K-Squared Ramblings

Affluent Flowers

When I first spotted this sign, I just couldn’t believe the name of the florist at the bottom.

Okay, I’m sure people with more money send more flowers, but it seems a little tactless to point it out in the shop’s name.

Of course, it is Irvine…

How does that work?

Wait a minute… how does one lease a tax refund?

California Craziness

Here are some interesting/amusing signs we spotted on our trip to Northern California last month.

This seemed appropriate for a trip to a comic convention. And like the Sylar Industries sign I posted earlier, all it needed was a little adjustment. Can you get a room with the power cosmic? Found in San Simeon, across the highway from our motel. (Keep in mind as you read on that the one on the right is the only doctored photo in the post.)

My personal favorite was this one in Sunnyvale. It’s always nice when city planners (or anyone making a sign, really) have a sense of humor.

Perhaps Mr. Speeder was frustrated by driving this street, somewhere near San Luis Obispo:

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Sylar Industries

Up in Napa, we found this sign at the entrance to Syar Industries.

Being Heroes fans, we couldn’t resist. Not only was the name just one letter off of the show’s popular villain, but the elongated S in the logo was just begging for a trio of crosspieces to turn it into the helix symbol that appears everywhere in the show. A bit of photo-manipulation later:

Ick! Sins!

According to Katie, this actually said “quick sins” the previous time we drove past it!

This shot almost cost us our new car. The sign faces the freeway, and rather than stick Katie with shooting from a moving vehicle at night, I tried to find a good angle from the parking lot. We saw that the lot extended far enough to see around the corner, and headed for the end of the lot. As I prepared to turn into the last space on the end, a truck came zooming around the corner of the next building over, a Carl’s Jr. with a drive-through and absolutely no visibility. Clearly they weren’t expecting to see anyone in the lot at 10:00 at night. Fortunately we both stopped in time.

Also, I now know that the horn works.

Wash Out

Is that like “Bridge Out?” As in the wash has broken down, so isn’t safe for the water to cross? How is the water supposed to read the sign?

Yield to Confusion

Found this while wandering around the Lemon Heights area a few weeks ago, looking for scenic viewpoints. It’s on the Skyline trail, near Peters Canyon park.

It seems to be saying this:

• Cyclists* yield to pedestrians and horses.
• Pedestrians yield to horses.
• Horses yield to no one.

But if you’ve never seen it before, the meaning isn’t clear at a glance.

Apparently the idea is to make everyone stop and try to work out the diagram, so that they can start moving again in the right order.

*Or perhaps only bicycles, since there’s no rider in the picture.

New Age Drinks?

Okay, maybe I’ve missed a memo or something, but can someone tell me: what exactly is a new age drink? Nothing in the aisle stood out as being particularly new-agey.

Icy?

I found this photo while looking for the UCI Student Center pic. This was taken on the way back from a camping trip with UCI’s Campuswide Honors Program in the Angeles National Forest in April 2000. IIRC it was along Angeles Crest Highway.

A permanent sign isn’t necessarily the best way to indicate a transitory condition.

Not a problem

Ordinarily, there wouldn’t be anything odd about this sign. But look at the placement.

Why do they need a No Parking sign in the middle of the lawn? It’s a new sign, too—they just redid the entire lawn last year.

Seriously, I don’t think they’re going to have much of a problem with people parking on the lawn in front of an office building in Irvine.

Come to think of it, though, this is only 50 feet or so from the crosswalk warning device.

Cylon Sighting

Hmm, does anyone else think that the logo on this sign….

…looks a bit like a Cylon Basestar?

Prim(a)tech Sighting

In honor of the Heroes DVD release, here’s a truck that’s almost, but not quite labeled for Primatech Paper:

Interestingly, it’s been a month for timing pop culture releases with relevant astronomical events. First Stardust, all about catching a falling star, arrived in theaters the same weekend as the Perseids meteor shower. Today, the Heroes Season 1 DVD arrives on the same day as a total eclipse (albeit a lunar one, rather than solar).

Vestal dot-what?

This touring bus has an advertisement for the company’s website, but the placement of the handle for the cargo doors is… unfortunate, as it obscures the top of the “o” in “.com”—changing it into an entirely different word.

And weren’t those who dedicated themselves to the service of Vesta called Vestal virgins? I’m just sayin’…

(Once again, I’m afraid to see what search terms are going to bring people here…)

Strange Sights of San Diego

Our first night in San Diego, we picked up our badges for Comic-Con, then went out to see Avenue Q. We took the trolley back, and as we walked up the hill from the Little Italy trolley stop, we saw a pair of giant cartoon eyes looking out over the city from a balcony near the top of a nearby building. I thought they might be satellite dishes with convenient lighting, but then I remembered the number of odd publicity stunts connected to the Simpsons movie. No idea whether it’s related or not.

The shuttle route from our hotel to the con passed by this mural, which plays with the nature of the constructed reality. The wall is a newspaper page. The face is a sculpture, a painting. The hands holding the chisel and paintbrush, of course, are just as artificial as the face being created.

We noticed an interesting coincidence at Horton Plaza. Just a few doors down from the Post Office was an Aeropostale clothing store:

This bench was in front of a hotel, probably the Hilton San Diego Gaslamp. I suppose that makes the pun on dog training more appropriate, since it’s a block away from Petco Park stadium.

I’ve always figured standing out on a street in a mascot costume must be miserable, especially in summer. But how much worse to be dressed as a giant soft drink? I suppose this would go with last year’s walking sandwich.

Now, you have to wonder about AMN Healthcare. It’s clearly a set of initials…but how often do people complain about health, insurance, and the healthcare industry? It’s just one letter off from “Damn Healthcare.”

Back to the shuttle route, next to (or possibly connected to) the Martini Ranch spotted in a previous installment of this series, was this nightclub that made no pretensions about what people are going there for. Also note that it’s a “niteclub” — is that a nightclub with fewer calories?

Then there’s this place, which employed the ultimate euphemism:

That’s got to be the most convolutedly delicate way of saying “sex shop” that I’ve ever seen.

Our fu is complete

The Whole Foods market in Tustin (the only one in Orange County, as far as I can tell), is moving to the new District shopping center going in at the corner of Barranca and Jamboree, on the site of the former MCAS Tustin Marine base. Several of the big box stores are open already, but they haven’t moved yet. In fact, yesterday, they were only part way through putting up the sign:

We drove around a bit, exploring the shopping center and the two segments of road that have been completed so far. Outside the shopping center, there’s not much to see yet except for barren fields and empty lots sweeping back toward the two blimp hangars and, off in the distance, a building complex on the far side of the former base.

Southeast blimp hangar viewed from corner of Tustin Ranch Rd. and Warner Ave.