This particular piece of graffiti has been on the Chalfont Railway viaduct, through which the M25 London Orbital motorway passes, has carried the slogan “Give Peas a Chance” for many years, and never ceases to get some attention. I’m not normally a fan of graffiti and it might not be a Banksy, but I bet you can see the appeal of this during a motorway journey. Allegedly, it refers to a campaign to support a London based graffiti artist, known as Peas.
Should we give peas a chance? And what’s your favourite motorway graffiti?
In my hometown…..http://www.reformer.com/localnews/ci_26151762/mary-shiminski-who-loves-you-36-year-mystery
“Visualize Whirled Peas.”
Yup saw that on a bumper sticker on a first generation Honda CR-V. It made me think of the UK though since they seem to like creamed peas across the pond.
I would bring a bumper sticker like that from the US just to keep (there’s no way in hell I would stick anything in a car) There are other funny ones: “Shave the Whales!”
And offensive ones, like one I saw in the interwebs that says “Jesus loves you. Everyone else thinks you’re an @$$hole”
And the imagination for those is yet to finish
My favorites are when I see “________ marry me!” I always wonder if that worked and what the approximate ages of the parties involved were.
I’m going to be driving from Gallup, NM to San Diego, CA in mid October. I’ll have to keep an eye out for unusual graffiti.
Well I remember some graffiti you will see maybe 15 or 20 miles west of Gallup on I-40 and just after you cross the border into Arizona. It is those fake animals up on the cliff on the north side of the interstate. I guess that is graffiti too.
That’s not graffiti, that’s advertising. 🙂
What’s interesting is that you do occasionally see graffiti written in the Navajo language. That’s interesting because so few speakers actually know how to read or write it.
When graffiti (well, not the artistic one but the vandalism one) was done a lot by these sides I used to see those a lot, saying “I love *insert random name of girl here*”… I also thought that was really weird…
The railroad viaduct over Rt 127 in Pinkneyville, Illinois, has long had “I was on the grassy knoll” painted on it.
A bad reference to the JFK assassination.
I’ve been telling my kids to “Give peas a chance” for a long time. If I saw that graffiti and didn’t know the reference I would have assumed that it was painted by a similarly frustrated parent. One who didn’t mind heights.
For years, there was some great graffiti on an overpass in northwest DC on the beltway. The overpass crossed I-495 just as it crested a hill – if you were driving westbound, the LDS church in NW DC, a glittering edifice with tall, impressive spires would rise majestically out of the horizon.
Painted on the overpass: “Surrender Dorothy”
You beat me to it — that one was a classic and lasted for many years. The huge cathedral with the towering spires definitely looked like the Emerald City as depicted in the 1939 movie.
I can think of two-painted on a large rock on Route 9W overlooking the Hudson River was “My Volvo Muy Mal”. It was done in the late 60s. Guess it will remain a mystery.
The other one was more vandalism than graffiti. Overlooking the NY Thruway north of Suffern was MOTEL ON THE MOUNTAIN spelled out in tall letters visible down in the valley a good distance away. When it became a gay bar/hideaway some enterprising vandals removed the TEL.
Many years back we had a railroad overpass over West 130th Street in Cleveland tagged “TRUCK STOP HERE”, it was a wee bit low and had a nasty habit of tearing the roofs off unwary trucks and trailers.
An overpass in my town said Jim Morrison Lives on it for the longest time.
I saw a picture of a business called “Johnsons Tool Works”. Someone spray painted on the wall under the sign, “So does mine!”
Not graffiti, but it ought to be.
That caused me to spit out the water in my mouth when I saw it just now. Thanks for posing it, I needed a laugh.
somewhere in east lansing, mi is a railroad bridge with the word “LIONEL” spray painted on the side. done really well too as it’s not freehand but with a stencil, quite large and in the font that Lionel used.
i still chuckle at that one even though it has been almost 2 decades. damn. almost 2 decades …. i wonder if it is even still there.
