This is Sparta!
A couple years ago I saw this sign on Suomenlinna, a fortress island offshore from Helsinki. While it may not have been original, it made me laugh. The sign, meant to convey a fall hazard, featured a Sharpie marker addition of a kicking foot and a dialogue bubble proclaiming, “This is Sparta!.” If you don’t get this reference, you should see the movie 300. [Or, better yet, watch the clip below.]
Everyone sends an email or leaves a note on occasion that makes perfect sense to the writer, but which could mean any of a dozen things to the reader. That’s the price of doing business in a hectic world. However, if your job is making signs, it seems to me like cutting through the ambiguity would be important. Take the sign below, whose intended meaning is completely unclear to me.
Taken in Helsinki
A few of the possible meanings that sprang to mind were:
– “Give a girl a fist bump!”
– Pedophile-friendly zone
– Go Zone (i.e. they are walking away, so from that point you may only “go” and never “come”)
– Take Your Dad to School Day
– Midget Dating Allowed
Below is one that I think I comprehend, but you may disagree.
Taken in Phnom Penh
I’m pretty sure that it means, “Limbo dancing will be punished by God.” Granted I’m illiterate with respect to the squiggly language used in the caption and so maybe it says, “Watch out for falling snakes.”
Some signs seem to make perfect sense, but the context throws one a monkey-wrench. The sign below was seen on a little door of about 6X6 inches on the side of a tour-bus.
Seen on a bus in Helsinki
Now, obviously, this sign means, “Moose Fornication Zone.” However, how would you get the moose through that six-inch square portal?
Sometimes sign-makers add verbiage to reduce the ambiguity. This inevitably succeeds in making the sign more confusing than ever. I saw the sign below in a restaurant on Rue Sherbrooke in Montreal.
Taken in Montreal
Now, seeing the photo, I was jonesing for some fatty, spicy pork product. However, every hetero male knows that you don’t ever want to be caught at a sausage fest.
I had a similar problem trying to decide whether to go into this gift shop at the Ming Tombs in China. The store bore this sign:
Taken at the Ming Tombs near Beijing, China
While I favor economic liberty, I’m willing to shop at a store that is state operated. However, it occurred to me that it could be the souvenirs that are state operated. What if they supplied a balding civil servant to operate the music box I bought there? That possibility was too creepy to consider.
Some signs are clear both pictorially and verbally, but, at the risk of digressing, one has to wonder if the sign is necessary.
Taken in Budapest
If there’s a completely opaque film of diarrhea floating on the water, do you really need to tell people not to go for a swim?
It’s true that some times ambiguity is strategic. Who would go through a door, if they saw the sign below posted on it?
Taken in Xian, China
Well, people do go into the DMV, so I realize there are some sadists who might be into being clubbed, starved, burnt, or being subjected to particularly fierce animal–such as an ill-tempered gerbil.
As I try live my life in a positive manner, I’ll leave you with an example of a sign-maker who got it right.
Taken in Arequipa, Peru
Now this is a sign that is completely unambiguous. Clearly, this sign was located at a Baptist church, and it means, “Boys and girls doing the twist in the same room will go to hell.”
The pointy-topped building is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests
The Temple of Heaven is a complex of buildings used for Heaven worship. It was built in the 15th century, and is a Taoist temple (Heaven worship predates Taoism–though the Temple doesn’t.) The most distinctive building, the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests–shown only partially in the picture–was built without any nails or spikes.
It’s located in a beautiful park south of central Beijing. The park has a rose garden and is a popular hangout for people doing tai chi, playing instruments, and dancing.
Pensive macaque reflects on a monkey’s life
It started as a plow furrow, seriously.
You just don’t see enough moats these days.
This is Cambodia
Traveling cross-country through Cambodia at the end of the wet season, the road seems to be just the Mac-daddy paddy dike, and the rest of the country is a flooded rice paddy. What once was jungle is now solitary trees, often palms, jutting out of a verdant sea. Farmers fish waist deep, casting nets, as emaciated oxen cool their bellies. Everyone lives and dies by water.
Truth in advertising is so refreshing.
Glories Past
Sitting off the Coney Island boardwalk, the old Child’s restaurant–like so many structures at Coney Island–embodies glory days past.
Can you see it in its heyday?
Budapest’s south side
Gellért Hill is a prominent overlook in Budapest; it’s topped by the Citadel. The hill offers splendid views both north and south down the Danube River. I show the view to the South to be contrary (pictures to the north, dominated by the sprawling neo-gothic Parliament building, are ubiquitous–and are commonly the subject of postcards.) If you want some exercise, you can walk up to the top. The stairs are adjacent to the roundabout at the foot of the Buda-side of the Erzsébet bridge.
