gor[b] Paul Gorbould: Words and Pictures

Playing in traffic

The crosswalk outside CBC, at the corner of Front St. and John St., has gone digital.

Digital watch, that is - in addition to the regular crosswalk signs (White Man says walk, Red Hand says halt!) and noises (chirping) there's now a timer that counts down how many seconds you have left to cross the street.

I've never seen this before. It's quite mesmerizing, actually - I end up staring at the time remaining instead of getting my ass to safety. You get something like 20 seconds to cross - seven seconds of white hand safety, then 13 seconds until you get greased by a Hippo bus.

I don't understand the need for it, but I love it. It's like one of those Hollywood movie time bombs ticking away, or the Christmas tree lights at a drag strip.

I've only crossed there twice since the installation, and already I'm inventing games to play with the countdown. How fast can I cross? How late in the count can I go before I dash? What will my personal best be?

And I can only imagine the elderly tourist staring at those seconds draining away, terrified that they won't make it, and staying on one side of the street forever. As a colleague pointed out, knowing the number of seconds remaining is only useful if you know how long it takes you to cross the street.

This is going to take some practice.

Passing the ‘bucks

As you can see from this photo (from Joe Clark's Flickr, via Leslieville.org), my little corner of Leslieville is inches away from having a new Starbucks.

Joe has a great site about this impending event, and my neighbours are torn between being excited about drinking the coffee and being excited about the implications to their property values. Hurray... Leslieville can now overcharge for both!

I'd better brush up on my lingua barista, though. I went to the Starbucks by CBC today, and the woman in front of me ordered the following (and this is verbatim):

One tall no-fat sugar-free vanilla latte extra hot no whipped cream

And the guy behind the counter (I guess he'd be a barista, but wouldn't the male term be baristo? Or is barista just pretend language?) repeated the order exactly, from memory, to the guy actually pouring the coffee. But that guy had to write furiously on the cup, spiraling around the thing twice.

Which makes me ask, what's the point of this relay process anyhow? It seems to be particular to Starbucks. You say your order, and the cashier just says it again to someone else, who goes and makes it. Couldn't I tell him or her directly, or couldn't the person at the cash go get the coffee?

This seems to be an institutionalized version of the broken telephone game. Except the words are more complicated, and you have to drink the final product.

And overpay for it.

Signage of the Apocalypse #5

Livin' the stereotype

My sister snapped this photo of a pickup truck we were following along the 401 yesterday. Note the Alberta plates, and the bumper sticker that says, "Keep Honking, I'm Reloading".I'm not sure if it was affixed with any sense of irony, but it's pretty damned funny.

(Click photo to enlarge)

Signage of the Apocalypse #4

Widows in every room

There's nothing I like better than mistakes in posters of stuff for sale or rent. Particularly when they are posted in a building full of 1,000 journalists.

The Canadian Broadcasting Centre has bulletin boards by each elevator, each jammed with ads for various things for sale. People waiting for the elevators have plenty of time to mull them over, and plenty of time to make editorial suggestions.

Here's one I noticed today, with the comments added by a helpful editor.

[Previous Signage entries: 1, 2, 3]

Signage of the Apocalypse #3

If it's too inept...

If you read my haphazard Blogger profile, you'll notice that one of my favourite books is Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. It's a sad and wonderful collection of short stories about small-town characters, woven together by the experiences of a young reporter named George Willard.

Like George, I grew up and got my first newspaper gig in a small town. And like George, there was a defining moment when I knew I had to leave.

Now, unlike George, my departure wasn't facilitated by a death, a failed romance, a fight and an adolescent epiphany - though it did make me briefly consider my hometown (Woodstock, Ont. - hmm, it even sounds like that book title) to be "squalid and commonplace."

My epiphany was written on the back of a 1970 Chevelle.

Woodstock is one of those towns with a "main drag", where the main dragsters cruise endlessly and pointlessly up and down all night long (Dundas Street, from the Tim's to the McD's and back), showing off their pseudo-muscle cars with their Cragar rims and chrome headers and whatnot.

Some of these cars had catchy slogans (or car stereo brands) plastered across their back windows. The Chevelle in question had the following, stuck on with those gold-coloured, trapezoidal letters that people used to use for boat numbers and mailboxes:

OK, so this graphic is a mock-up based on my fuzzy memory - it could have been a Malibu or a 442, and I don't know if it was powder blue - but the spelling has HAUNTED ME FOREVER.

