This set of creatively vandalized signs made me chuckle. Can you think of any good ones you’ve seen?
I took a picture of this one from the NYC subway in 2020:
Well.
I made little green men out of popsicle sticks and green paint. I wired a green painted beer bottle top on them and painted the huge almond shaped eyes.
I put them on tree stumps and little hollows on the gravel road edge.
My thoughts were this would cause a stir in the community at large.
Alas no one noticed.
I mean come on peeps, don’t you pay attention?
Several months maybe a year later one of Son-of-a-wrek friends was coming to my house.
He came in and said, “Someone’s playing a prank on you guys!” and put the little raggedy green man on my table.
I laughed and laughed.
Son became alarmed. So he looked around and found 2.
I’ve never revealed it was my prank.
This one was always a favourite- stared down onto the M32 in Bristol for years, until the eyes blew off in a storm. They did get replaced at least once, but last I saw the tree was eyeless.
Another favourite was done by a friend- the street litter bins had ‘litter’ written round the top, which, with a bit of glue and craft supplies, turned one into a sparkly glitter bin.
A footbridge overpass in Columbia, Maryland was covered with arcane graffiti.
To which someone had added in small, legible writing:
“Peace, through vandalism”.
When COVID was peaking there was a business near me that had a sign made with changeable letters that said “We are all in this together”.
Every time I saw it I wanted to re-arrange the letters in the word “this”.
mmm
Two more from the same source as the OP.
There was a large distillery nearby that sold off their used barrels, and it was common to see homeowners saw them in half and use them as planters. Vandals would tip the barrels over.
Then it became the fashion to lay the planters/barrels on their sides and plant flowers so they looked like they were spilling out from the barrels. (Like a cornucopia.)
Then the vandals started to vandalize them by tipping the barrels UPRIGHT.
Either way, still done by creeps.
Richard Ankrom Is my hero.
This was the original germ of the idea: The California Department of Transportation had screwed up. For many years, if you were traveling north on the 110 in downtown Los Angeles and were intending to go north on the 5, there was no easily visible signage to prepare you for the sudden interchange. And it’s not just any interchange, either — it’s a strange corkscrew of an exit on the left side of the freeway, sneaking up on you at the end of a tunnel. Without a decent amount of warning, you would very likely miss it — and plenty of people certainly did — ending up halfway to Pasadena before realizing what had happened. Ankrom was one of those who had missed the exit before, so he decided to fix the problem himself.
At the McDonald’s in town, in the men’s stall, someone scratched off the “C” from “BABY CHANGING STATION”. Baby hanging station. I had a picture of it but don’t have it anymore.
And of course, there’s this, from The Dark Knight:
As you drive on the Outer Loop of the D.C. Beltway in Maryland, you’ll approach the Washington Temple of the LDS church, which opened in 1974. But before it was even open, a genius graffitist climbed up on a railway bridge at the end of the straightaway that gives the view of the temple, and painted “SURRENDER DOROTHY” in feathery black paint that looked just like the witch’s skywriting in the movie.
Imagine that writing on the bridge in the picture below.
It was a thing of beauty.
According to the “Surrender Dorothy” Wiki page, “It was removed by the Maryland State Police;[4] however, it has been periodically repainted in various forms by equally unknown persons since the initial police removal.”
But never as beautifully as the very first incarnation. Sadly, some quick Googling didn’t turn up any pictures of the first version.
Removed for lach of vanalism
I know a fairly busy two lane street which had an odd and dangerous feature - a short, single lane tunnel. This was located at the bottom of a V-shaped slope, and you could not see the oncoming traffic on the other side of the tunnel very well, even though the tunnel might only be fifty feet long.
It used to have yield signs on both sides of the tunnel. You would drive to the bottom of the hill, yield, make sure there was no obvious traffic coming the other way through the tunnel, cross your fingers - and go for it. I’m sure it was the site of hundreds of car accidents. On the other hand, it was so obviously dangerous that drivers were generally cautious and slow; maybe fewer accidents than you’d think. After many years, they finally replaced the yield signs with traffic lights - so there must have been some.
Painted on both sides above the tunnel? The odd phrase - YES! A VERY SCARY HOUSE! When I was five, I thought that was hilarious.
I haven’t actually done it, but I always thought it would be fun to copy the first few pages of Moby Dick (or War and Peace) on the seat of the Galaxy Chair at Heavenly Valley
I spotted this almost two years ago. Not shown well here, you need to click on it to see it better.
Not exactly vandalism (since my neighbor did it herself), but I think it fits here:
An act of self-vandalism by the owner of this demolished house went viral a few years ago: “Got the spider!”
My favorite one – which I hope was for real originally, and not a joke – wasan addition to what used to be ubiquitous ads in NYC subway cars beck around 1970
underneath which someone had written
Not necessarily vandalism, if it was done by the book’s owner:
I had access to the shop at Boeing that made many of the placards used on their airplanes. I made 50 of these stickers. Over the years I have installed about 30 on hand dryers in restrooms and gave away some. I still have 4 left, I will need to make some more soon. The oldest that is still installed is in a nearby Safeway. That sticker has been on the dryer for at least 20 years.
