Category Archives: Snotty Comments on NYC Signs

Mocking double meanings and pretentious language on street signs and ads

Rapid Response Team

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Some signs call for lengthy analysis, and others merit no more than a rapid response. Here are a few particularly odd signs that fall into the second category. From a tech store:

Okay, fine. Can we start by fixing the apostrophe that should appear in the first word of the sign? Then maybe move on to the pronoun-agreement issue (“tablets and phones” and “it”)?

From a department store:

Where, exactly are the little guys being cleared to? I’m not asking why, because as an experienced mother, grandmother, and teacher, I already know that an occasional, short “clearance” of kids is appealing.

Before I move on, I’ll share one thought. Wouldn’t it be nice to imagine the apostrophes missing from the first two signs are having lunch together? And speaking of lunch . . .

Is there anyone who prefers an uncracked egg? Or an egg that cracked a couple of weeks ago but is only now hitting the bagel?

One more mystery:

If it’s a “NO BUTTS BIN,” are you supposed to put the butt in or keep it out? Or — and I prefer this answer — not have a butt at all? And what’s that squiggly mess on the left side? (I saw it up close, and it wasn’t any clearer in person than it is in the photo.)

Please feel free to send in answers to these questions. And if you find two stray apostrophes, tell them to come home to their signs.

A Little Help

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The Beatles got “by with a little help” from their friends, and so do I. These signs come from a cadre of alert observers. Presented with thanks, first to Sharon:

How polite to say, “Please do not become alarmed” immediately before asking passengers to “please use the button marked ‘Alarm.'” Nice to know there’s a “telephone ‘if furnished.'” Impossible to decipher, but nice to know.

Now another, courtesy of Jacqueline:

I have never visited that part of the world, but if I ever do, I will be sure to spend “less than tow nights.”

Another, this time from Don:

What’s with the S and its double duty? Labor-saving? Eco-conscious?

Now a menu from another friend via her friend in Madrid, both of whom prefer not to be named:

This one is a little hard to read (in more ways than one!) so I’ll type the most important line: “Salad with all it must have.” That’s how I always prepare salad. Don’t you?

One more, from my friend Marlene: an ad on Craigslist for a “2 year old Teacher on Long Island (Deer Park).” I don’t have an image for this one, but I’ll let you make your own, complete with a toddler, her grade book, and a bunch of chalk. I wonder whether the school offers free diapers to its faculty? Time-outs for tantrums? Bibs?

Speling Is a Lost Airt

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I don’t normally bother to point out spelling errors in New York City signs, but every once in a while I can’t help myself. Why would someone have a sign professionally printed without running it through spell-check? I admit that spell-check is far from perfect, but still. A glance would have been enough to save this sign from over-consonance:

It would be nice to think that the sign-maker chose “dinning” to emphasize noise-level issues. I’ve often drowned a scarf in sauce while leaning over the table to catch one or two syllables. The background music and the shouts of other diners (dinners?) can be deafening! Alas, I don’t think that was the intention. On the plus side, the hyphens in “off-the-beaten-path” are correct.

Another instance of over-consonance:

When I saw this sign I immediately thought of Nagini, Voldemort’s pet snake. Read it aloud and listen for the hiss in “occassions.” I assume the sign-maker speaks Parseltongue, the snake language of the Harry Potter series.

The consonants are fine in this one, but not the vowels. The sign does, however, accurately reflect the feeling New York’s construction inspires in those of us navigating the city’s sidewalks:

If you’re overwhelmed after exiting the walkway, perhaps you’ll consider dinning out, with a sheet cake to mark the occassion.

Et Tu, NYT?

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I once offered my students extra credit for every grammar error they found in print. Fairly soon I was forced to exclude mistakes from a couple of newspapers. Had I not done so, every kid would have received an A+. It was just too easy! But The New York Times was different. Finding a poorly worded sentence there was tough — then. Now, I’m not so sure.

Here’s a pull-quote that should have been pulled before it hit the screen or page:

Gentile?

