I have a picture.

I also note with mild sorrow that the photo I sent to the Muffler Men section of Roadside America seems to be gone. They had it up for a while, though -- the Muffler King on Jefferson Avenue has a unique feature: iron grillwork over the window, depicting the Muffler King himself. I expect I'll put some of this stuff up on my web page before too long. For the children.

In the town where I grew up there were big neon signs for both Dick's Liquors and Liquor Palms, but I don't think anyone else ever noticed they were funny.

Also a salon called Hair I Am (funnier to Pagans than to most people).

When I was a kid, there was a bar & grill in Okemos whose sign just said BAR - FOOD. These two words lit up alternately, which became very amusing (to me as I was first learning computers) when the D burned out.

The Fly
Gods Must Be Crazy
Aliens.

But it was beaten recently by

Erin Brockavich
Screwed
My Dog Skip

ALIEN
MEATBALLS
ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ

My personal fave: Hoosiers aren't known for their spelling skills. In Indianapolis, a movie marquee abbreviated The Bicentennial Man as "Bi anal Man."

Fran

(Seriously. I also recorded Robbie Benson's lame flick One on One just so I could gawk at the CSU location shots.

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/davea/porosity.html

They were about a half a mile downhill from the Catholic church that had a sign saying PROTECT ALL LIFE FROM CONCEPTION.

I ruminate on college football teams called the Hoplites. Or the Janissaries. Or the Mamelukes. Or maybe not.

My dad was a psych prof at MSU. Tortured rats for a living, and still does. I was in the MSU Tolkein Fellowship, and did a little SCA. I was a member of ALPS while still there; it's how I first met D Potter (I'm sure she wouldn't mind my saying so).

As for your football team names, think about the jokes that must be endured by the poor kids who go to school in Troy, NY.

We also spotted a graffitist who specialised in economy; when faced with a road called

Laurel Grove Mews

he just changed it to

Laurel Grove Mews!

     White Plains -->

NORTH PLAINS (Up Arrow)

OCEAN BEACHES (Left Arrow)

Out of context, we're faced with two *generic* locations. It's as though you've slipped into McGoohan's Village, where's there's one of everything. The Pub. The Record Store. The Grocery. The Pond.

Actually, North Plains is a town, and there are too many beaches to list, I guess. But why not say PACIFIC OCEAN?

Deborah, that "Only" is a prize.

Stefan, my guess is that they say "Ocean Beaches" because that's the specific feature that holiday-makers unfamiliar with the area will be looking for. We get the same thing here. "Atlantic Ocean" could be anything -- loading docks, tidal salt marshes, uninviting rocky coastal bits that are a pain to get to without crossing poison ivy-infested private land, et cetera and so forth. What they want are the broad sandy public beaches with parking lots and restrooms and boardwalks.

Route 50 begins, in the West, outside of Sacramento, CA. Right by the entrance ramp is a sign naming a city in New Jersey -- sorry, I forget the name -- with a distance. Nifty.

That's a very cool site. Highway otaku!

NYC and San Francisco should put up mileage signs at the entrances to the George Washington and Bay Bridges, respectively.

Could be worse - they might live in Vestal, NY ...

Not that any who get good counsel would use that actual BRAND. Yuck.

He always wears a muffler, man.
A muffler, man, a muffler, man.
A raincoat and a muffler, man,
And tries to show he's cool.*

They dragged away the muffler man.
The muffler man, the muffler man.
They put him in a big black van
And sped away downtown.

And there they kept the muffler man.
The muffler man, the muffler man.
They hit him with a frying pan
And darn near broke his crown.

*(Expurgated for the wee ones.)

The remains were purchased by a marine supply store and turned into "Harvey." He now sports a large round head with rabbit ears. The oddly placed hands are used to cradle valentines hearts and other seasonal icons.

There are eateries all over the city that advertise some form of Southern fried chicken; and then there's the one I saw in Spanish Harlem:

Yankee Fried Chicken
Jugos Tropicales

My all-time favorite NYC sign is put up by the city, and hangs from the bottom of a certain traffic lights. It says

WAIT
FOR
GREEN

In the grammar of city street signs it's an intensifier, comparable to our alternate and more emphatic version of the NO PARKING sign. That one goes up in places where they really mean it, like the street in front of the United Nations complex, and says

DON'T EVEN THINK
OF PARKING HERE

I ask no forgiveness for this.

Yes, everyone should wait until the light on street B turns green anyway, but everyone knows that people watch the lights in the rest of the intersection to see what's about to turn (especially vital if you're trying to make a left turn ahead of oncoming traffic). "Wait for green" signs are a warning that this is specifically not a good idea.