@phendrick Think I know that sign. Very possibly the beach on Sauvie Island near Portland. Far end of a long strip (pun intended) of beach on the Columbia River. The rest of the beach which you get to first was for normal clothish-types. Just drive a bit further down the dirt road and then there is a parking area. It was strange that it was so official. But hey, because Portland.
There were well-known beaches of that type in California (near Santa Cruz and Marin County) when I lived there, but at the time they definitely were not officially designated that way.
@phendrick@pmarin Visited Sauvie Island many times in my younger years. We always went by boat, which was much easier and faster than the driving/parking/hiking land route. Locals referred to it as “Nipple Beach”.
@pmarin Nope. This sign (believe it or don’t) is from Lake Travis, in the un-Texas (politically, culturally, socially, …) town of Austin. The only officially legal public nudity spot in the whole state.
These types of signs are probably somewhat generic.
@phendrick I haven’t been to Sauvie Island in about 20 years but the sign seems familiar. The weird thing was just seeing a sign like that making it kind-of normal. All the ones I knew in California were ‘park in the unmarked dirt area, walk down a treacherous dirt path, sometimes bordered by poison oak, and at the end you got to the beach’ Some were well-known and others were basically almost deserted most of the year. But it always seemed kind-of ‘illegal’ which made it more fun at the time.
Worked with a bunch of people from Texas but overwhelmingly most agreed that Austin was the place to be (even if they were stuck working in other cities). One guy had to leave T.I. and move to a different company because that was the only way he could relocate to Austin.
@phendrick If I could find the actual supplier that prints these for government agencies I’d buy 2 or 3 of them (there are online places that will custom-make signs but I would want the government-quality ones). One for me and one for my nephew that would get the joke (and possibly need it for his backyard).
@pmarin
I haven’t been to Austin in many years (last was for the funeral of an aunt) but was there many times for conventions. Also had an in-person appt there with TRS when I was retiring. Always enjoyed the city, but it definitely has a different vibe to it. One of the few places where pedestrians would try to block highway traffic. Texas pickup drivers don’t care for that. Place is also noted for the annual SXSW festival, which I’ve thought about attending, but never have. It’s not for nothing their unofficial motto is “Keep Austin weird”.
FWIW, two different summers, I took stairs to the top of the UT tower before the idiot Charles Stewart Whitman went up there with his rifle, resulting in the closure of the observation deck. I was on campus there each time for a special high school program. https://www.britannica.com/event/Texas-Tower-shooting-of-1966 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman For some reason, he has a different middle name on Wikipedia.
Are you going to make sure your nephew invites you and several of his girlfriends once he has the signs up?
@ircon96@pmarin I looked at it all again and came to the conclusion that I’ve had his name wrong all these years. When it was in the contemporary news, he was always referred to as Charles _____ Whitman, with the middle name. Soon after I started thinking of him as “Charles Stewart Whitman” instead of “Charles Joseph Whitman”. I guess I conflated him with “Stewart Whitman”, a popular actor on many TV shows of the period. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Whitman
They actually didn’t close the tower deck over the Whitman massacre.
They closed it a few years later due to several suicide jumpers. My friend was a freshman at the time and I was visiting her when the last one happened.
I remember hearing that the distraught co-ed left her shoes on the observation desk.
That’s the detail that sticks with me other than that they closed the observation deck
This is the Life Magazine cover after the Whitman shootings
The shattered glass is one of the store fronts on the opposite side of Guadalupe Street near the tower
I remember reading an interview with the storefront manager, who I think was running one of the third-party bookstores along the Drag (Guadalupe Sreet near the campus)
He said the news photographer, someone local, who had hooked up a contract with Life, wanted a dramatic, an exclusive photo
So the photographer paid the bookstore manager several hundred dollars in cash
Photographer then took all the shots he needed
And the photographer then kicked/knocked out the remainder of the store window, so that no other photographer could get that news photo
If I recall, the Whitman shootings were America’s intro to random mass shootings of anon victims in a publicly accessible place, that happened because someone was disturbed.
