Nothing delights me more than a really clever funny business name. just the other day I saw a truck for a landscaping firm called simply “Mowtown,” which is great.
It’s not the best in town though. Just minutes from my house is a racquet sports shop called The Merchant of Tennis. And a few minutes in the other direction is a tile sales and installation place called Grout Expectations.
Also in College Park is a place called “Pizza Kingdom.” Nothing wrong with that, except on their sign they used a slice of pizza as the “a” in “pizza,” which when seen from the major road, looks like it says, “Pizz Kingdom.” View on Google Maps, as seen from Route 1: Google Maps
I interviewed at the Union Fork and Hoe Company across from ye olde Ohio Penitentiary in downtown Columbus in 1984, it was medieval. There were also worn out forkin hoes just down the street hanging out on the corner.
A buddy of mine did landscaping for a company called All Green Lawncare. When he started his own landscaping business, he asked his friends to help brainstorm a new name. I got an artist friend to do a mock-up presentation on Al Green Lawncare complete with the singer’s likeness and musical notes. He chose another moniker.
Another buddy opened a beeroporium right at the start of the craft beer craze. He used the name** House of 1000 Beers.** Yes, they have over 1000 unique beers. When I wear one of their tshirts, people tend to laugh/smile.
The hair salons around here seem to compete with each other over the funniest names. There’s a Curl up and Dye, Best Little Hair House in Town, and a Cliptomaniac all within just a few miles of my house.
There was a restaurant in the kosher area of town called “Burrito Lam”. A play on the Hebrew for “eternal covenant”, brit olam.
Also in the department of bad Jewish puns, there’s a traveling BBQ that used to be called Hakadosh Barbecue (Hakadosh Baruch Hu means “The Holy One, Blessed Is He”). Then they switched their kosher certification company, and the new rabbis apparently didn’t have a sense of humor about that sort of thing. So now they call themselves The Wandering Q.
When I was but a teenager, I used to get my hair cut at a place called “Hair It Is!” That’s not all that interesting, but due to the way they jammed all the letters onto their sign, they ended up without any noticeable spacing. So it read “HAIRITIS!”
“Sir, I hate to have to tell you this, but the test results are back and it’s not good news. You have a case of the rare disease hairitis. There’s nothing we can do.”
A friend owns and operates a small coffee shop. He’s a big Star Wars fan, so he called his coffee shop, “Java the Hut.”
Also dealing with letter spacing on a sign, a local bar called the “Top Hat” recently moved. There wasn’t enough space on the new location’s sign for two words, so they crammed them all together: TOPHAT. It’s starting to become known as the “Toe-Fat.”