I remember that, but I think you have the wrong college. The Lionel bridge was in Ann Arbor, not East Lansing.
dan, may be more than one. i never lived in ann arbor.
I saw one in Switzerland of all places, that said [in English], “Homophobia is gay !” .
For 40 years or so a railroad bridge in my town said “GOD BLESS REED MCCORMICK”. He was a student RA at Dickinson College and his dormmates pranked him, only to have it stay there. He is now an attorney in State College. People still ask about it even though its been gone for more than a decade.
Here’s the story: http://cumberlink.com/news/opinion/columnists/rich_lewis/subway-and-slate-both-clean/article_743382bb-d679-58b1-a676-4b958f9bfa98.html
There is a Philadelphia suburb called Devon. For many years local music fans would paint over the “n” on the exit from US202, leaving “Devo”. As soon as it was cleaned it was painted again. This lasted from the late 70s through at least the early 90s.
I question the reference to the graffiti artist.
my thought is more an intentional play on or badly spelled john lennon reference;
“give peace a chance”
Congratulations, you got the joke.
The inner ring road around Boston is Route 128. The State of Massachusetts started promoting it as “America’s Technology Highway” in the 1970s, reflecting the rise of the minicomputer business in the Boston area. At about the same time, someone painted “THINK” in large white letters on a rusting railway overpass that crossed 128. Those words stayed there for decades. I always wondered if that was an ironic reference to IBM’s motto (IBM was never a strong player in minicomputers), or if it had nothing to do at all with technology.
Does anyone remember the original IBM Think pad … not a laptop or even computer, but a small leather-covered pocket notepad with the word THINK embossed on the cover. Long before any laptops existed. I used to have one but it’s been missing for decades now.
Many years ago, a group of high school students from Butte, Montana chose to antagonize their sports rivals in nearby Anaconda, Montana by taking old railroad ties from the abandoned railroad just outside of town and positioning them on the side of a pile of slag, in front of the copper smelter just outside of Anaconda and they wrote out the words, “BUTTE RATS.”
Then the Anaconda kids went and rearranged the ties and added a few so that it said, “BUTTE EATS SHIT.”
Another favorite thing to do in Montana was to find a sign pointing to the town of Ennis, or that said how many miles away it was, and to then go and paint a “P” in front of it. (Most of the Ps were done sloppily with spray paint, but every once in a while someone would paint one that would be very professionally done and that was difficult to tell that the sign had been tampered with.)
Many years ago in Tel Aviv: “reinstate British rule” as a response to the incompetence of the Israeli administration…
1939 and a member of Australia’s conservative government,in 1939 he became prime minister,was the key government figure in a battle with waterside workers.The workers refused to load ships with scrap iron destined for sale to Imperial Japan.His name was Robert [Bob] Menzies.Much of Australia’s remarkable and heritage ironwork was sold to Japan and many older Australians say the iron came back in bullets.Menzies was referred to as “Pig Iron Bob”.!978 Bob died and while driving me and then girlfriend through the once inner city industrial suburbs of Melbourne,in my 1972 VW Dormobile camper,we noticed on a very high brick wall someone had painted in large letters,”Ashes to Ashes,Dust to Dust,May Pig Iron Bob Turn to Rust”.
Years ago while driving the Hume Highway from Melbourne to Sydney I passed the sign for the small town of Bookham. Someone had stuck a banner below the town name reading “Danno”.
(“Book ’em Danno”, catchphrase from the old Hawaii Five-0)
And in north Queensland I saw someone had amended a “Dip” road sign with “in the heart of Texas”. I mailed the pic to Car and Driver who published it in their ‘funny roadsigns’ feature and sent me a check.