What a difference one extra letter makes! I’m not going to speculate about the nature of “gentile” affirmations or how they differ from Jewish affirmations. Instead, I will proceed to another lapse in grammatical judgment.

This pull-quote comes from an obituary:

Surf that was used for D-Day?

I hadn’t realized that it was possible to “use” a surf, let alone “for D-Day.” Misplaced modifier, anyone?

One more, from my archives:

Printed before Amazon selected sites in Virginia and New York.

“Square foot modern.” A new architectural style?

In fairness to my local paper, I have to forgive the editors who overlooked these mistakes. No one’s perfect. As we all know, to err is humane.

Where?

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I don’t allow my phone to broadcast where it is and therefore where I am, because I enjoy whatever shred of privacy I can wring from modern life. I do wish, though, that some signs gave better information about location. For example, imagine you’re driving and come upon this sign:

Bay?

A bay can be a coastal indentation that boats bob around in. It can also be a window or a tree, and sometimes the sound of a hound. Digging deep into the vocabulary of public transportation, you find that a bay is where a bus parks to pick up or drop off passengers. But suppose you’re driving a car on a Manhattan street. What are the odds that you’ll slow down to figure out where the “bay” is, or worse, that you’ll spend so much time thinking about the sign that you’ll overlook the red light in front of you? I stood near this sign for a while, watching cars turn left from any of three lanes, plus a bit of another, which was intended for vehicles traveling in the opposite direction. Redefine bay if you please, but please let it be common usage before it hits the streets.

Another location issue:

Curated how?

I’ve held onto this sign since last autumn, trying to decide what the thrift shop is doing. “Curated” implies careful selection. But “curated by location”? I can only imagine a vast sorting area with workers deciding whether a coat is “totally Chelsea” or “too Upper East Side.” If so, I’d like to see the selection criteria. Wait, actually I would not like to see the selection criteria. I gnash my teeth often enough these days.

Which brings me to this, the best statement about location I’ve come across:

Instant karma

I’ve seen several cryptic messages like this one, sprayed around my neighborhood. They take me back to the early days of Keith Haring’s career, when he pasted black paper over subway ads and then drew barking dogs or radiant children. Am I watching the next street artist develop? Maybe. Even if the artist never achieves Haring- or Banksy-level fame, it’s nice to know where karma comes back: in the shower.

Presented Without Comment

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Actually, presented with only a little comment are these signs and the questions they raised when I saw them. The first involves finance:

4 – 7 p.m.?

I can only hope that the bartender doesn’t get paid by the (happy) hour, which runs from 4 to 7 p.m. I’ve given up correcting signs announcing that you get one cocktail when you buy one. What they really mean is that you get a second cocktail for free if you pay for the first one, but I won’t bother pointing that out. Seriously. I won’t even mention it.

To enter this construction site you need a helicopter:

How do you “sign at 2nd floor first” without passing through the ground floor? I’m giving the sign-writer a pass on “everyone enter” and “be orientated.”

Last one comes from a restaurant for people with extra-strong teeth:

Lacking hyphens, the four adjectives run together and provide interesting food for thought, which is the only sort of food they’re offering, according to this sign. Is it a batch-market or market-fresh? I don’t know or care, but I would prefer not to eat plates, even if they’re made from local clay, scooped out and kiln-fired at the height of the pottery season.

Nouning

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Calvin, of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, says that “verbing weirds language.” So does nouning, my term for changing another part of speech into a noun. I’m not necessarily against the practice, but I must admit that these signs made me pause. (Paused me?) First up is a sign from an outpost of a coffee empire that will remain nameless:

A handcrafted?

The chalk is a bit smudged, but the intent is clear. Buy “a handcrafted” after eleven and you get a cheaper (but not cheap) “lunch item.” I wonder whether employees discuss their favorite handcrafts while they’re on lunch-item break.

Moving on:

A good what?

Yes, I cropped the photo, but no, I didn’t cut any words. Nothing appeared with “daily” except clouds. I snapped this one a couple of years ago, and I still haven’t figured out what it means. Theories welcome.

