Item Redeemable for One Free Trip Downtown, See PD For Details

[PepperElf]

I'm not keen on people making any excuse to take a stop or yield sign. We had a kid back in Cali steal a stop sign from a rural intersection. Shortly thereafter a family was short one father after he ran through the intersection and was T-boned by a truck. It's not funny, it's not a harmless prank.

That's an excellent point. It's not harmless.
This is why I advocate... if you want a stop sign that badly for a decoration just buy one.

Hell... single basic stop sign at Safety Sign goes for under $22. Most funerals start at a couple grand.

[Zoom]

Hell... single basic stop sign goes for under $22. Most funerals start at a couple grand.

And most people lost have sentimental value beyond the cost of any funeral. Except for some SCs of course.

[Argabarga]

they can prove it's their sign rather than city property

Except for the lack of a Borough Property Asset sticker on the back of the sign.... I don't see that, I don't take it.

And if they fake one of those, ball's back in their court for forgery

But, we're already thinking about 20 steps ahead of your usual inebriated and juvenile sign-stealer

[fireheart]

Yep. However, quite a few "go missing" during said campaigns. Either they get stolen--quite a few show up in college dorm rooms, or they get removed by property owners.

Politicians down here are bound by a little environmental law, that basically posters are subject to removal immediately after the election, with about a week or two to comply, after that, they get fined for it.

[Racket_Man]

way back in college I actually bought a sign or two (like yield or men working) at a police auction. I hung it on my room door.

[Merriweather]

way back in college I actually bought a sign or two (like yield or men working) at a police auction. I hung it on my room door.

All this talk of a few people buying signs, when most people steal them reminded me of something a bit similar. And definitely not worth it's own thread

When I was a kid, we were traveling once, and stayed in a motel. My sister and I SO wanted to take home a glass from the room (it had the cutest little sleepy bear on it
So we went down to the office and asked the guy at the desk how much it would cost to buy one from them. Once the guy got the amazed look off his face, took him 20 minutes to find some sort of invoice so he could see what they cost the motel, and just charged us some tiny amount that was what they paid for them. Said in all his years working there, no one had ever asked him about buying a glass before, though of course they had to replace them constantly.

[wolfie]

Except for the lack of a Borough Property Asset sticker on the back of the sign.... I don't see that, I don't take it.

And if they fake one of those, ball's back in their court for forgery

But, we're already thinking about 20 steps ahead of your usual inebriated and juvenile sign-stealer

And have any fratboys tried removing the BPA sticker from the back of a stolen sign?

As for the forgery, do you look closely at the sticker to be sure it's genuine (like you do with parking passes), or would something that (deliberately) looks similar but isn't exact (i.e. "Property of Tappa Kegga Bru fraternity") catch you, since after all nobody fakes BPA stickers? Somehow I doubt that a sticker of that nature would result in forgery charges, since anyone reading it would see that it's not a real BPA asset sticker.

On the "substitution" issue, one year my university switched from annual passes to coin-op "pay as you leave" for the student parking. A well-known rowdy group staged a protest, including cutting off the gates and burning them in a bonfire. Of course, the night before the protest, they had removed the real gates and mounted their own, so they weren't destroying campus property - or so they thought. It seems the guys from physical plant chose the same night to replace the gates with ones that didn't have a design flaw (originals were plexiglass, and some people would get a friend to grab the end and bend it back to let them leave), but the campus rowdies had got there first, and physical plant either didn't realize (or didn't care) that they were taking down "made for a prank" gates instead of the originals. Cue a bunch of faces that matched their jackets once the rowdies realized that despite their preparations, they HAD actually destroyed campus property.

[Tiberious]

I'll admit that a street sign (not stop signs, just street names) or three have wound up in our house -- but they were ones which had been knocked over by errant vehicles, with their poles snapped in half by same, which would have had to be replaced anyway ^_^:>

I know exactly what you mean, but I too have had the sign right in front of my place get knocked over like that. I just left it there, figuring they can unbolt the sign from the pole and put it back up. Be far too easy to figure out where it might've gone if it disappeared from the broken fixture.

I left an edit in my post, saying that if I were in the mindset to grab a sign 'from the wild', I know one that I think I would be doing a favor in forcing replacement on.

That said, I wouldn't be so stupid as to take a new one, or anything like a 'Stop' sign, even if it were faded past readability.

[Andara Bledin]

There are only a few times I have been of a mind to abscond with a road sign of any stripe, and that was almost always after someone else had mowed the thing down.