Four spelling mistakes in seven words! You couldn't do worse if you tried.

I'd think that if you were driving down to the Canadian Tire or the Co-Op to buy letters to permanently pimp your ride with a classic, stick-it-to-the-man phrase (anyone know where it originated?), you might check the spelling with a friend who had passed Grade 10. But no, 1980s Woodstonian, you did not.

One look at that car, and I knew my time was up. Like George Willard, I packed my bags and left town for good, letting Woodstock "become but a background on which to paint the dreams of my manhood."

Except my manhood will go through a spell checker first.

[Previous Signage of the Apocalypse here and here. Apologies for the posting gap - I was having "broken pipe" problems between Blogger and Netfirms, which seem to have been resolved. For now.]

Signage of the Apocalypse #2

Einbahnstrasse

This one happened to my parents, not me, but I can certainly sympathize.

Both my parents come from England, and speak only English. But they were both Geography teachers, and really had the travel bug.

Before I was born, my folks had toured all over Europe, and even lived in Kenya for a couple of years after they got married. When my sister and were old enough to travel, our family would spend each summer living in a different part of the world, courtesy of house exchanges or traditional vacations.

Mom and dad got to be pretty good at navigating the planet. But once in a while the simplest thing would throw them off.

Case in point: One time, before I was born, they took a trip to Germany. They rented a car, and drove to a major city. Being good geography teachers, they had maps and had studied the landmarks, but they were still nervous about finding their way around the narrow streets.

After parking the car, they were careful to take note of where they left it. They looked around for the name of the street - they knew the German word for "street" was "straße" ... and saw a rectangular sign that looked about right: Einbahnstrasse.

They diligently wrote down Einbahnstrasse, and went sightseeing.

Of course, they had quite a time finding the car again. They found Einbahnstrasse, but no car. They they found a different Einbahnstrasse... then another, and another.

As you probably know (but they didn't): "Einbahnstrasse" = "One Way Street".

I'm still not sure how they managed to figure out "strasse", but not "ein" (they could count to ten in German) and "bahn" (they drove there on the Autobahn). But they learned to pick apart those damnable German compound words in a hurry.

[Signage of the Apocalypse #1 can be found here]

Signage of the Apocalypse

I've always been fascinated by signage. It must have something to do with working with the English language for a living. I sometimes have trouble being concise with a 1,000 word limit (and I absolutely dread writing headlines) - so I can only imagine what it would be like to be limited to just a word or two.

Or no words at all - check out the Stick Figures in Peril pool at Flickr.

(As an aside, I've finally set up my own Flickr account, but it's mostly boring family vacation images, and I've set most of those as "family only" - so enjoy the baboons and sunsets. My kids don't need to be on the general internet.)

For those who also appreciate a good signage puzzler, I highly recommend the book Deep Time by Gregory Benford. It's a fascinating look at creating messages that transcend time, language and even species. I was floored by the discussion of creating warning message to mark a nuclear waste site that would be dangerous for 10,000 years.

Where was I? Right, signage. I'm not pedantic about it (see Joe Clark on my local cheese shop, or his hate-on for arial photo group - both of which are highly entertaining, but not my personal vexation.) I'm merely bemused.

Over the course of the years, I've collected a few signage anecdotes that might be worth sharing. I thought about spilling them all at once, but I think I'll let them trickle instead, as I've been doing with my last three items in the "Identical Twins" series. Plus, stretching them out will help me avoid embarassing post gaps like the one this week.

I make no claims to originality on these - someone is sure to have blogged them first - but here they are regardless.

Signage of the Apocalypse #1: Flame On!

My sister and I have both been captivated by this peculiar Toronto sign, which adorns the Peace Garden outside Toronto City Hall. (Apologies for the crappy picture quality; I forgot my camera and had to snap it with the cam in my Palm Pilot.)

Forgiving the lack of punctuation, I love its sturdy, timeless look and simple message: CAUTION ETERNAL FLAME.

You've been warned!

But what's so striking about that text is the decision to include the adjective. Is an eternal flame more dangerous than a normal flame? I'd say no, it's probably less dangerous, because it's always been there and always will be.

What you really need to watch out for are the Completely Random Flames - ones that suddenly spring up out of nowhere, like at the Fire Swamp in The Princess Bride (did you notice that Buttercup catches fire even though the flame is three feet away?)

I'm told City Hall also has Rodents of Unusual Size, but they're most often found inside the building.