Wednesday, September 03, 2003
Sign Language
Signage is one of my favorite -ages. From “Yield” to “Peligro - Biocontanamica,” signs tell us so many wonderful and exciting things. And I am fortunate to live in a city that is proud of its history and its architecture, so there are quite a few plaques and signs up around downtown and the neighboring districts for my perusing pleasure. There are plaques marking the site of old opera houses, the first state fair, the Barbary Coast trail tour, even brass plates in the sidewalk telling you the names of the ships buried in landfill under your feet.
If I see a historical marker, I’m enough of a geek to stop and read it. “Oh, so this is where the old Jesuit infirmary stood.” “Oh, so this is where Steve McQueen caught air in Bullitt.” “Oh, so this is a seventy-year-old advertisement for laxitives. Neat.”
Two of my favorite plaques are across the street from each other where Bush and First both terminate at Market, a wide and messy intersection featuring the city’s finest example of pure modernist architecture. Next to that soaring edifice, on a sliver of a traffic island, is a low plinth with a plaque marking the erstwhile site of a major slot machine factory in the 1800s. And on the other side of Market, set into the sidewalk at the corner of First, is a plaque stating that the original shoreline of the city used to be 25 feet to the north-east - now, a heavily-trafficked transit corridor. The sea, the slots - all gone, long gone now from there. All that remains are the plaques - and the dorkballs like me who trip people up by standing still in traffic to read them.
Many tourists take photos of themselves with plaques, usually from a sufficient distance that the plaque cannot be read. So if you didn’t jot down some notes, all you’ll be able to say when you show off the photos is “That’s me at the bronze plaque where they arrested Ginsberg after he read Howl, or where the Federal Mint got blown up, or where the world’s oldest chinese-italian restaurant is. Hard to tell. But it was highly memorable. Hence the plaque.”
Hence, indeed. These poor benighted fools need some historical markers that are worth remembering, so when the photos come back they can remember instantly, forever, why that spot merited a snapshot. As a public service (for I am nothing if not embarassingly public), I hereby suggest that plaques commemorating the following high-value cultural artifacts and accomplishments be cast in bronze and mounted on random edifices downtown:
* Buddhism Founded, 700 bce (Tuesday March 4) - Get Serene!
* Golem Loosed Upon City From This Location In 1853; Only the Righteous Survived
* Yalta Conference (Dress Rehearsal), 1944
* S.L. Clemens Here Coined the Word “Hella,” 1888
* America’s First $5 Latte, 1991
* “Tastes Like Chicken” First Applied to Non-Poultry Foodstuff, 1869
* MYSTERY PLAQUE: Something Really Cool Happened Here A Long Time Ago But We Can’t Tell You What
* If Napoleon Weren’t French, He’d Have Been Buried Here
* Site of WeinerTown and the WeinerTown Ball: 1893-1931
* Underware Purposely Exposed Over Waistline of Pants as Fashion Statement for First Time: 1984
* At This Site, Four Out of Five Dentists Chose Dentyne (for their patients who chew gum): 1977
* Look Out! Behind You!
Thanks for your cooperation and support in this matter. I will look forward to seeing pretentiously brazen signage and befuddled tourists around downtown, starting forthwith. And for god’s sake don’t ask me for directions. You’ll hear crap about this town even I don’t know where it came from.
