A (somewhat misguided) sign from above

Someone goofed
London, ON
March 2014
This photo supports Thematic's "look way up" theme. Click here to participate.

I feel a little guilty sharing this one. On the one hand, I love my city. And I'm mighty proud of its long-overdue decision to overhaul the London.ca municipal website after years of letting it gather dust, the electronic-era equivalent of an unrenovated, unloved, dilapidated house. It its newly burnished form, it's finally a worthy reflection of the place it both reflects and supports. I even lauded it in a London Free Press article.

But then I came across this sign, hung rather prominently from the overpass on Wellington Road, a deliberately chosen spot over a high-profile stretch of road that serves as a literal and physical gateway to the downtown core. The wording here is no accident. The boo-boo that put the "4.0m" height-warning safety sign over the last half of "city" almost certainly is.

While I appreciate not having tractor-trailers wedged under the overpass on their way toward delivering cheaply made resin lawn furniture to the Evilmart stores in the far-off, downtown-killing suburbs, I can't believe that someone didn't measure the position of the inviolable, immovable, clearly necessary safety sign and then plan the graphics and/or sign mounting around it. The cynics among us might conclude that whoever was responsible for this latest bit of civic-friendly - and funded - marketing just didn't care.

We've spent much of the past year arguing over, and being charged for, such idiocies DaleTV, as taxpayer-funded video equipment purchased by a somewhat misguided councillor who fancies himself a YouTube megastar (and then has the audacity to claim he's keeping the hardware after he retires), and taxpayer-funded blue-chip lawyers' fees to advise a mayor and councillors who wouldn't know how to do the right thing if it were spelled out in giant-size Alpha-Bits cereal characters outside City Hall.

Perhaps we've been too focused on the circus that is London municipal politics instead of on basic execution of critical pieces of the city's marketing strategy. Assuming there's even a strategy to begin with.

The November election can't get here soon enough. Because two missing letters say more about what's missing in London than the rest of a screaming-green, giant-sized banner ever could.

Your turn: Sign fails are easy photographic pickings. Got one to share? If so, head here.