@IndifferentDude Yeah that’s pretty good. Some of them are obviously joke signs but still funny. National Lampoon magazine often had a section with a page of signs like that.
Linoleum Dicks was a classic (and real) I used to drive by it in Campbell CA many times.
The Bat Cave I can attest is real because it’s near Asheville and each time I drive by it I get kind-of a chuckle (never actually got to Bat Cave yet, though).
Climax is a location in Colorado and very likely that sign is real. And Weed is a town in California, think I stayed there once or twice on drives up I-5.
@IndifferentDude Multiple cities have restaurants proudly bearing the name Pho King; there’s one on the north side of Austin that I’ve been seeing for years.
@Kyeh My copy of A Guide To Dog For Hoomins gives the lower half of the first one as “Arf arf woof bow wow yip woof”, but that may be just a local dialect difference. I think this was transcribed from Terrier, and they tend to be a bit more verbose. A Pyrenees can often say more with a stern look than a toy poodle can with sixteen yaps.
Took this pic on a trip to Biloxi. Somewhere between there and Tallahassee we left the interstate to find gas…probably Alabama . My brother rented a huge Mercedes van and most of our family went up for my Daddy’s last vacation. He got a huge kick out of the plunger…
This sign I actually saw in Alaska 30 years ago (maybe this is a new photo, never sure what will pull up)
/image at your own risk road alaska
Yup that’s the one. I can’t remember why I noticed it but possibly it was mentioned as an attraction in The Milepost. Don’t know if it’s still the same, but don’t try driving to Alaska without the guide called The Milepost.
Lake Jackson is I think the home of the original Bucees.
The owners realized that they could get people to go miles out of their way to get gas drinks snacks … if people knew for sure that the bathrooms would be sparkling and everything in the bathrooms always worked right.
And then the owners expanded the concept to the footprint of a Walmart superstore and added in a “worth stopping because you won’t regret it” flavor.
Although it doesn’t count as a sign the farm next to our family farm the guy who owned that planted poison ivy around the perimeter of his farm to go help enforce his “NoTrespassing” sign where then then also put “by order of” and then put his full name. When he decided it was OK for us to go to his upper fields and eat blueberries he laboriously kept the part where we’d cross over between his farm and ours free of poison ivy.
Bare aware:
Staring is impolite; laughing even more so.
@phendrick Think I know that sign. Very possibly the beach on Sauvie Island near Portland. Far end of a long strip (pun intended) of beach on the Columbia River. The rest of the beach which you get to first was for normal clothish-types. Just drive a bit further down the dirt road and then there is a parking area. It was strange that it was so official. But hey, because Portland.
There were well-known beaches of that type in California (near Santa Cruz and Marin County) when I lived there, but at the time they definitely were not officially designated that way.
@phendrick @pmarin Visited Sauvie Island many times in my younger years. We always went by boat, which was much easier and faster than the driving/parking/hiking land route. Locals referred to it as “Nipple Beach”.
@pmarin Nope. This sign (believe it or don’t) is from Lake Travis, in the un-Texas (politically, culturally, socially, …) town of Austin. The only officially legal public nudity spot in the whole state.
These types of signs are probably somewhat generic.
@phendrick I haven’t been to Sauvie Island in about 20 years but the sign seems familiar. The weird thing was just seeing a sign like that making it kind-of normal. All the ones I knew in California were ‘park in the unmarked dirt area, walk down a treacherous dirt path, sometimes bordered by poison oak, and at the end you got to the beach’ Some were well-known and others were basically almost deserted most of the year. But it always seemed kind-of ‘illegal’ which made it more fun at the time.
Worked with a bunch of people from Texas but overwhelmingly most agreed that Austin was the place to be (even if they were stuck working in other cities). One guy had to leave T.I. and move to a different company because that was the only way he could relocate to Austin.