Last one:

I don’t shop for new “wears” at the dry cleaners, but maybe I should. I’m going to a wedding in a couple of weeks, and even an imperfect wear would come in handy. If you have any cocktail wears you don’t need, let me know. In the meantime, have a good daily.

Year End Thoughts

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With only a few days left before 2018 hits the history books, I’m offering some holiday advice, culled from signs I see in the few NYC stores that haven’t been wiped out by e-tailers.

First, party hearty, but maybe not this hearty:

I took this photo in early December.

I won’t quibble about “Opening on January 2019.” If they are “close” because they’re sampling wine for most of a month, the mistaken preposition is understandable, if not inevitable.

Next, shop locally. I wasn’t kidding about the effect of online commerce on the city’s landscape, and from what I’ve read, the same is true in suburban and rural areas. I’m planning some purchases here:

You never know when you’re going to need an exclamation point!

I don’t wear contact lenses anymore, but I may stop by for new glasses and a couple of spare punctuation marks. A store with a sense of humor deserves to stay in business.

Last, a resolution for the year about to begin:

Grab that handle!

Judging by the headlines, 2019 will be bumpy. To make the world a better place, we all have to “PULL A LITTLE HARDER.” Actually, a lot harder. Happy New Year!

Twenty Something

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Regarding the title of this post: “Twenty,” because that’s the number trending on signs around town. “Something,” because the message of each of these signs means something. I just don’t know what. Take this sign (please, please take it away):

I like a discount as much as the next person, but I’m a little hesitant to buy a “damaged boxes item.” And no, there was nothing under or near the sign to give me context. No damaged boxes, no item.

Here I know what they’re selling, sort of, but there’s still a problem:

Actually, several problems. Once you say “Coca-Cola,” doesn’t that narrow things down, making “beverage” redundant? Are there Coca-Cola sandwiches? Cookies? (Forget I asked. I don’t want to know.) My real issue is with “200Z,” which looks like a serial number. Given the nearby illustration of more sugary beverage than anyone should ever drink, I’m assuming that “200Z” needs a space, as in “20 OZ,” the abbreviated form of “20 ounces.”  I’m not sure whether the pizza crust and sauce under the pair of cheese slices are included in the $5.95 price, but at least the store inserted the hyphen correctly.

I saved the best (actually the worst) for last:

If you hope to meet a regular customer, your odds are 4 out of 5, I guess, because  “today” has “20% new clients.” Actually, new “client’s.” I was tempted to erase the hyphen with my sleeve, but I can’t spend all day deleting apostrophes from NYC signs. I have better things to do, like figure out what the shop offers. The part I glimpsed through the window left me clueless. Besides, the sign may be referring to something belonging to the 20%, in which case the possessive is appropriate.  The only problem, aside from the fact that there’s no indication of what’s possessed, is that the apostrophe should appear after the letter S (the plural form), because “20%” implies more than one person. They can’t chop up one person!  I think at least twenty-something percent of us can agree on that point.

 

Happy Halloween!

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Before or after you hit the trick-or-treat trail, take a minute to enjoy  these holiday photos. This one comes from my friend Milton:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Punking” seems perfectly suited to the “trick” part of the Halloween slogan, don’t you think?

Mary Shelley’s famous novel, Frankenstein, is also a good fit for this holiday. The Morgan Library has a fine exhibit celebrating the 200th anniversary of the monster, who, by the way, has no name and is actually much less monstrous than most of the human characters in the book. (Frankenstein is the name of the doctor who sewed body parts together and animated the creature.) I learned a lot from the exhibition, including this information about early theatrical performances of the classic work:

Leave it to Mary Shelley, inventive in so many ways, to add an apostrophe and the letter S to a row of hyphens to create a possessive form of “the unnameable.”

Once Halloween is over and you’re fighting sugar rush and paying dental bills, you might plan for another holiday, one that tends to be stressful. Show this sign — sent by my friends Pilar, Naomi, and Aracelly — to any of your unruly offspring:

“Behave or I’ll drop you off.” Simple but effective! But before your kids call Children’s Protective Services, be sure to explain that you’re just punking them.