From 1976 to 1985 I worked for Tasmania’s capital city council,Hobart,in the Town Clerk’s Department.A very conservative organisation which I often referred to as the lowest form of government and indeed it was.One night my girlfriend and me and a TV reporter from our national broadcaster were walking across the lawns of historic Salamanca Place to eat at one of the many restaurants there.A new installation was a brick circle with one large and one smaller metal whaling pots,originally used to boil whale blubber.In front of the pots and cemented into the brick circle was a metal post with a frame and perspex and a black pegboard with white letters which read “Historic whaling pots” and below that “Plaque and history to be erected at a later date”.We laughed a lot.
On a bill board that stated “Jesus Saves” someone had sprayed painted “Green Stamps”.
The entire sign came down within a few days.
Sign for Newburyport, Mass. said “Historic Newburyport”. Some one modified it to ” PREHistoric Newburyport”.
When I was younger I lived in an apartment that was right next to train tracks that had an old stone tunnel from the 19th century running beneath the tracks for cars. At some point somebody decided it sounded like a grand idea to take a paintbrush and paint the entire set of lyrics to Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” on one of the tunnel walls. Considering the highschool was across the road they had the students paint the tunnel in the school’s colours with the local motto the next year to cover it up. And the person who did it struck back with Eagle Eye Cherry’s “Save Tonight.” This went on for three months as the perpetrator put up song lyrics and the highschool painted it over until somebody painted the tunnel totally white. It’s been like that for thirteen years now, and the last time I checked the paint had started to chip away and you could see all the colours and words underneath.
It’s not graffiti but a funny story. In The Forks, Maine the sign for the town is carved in granite that the population is 30. When tourists would ask how the sign gets changed if someone has a baby the joke used to be that the population never changes because every time a baby is born, a man leaves town.
Just North of Frogtown (outside of Los Angeles) visible off Interstate 5 was a viaduct spanning the Los Angeles River saying ” VISIT SAN FRANSISCO ” for many years .
They began to clean up the trash and weed filled river and re painted the pipe, covering the words .
-Nate
Name sign on a long gone grocery store in my native Marblehead, MA was for Penni’s Market.
Remove some characters and what do you get? The store management gave up on replacing the missing characters and put a checkerboard pattern there for some odd reason. This was popular from the 60’s until the business burned down in the late 80’s.
In my current hometown of Manchester NH, I just see gang, or wannabe gang grafitti. I drive past one poor ’73 Chevy Laguna S-3 that has had one side tagged repeatedly, and now with a smashed window. Aside from that- just a persistent website sprayed on underpasses for some 9/11 Conspiracy thing.
Saw this in Palm Springs, where pedestrians are told to stand up and be truthful.
Not really graffiti, but the first time I saw this sign, I had to do a double take!
This one I don’t know if it’s true, but I ROFL’ed hard when I saw the pic
Graffiti is an eyesore and should be punished horribly. Singapore is too soft on vandals.
Two:
Like redwagon above, “Lionel” painted on a RR overpass. That never gets old.
Sign graffiti?? This one might be one of the best
“Agnes Moorehead Is God” on the side of a wall near Ivar and Hollywood Blvd.
Not graffiti but automobile related so here goes. About 15 years ago I saw an S-class Mercedes in a parking structure in St. Louis with a Missouri license plate that read “HMFIC”, it made me smile then and I still smile whenever I think about it. Truth in advertising I suppose.
“Surrender Dorothy” painted on the Chessie System Bridge over the DC Beltway with the view of the four spires of the Mormon Temple in the background.
My favourite roadside graffiti ever has been on a corrugated iron fence perpendicular to the road in rural New Zealand for as long as I can remember (35+ years!) and reads “Land Rights For Gay Whales Against Patriarchy”. Certainly covered the bulk of the special interest groups in late 1970s-early 1980s New Zealand!
Found this on a Men’s room door at a service station:
Someone climbed the water tower in my hometown when I was in high school and painted welcome to hooterville.
There were these at this link:
http://www.verbicidemagazine.com/2013/04/06/funny-graffiti-improving-signs-ads/