used a good wallow in signage to tremble the æther, but as regular listeners will know I love to photograph signs, preferably weird signs and the weirder and sigh-nearer the better. And I've been doing this for ages; from the ancient days when there still was a Soviet Embassy in Washington and outside it I surreptitiously snapped the side of a police-style car, with the rather too obvious insignia SECRET SERVICE UNIFORMED DIVISION painted on it for all to presumably not notice, right down to the almost present day when I caught a sign with an enormous SMOKE FREE BINGO as three separate words with no hyphen whilst walking in Plano and (since there was no hyphen---I'm sensitive about the lack of hyphens---it couldn't possibly mean that Bingo had no smoke) I wondered who or what was this Bingo and why would anyone want to smoke him her or it, and further, why on Earth they wouldn't pay for the privilege.

But for the rest of this essay I'm going to eschew the latter and later type, the advertising sign, and examine only the former and earlier, the official sign.

The reason for this (apart from mere considerations of time) is that so many, perhaps most, of these official signs are at heart so endearingly pathetic (or rather the hearts that fed them are so pathetic) that sometimes when my hand comes to mock them it almost pains me, so I almost don't---almost but not quite; so let's look at some of the poor sods---I mean signs:
observeSigns.jpg
Here in Texas we have road signs scattered about, that tell us to OBSERVE WARNING SIGNS---STATE LAW. Now, I don't know about you, but to me this sort of meta-sign---a sign about signs-- seems superfluous, verging on desperation on the part of the authorities, I mean if we aren't going to obey the actual signs then why the Hell would we obey them at a remove?1
Of course, personally I do observe them, not so much to obey them, as to occasionally take photographs of them.
ashtrya.jpg
Even more depressing than the meta-signs, and I'm sure a main reason for their existance, are the USE YOUR ASHTRAY NOT THE HIGHWAY signs that then add a plaintive KEEP PLANO BEAUTIFUL which as I look about me at the current state of Plano, leads me to suppose that they need to look up either the word 'beautiful' in a good dictionary, or else the word 'keep'.

 

 

 

largecrossing.jpg


Then, not to give you the impression that it's only Texas or indeed America that sins as it signs, there's the one I saw back home in England that warns drivers of large or slow vehicles to phone before crossing the railway tracks and then goes on to explain LARGE MEANS OVER 61' 6" (18.75M) LONG OR 9' 6" (2.9M) WIDE OR 44TONNES TOTAL WEIGHT / SLOW MEANS 5MPH OR LESS then goes on to tell them to PARK HERE AND USE THE PHONE AT THE CROSSING each notice on a separate sign on the pole and as a final touch there's a NO PARKING AT ANY TIME sign for good measure. You can almost see the sign erectors slapping their knees in hysterics as they think of what they're doing to those poor slow, large drivers--what a pathetic sense of humour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keeping in Britain, the London Underground signage tends towards the prolix--I suppose (since they've now put up signs warning that it's noalctube.jpgillegal to drink alcohol on the Tube) that they think you need something to occupy your time. It's a pity then that for most journeys all you can see about you are the armpits tubeCrowd.jpg(or in extreme cases the legpits---though there's less of that since they've banned the drinking) of all those others crowding round you strap-hanging for dear life. When you actually can see the signs they tend to have little essays tubesign2.jpgabout stations being busy and how you can get off at different ones and walk, and they also tend to be just too long to be related here. Then above ground again there's the mysterious HUMPED PEDESTRIAN CROSSINGhumped.jpg which, (as far as I can tell) has nothing whatever to do with either pedestrians dressed in black, with evil mediæval haircuts limping across the road whilst declaiming
"I can add colours to the chameleon,
Change shapes with Protheus for advantages,
And set the murderous Machiavel to school.
Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?
Tut, were it farther off, I'll pluck it down." or indeed sex.

Finally, one of the most pathetic signs of the times that I've seen was on the back of a road sign back in Beccles. It just shows what a state we have sunk to. A little decal says simply THIS IS A STEEL SIGN AND HAS NO SALVAGE VALUEnoStealSteel.jpg---though if we look on the bright side, at least it means that A) we've not sunk so low that we are expected to try to steal steel signs and B) the sort of person who might be expected to steal the sign is actually expected to be able to read!

Cheerio for now
from
Richard Howland-Bolton



Notes:

The position and word-wrap of the images in this essay work perfectly in Firefox and Safari on both PC and Mac, however as is usual with Microsoft's Intersuck Expectorator they are crap.
If you are viewing this in IE do yourself a favour and upgrade to a decent browser like Firefox---it's free!
(Oh! Yes! And Vista is rubbish too!!!)


1 I think I've actually missed real warning signs while gazing at the warning-about-warning signs


I nearly forgot this one:
local police information

 






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