Signspotting © 2000 - 2008 | SITE BY FIDJELAND
My own journey had little to do with signs. I set out to hitchhike from Florida to South America on private yachts in 1992. It was a half-baked plan at best, and I only made it as far as the Virgin Islands. The only reason I even made it that far was because I got onto a commercial airplane and flew there. Once on St. Thomas, though, I did manage to get crew work onboard a 25-meter custom-made catamaran with a Jacuzzi built into the stern deck.
That job didn't last more than a week, but my six-month trip metastasized into a two-and-half-year world jaunt with pit stops in the French Alps to work as a snowmobile guide and Israel to pick bananas on a Kibbutz and Bali to be a DJ at Club Med. I returned home and, much to my parents' dismay, all I wanted to do was keep traveling. I leafed through a waist-high stack of photos from the trip and wondered who I could subject them to. It doesn't take long to figure out that even your closest friends don't have patience for more than about 20 minutes of picture flipping.
So I whittled the stack down to a manageable selection about the thickness of a paperback. I had
That job didn't last more than a week, but my six-month trip metastasized into a two-and-half-year world jaunt with pit stops in the French Alps to work as a snowmobile guide and Israel to pick bananas on a Kibbutz and Bali to be a DJ at Club Med. I returned home and, much to my parents' dismay, all I wanted to do was keep traveling. I leafed through a waist-high stack of photos from the trip and wondered who I could subject them to. It doesn't take long to figure out that even your closest friends don't have patience for more than about 20 minutes of picture flipping.
So I whittled the stack down to a manageable selection about the thickness of a paperback. I had
snapped some pics of a few funny signs while I was traveling but I didn't think much of it at the time. When sorting through my stack, I realized that some of the sign photos were in fact among the most entertaining. Maybe it was because I was such a crap photographer and those turned out better than many of the others. After all, photographing signs is relatively idiot-proof. They're standing still and dressed in bright, reflective colors. Hard to screw that up.
Looking back, the sign pics I had in that collection weren't all that impressive. There was an "Infart" sign from Sweden, a "Bad+Toilet" sign from Denmark (a formula for disaster), a "Butts Wynd"
Looking back, the sign pics I had in that collection weren't all that impressive. There was an "Infart" sign from Sweden, a "Bad+Toilet" sign from Denmark (a formula for disaster), a "Butts Wynd"