Clever vandals are clever

I’ve always had a thing for people who deface street signs or billboards, with one caveat — it has to be clever, or make me laugh. Sometimes, they don’t. Luckily, they often do.

Here’s a three-part gallery (part one, part two, part three) of defaced street signs that (mostly) accomplish that mission!

When I was in Montreal as a young lad, there were bilingual stop signs that said ARRETE / STOP, but francophone activists had taken red paint and covered over the S, the top of the T, part of the O and the round part of the P. That left a message of ARRETE ICI — or “stop here”. I believe that was my introduction to the world of culture jamming, although that term hadn’t been invented yet, or Adbusterized.

On the streets of my home town, I often see pedestrian crosswalk signs — which normally feature a generic walking man — given the “skateboarder” treatment (it’s simple to add a skateboard underneath just about any stick figure) or the “corporate drone” treatment (also, simple to add a briefcase and dollar figures about the head).

Go doodlers!