Diversions: signs of the times.

Day 643

In his spare moments, Gus indulges his hobby of collecting peculiar signs - traffic signs, warning signs, shopkeepers' signs. I once asked why his interest in signs, and he showed me this one:

 

Uhmm, looks like a billboard company's moral justication for "visual pollution," as a nascent anti-billboard movement called it beginning in the 1970s. (Whatever happened to those folks?)

In any event, billboards aren't Gus' fancy (although he marveled at this one):

Obviously a vandal's response to the jacked-up service fees with which troubled British banks are making customers pay for management's incompetence.

Signs are reflective of the times. Looking over Gus' collection, I was reminded of a 39-year-old tune by the Five Man Electrical Band -

Sign Sign everywhere a sign / Blocking out the scenery / breaking my mind / Do this, don't do that / Can't you read the sign?

And the sign said everybody welcome, come in, kneel down and pray / But when they passed around the plate at the end of it all / I didn't have a penny to pay / So I got me a pen and a paper / and I made up my own little sign / I said thank you Lord / for thinking about me / I'm alive and doing fine.

Time to edit the burgeoning GR image bank. (Click on image to enlarge it.  Locations are given where known.)

 

Boring and Oregon City are ex-urbs of Portland. Slow down: Nelson Suburbs, New Zealand.

Ham and Sandwich directions: Kent, England. Finally, a DUI test for cyclists.

 

Lost: Cardiff

 

Sand warning: Namibia. Unfortunately, when the wind gets up, obscuring the sign, you don't know what you're dealing with. Cemetery plaque: Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, England. A caution against drive-by mourners.

Hazardous and obnoxious conditions: Maui, Hawaii. I think they could safely have dispensed with "please."

 

No slouching sign: Seoul International Airport: Three-hour barking limit: Brisbane.

Danger ahead: Sutherland, South Africa. There's something about an e-mail drafted on a toilet... 

Everglades National Park, Florida. As a biker I might take my chances at the side of the road...

 

Both from England. The fine is payable prior to electrocution.

  Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, Calif. I thought he left them behind in Washington.

Diverted traffic: England. Pretty much all of England is a diversion, when you think about it. Shoplifters association: Marsaxlokk, Malta. In Baltimore or Brampton, it would be the "Shrinkage Association."

Foot prohibition: Yangon, Myanmar. One of many crackdowns since name change from Rangoon, Burma.

 

Beverly Hills, Calif. Rodeo Drive shoppers are a fretful lot.

Nairobi. It's a myth all Kenyans put warthogs before rug rats.

Okay, I cheated on this one. They're fake, but I couldn't resist with back-to-school approaching.

Rajiv Gandhi Zoological Park, or Rajiv Gandhi Zoo, in Katraj near Pune in southwest India. Mr. Roget was kept busy on this sign. The verb to Badger Harry is a new one on me.   

 

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

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