@phendrick If I could find the actual supplier that prints these for government agencies I’d buy 2 or 3 of them (there are online places that will custom-make signs but I would want the government-quality ones). One for me and one for my nephew that would get the joke (and possibly need it for his backyard).
@pmarin
I haven’t been to Austin in many years (last was for the funeral of an aunt) but was there many times for conventions. Also had an in-person appt there with TRS when I was retiring. Always enjoyed the city, but it definitely has a different vibe to it. One of the few places where pedestrians would try to block highway traffic. Texas pickup drivers don’t care for that. Place is also noted for the annual SXSW festival, which I’ve thought about attending, but never have. It’s not for nothing their unofficial motto is “Keep Austin weird”.
FWIW, two different summers, I took stairs to the top of the UT tower before the idiot Charles Stewart Whitman went up there with his rifle, resulting in the closure of the observation deck. I was on campus there each time for a special high school program.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Texas-Tower-shooting-of-1966
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman For some reason, he has a different middle name on Wikipedia.
Are you going to make sure your nephew invites you and several of his girlfriends once he has the signs up?
@phendrick @pmarin I hate to take the wind out of your sails, but the “may” in that sign doesn’t stand for May-December.
@ircon96 @pmarin
December? I haven’t even made it out of June yet!
(And MAY not, with this heat wave. Wait, we only hit 99 today. But I think the heat index was 105. And, yes, making everything sag.)
[Should’ve been “might”, but not as apt.]
g’night
@phendrick @pmarin I’m not sure who has the middle name Stewart, but both articles list his as “Joseph,” which i believe is correct, no?
@ircon96 @pmarin I looked at it all again and came to the conclusion that I’ve had his name wrong all these years. When it was in the contemporary news, he was always referred to as Charles _____ Whitman, with the middle name. Soon after I started thinking of him as “Charles Stewart Whitman” instead of “Charles Joseph Whitman”. I guess I conflated him with “Stewart Whitman”, a popular actor on many TV shows of the period. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Whitman
@ircon96 @pmarin Forgot to mention, by Karma, Stewart Whitman’s father was named Joseph.
@phendrick
Ahh, long lost youth.
Never went up to the top of the tower, tho visited UT constantly during youth childhood etc.
(Family had/has generations of alumni, self included. Season tix galore.)
By the time I was briefly and residence mostly all of Austin smelled like ganja
I’m usually there many times a month just to hang out with an old friend
Austin no longer has that much to do with the Austin of my earlier days
It’s all just techy and money now
Tho with better food, more expensive real estate, a hipper vibe, and far more liberal politics than most of the state
And the landscape can be quite stunning still.
@phendrick @pmarin
They actually didn’t close the tower deck over the Whitman massacre.
They closed it a few years later due to several suicide jumpers. My friend was a freshman at the time and I was visiting her when the last one happened.
I remember hearing that the distraught co-ed left her shoes on the observation desk.
That’s the detail that sticks with me other than that they closed the observation deck
I don’t mean to make light of it in any way.
@f00l That pic does make me nostalgic. The “Hill Country”. And nice and twisty. Miss the motorcycle rides I took through there many moons ago.
@ircon96 @phendrick @pmarin
This is the Life Magazine cover after the Whitman shootings
The shattered glass is one of the store fronts on the opposite side of Guadalupe Street near the tower
I remember reading an interview with the storefront manager, who I think was running one of the third-party bookstores along the Drag (Guadalupe Sreet near the campus)
He said the news photographer, someone local, who had hooked up a contract with Life, wanted a dramatic, an exclusive photo
So the photographer paid the bookstore manager several hundred dollars in cash
Photographer then took all the shots he needed
And the photographer then kicked/knocked out the remainder of the store window, so that no other photographer could get that news photo
If I recall, the Whitman shootings were America’s intro to random mass shootings of anon victims in a publicly accessible place, that happened because someone was disturbed.
@f00l @ircon96 @phendrick well, this discussion of happy nude people sure took a dark turn…
@rockblossom
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Surprised nobody posted this yet!!
@IndifferentDude Yeah that’s pretty good. Some of them are obviously joke signs but still funny. National Lampoon magazine often had a section with a page of signs like that.
Linoleum Dicks was a classic (and real) I used to drive by it in Campbell CA many times.
The Bat Cave I can attest is real because it’s near Asheville and each time I drive by it I get kind-of a chuckle (never actually got to Bat Cave yet, though).
Climax is a location in Colorado and very likely that sign is real. And Weed is a town in California, think I stayed there once or twice on drives up I-5.
@IndifferentDude Multiple cities have restaurants proudly bearing the name Pho King; there’s one on the north side of Austin that I’ve been seeing for years.
@IndifferentDude @werehatrack Don’t know the deal with Huong but apparently there are several restaurants in Texas named Pho Que Huong.
A local news show has a segment called “It’s a Sign!” They invite people to send in good signs they’ve seen. Here’s a few I like:
Actually I think the third one is from Buzzfeed.
@Kyeh My copy of A Guide To Dog For Hoomins gives the lower half of the first one as “Arf arf woof bow wow yip woof”, but that may be just a local dialect difference. I think this was transcribed from Terrier, and they tend to be a bit more verbose. A Pyrenees can often say more with a stern look than a toy poodle can with sixteen yaps.
Took this pic on a trip to Biloxi. Somewhere between there and Tallahassee we left the interstate to find gas…probably Alabama
. My brother rented a huge Mercedes van and most of our family went up for my Daddy’s last vacation. He got a huge kick out of the plunger…
@llangley
Brilliant!
@llangley Saw that on the internet too when I googled funny signs.
Also, the bridge is out.
@blaineg @metz
(Where’s that confounded bridge?)
@2many2no @mediocrebot takes offense at your ‘no brain’ comment. The bots will win in the end.
Resistance is futile.
I have that “just beware” sign on one of our gates. Love it.
I NEED this one!
@blaineg I’m told that signs like this are popular in Tasmania
Lots here, including the first one.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074DV2LGG?f
One of my favorite signs.
@blaineg Is that your motorcycle?
@Kyeh Not mine, but I’ve got a similar photo somewhere. Seems every biker stops to take a photo of that sign.
Lolo Pass, Montana & Idaho.
@f00l it’s a party and you’re all invited!
“Donner, party of fifty, your table is ready.”
@kc5rbq2
“Donner, party of forty nine, your table is ready.”
@blaineg Oh, I like that!
This sign I actually saw in Alaska 30 years ago (maybe this is a new photo, never sure what will pull up)
/image at your own risk road alaska
Yup that’s the one. I can’t remember why I noticed it but possibly it was mentioned as an attraction in The Milepost. Don’t know if it’s still the same, but don’t try driving to Alaska without the guide called The Milepost.
@pmarin Lake Jackson, TX has This Way, That Way, and Any Way.
@pmarin @werehatrack This is somewhere in CO:
@pmarin @werehatrack
Lake Jackson is I think the home of the original Bucees.
The owners realized that they could get people to go miles out of their way to get gas drinks snacks … if people knew for sure that the bathrooms would be sparkling and everything in the bathrooms always worked right.
And then the owners expanded the concept to the footprint of a Walmart superstore and added in a “worth stopping because you won’t regret it” flavor.
@f00l @pmarin @werehatrack
I heard that they’re opening a Buccee’s in Colorado this fall!
Although it doesn’t count as a sign the farm next to our family farm the guy who owned that planted poison ivy around the perimeter of his farm to go help enforce his “NoTrespassing” sign where then then also put “by order of” and then put his full name. When he decided it was OK for us to go to his upper fields and eat blueberries he laboriously kept the part where we’d cross over between his farm and ours free of poison ivy.
There needs to be one that says: “No Trespassing. We are running out of room in the trunk.”.