^-.-^

[Kagato]

This is going back quite a few years, but I remember back when I was living in Australia for a short time there was a stop sign that was pretty much so faded that all you could see was the octagonal shape. Someone ended up taking down the old one and stapling up a piece of cardboard that was spraypainted red with the word STOP scrawled on it in white paint.

Strangely enough, about a week after that happened it was taken down and replaced with a proper sign. Guess they just needed some motivation in hindsight.

[Javarod]

Probably because they don't want anyone to take the signs and then hang them up by a road somewhere and cause problems.

Bill Cosby in his "Driving in San Francisco" bit mentioned something like that upon seeing a stop sign at the top of a particularly steep hill.

"You gotta be kidding! NOBODY in their right mind puts a stop sign at the top of a hill like this. I figure the city didn't do it; some nut went down to the Army-Navy store got himself a stop sign, has a spy glass....'Look Martha we caught somebody down there.'"

Holy crap, i thought i was the only person who still remembers that bit.

[Sapphire Silk]

My parents found a yellow stop sign in the attic of the house where I grew up.

I once found a Yield sign in the basement of a house I lived in. Displayed it for a bit, realized it was ugly, and put it back in the basement.

[Jester]

Ah, sign thievery. I remember doing some of that in college. Of course, we were bright enough to (A) only steal the sign, not the entire post, and (B) never steal a STOP sign or anything like that that could endanger someone. Inconvenience, maybe ("Where the hell IS Green Street?!?!?"), but not endanger.

I also stole a traffic cone once. No idea why. Just wanted it, and picked it up as I was walking by. Spent a couple of years in my apartment.

Speaking of stolen street signs, down here in Key West, we have one of the most stolen street signs in the country. It's become a running joke, as the city has to replace it several times a year as tourists find ways to steal it without the cops catching them, though of course a few of them get caught each year, too. Part of the irony of all of this is that the sign in question is directly across the street from the county courthouse, but of course most of the thievery of said sign is done at night, when the courthouse is not open for business.

What is this sign of which I speak? It's at the end of US1 (though not of the street it's on, oddly), and while a lot of people find the "End US1" sign cool, that is not the one stolen. It's the sign BELOW the "End US1" sign that everyone steals. The Mile Marker Zero sign, seen below.



Of course, several shops in town sell "Mile Zero" signs that look identical to the one pictured above. But naturally, people want THE "Mile Zero" sign...despite the fact that there have literally been hundreds of The "Mile Zero" sign.

A little detour off topic: one of my best and most amusing sign thefts was not a road sign, or even really a sign at all. I was at a bar in Tempe that I frequented regularly, and it was around St. Patrick's Day, sometime in the early Nineties. And they had this amazing lifesize cardboard cutout/standup of Kathy Ireland commemorating the holiday. And I decided that I needed to liberate Kathy from the bar. Now, even folded in half (as it was designed to do), this thing was not exactly small, so getting it out of the bar would not be easy. But luckily, I had the help of the staff, who directed me which way to go to avoid both the managers and the cameras. (I was a regular there, and the staff liked me, clearly.) And away I went with Kathy, who stood in my bedroom for a couple years...much to the displeasure of my girlfriend at the time, Blondie.

Considering the school, I can't say I'm surprised. :P
Most of them are there to get drunk and party.

You mean there are other reasons to go to college?

At one point he also had 18 flags that were used to make the holes on a golf course. The course he liberated them from only has 9 holes. He returned them 2 years later with a note saying 'Sorry, I was really drunk.

That's freakin' hilarious!!!!

The towing manager told me back in his tow truck driving days he once pulled up to a red light next to a pickup and noticed that 2 of our "Private Parking" signs were in the bed of the truck. He promptly got out, and took both of them out of the bed. The redneck driver demanded to know "WHAT THE F*** YA THINK YOU'RE DOING?!"

"Taking back our property" the manager responded

The redneck thought about it for a second, and then quietly drove off....

As is that!

[julchen]

My father has a funny story about sign theft. He lives in a university district, so he sees plenty of stupid behavior, but three years ago he had some neighbors who took the cake. These guys decided to display a sign on the front of their rental house.

The problem? It read in part, "No trespassing by order of the United States Air Force."

That's right. These geniuses put up a sign they had stolen from a military installation on the front of their house. Five minutes after my dad (gleefully!) called the cops, the sign was down and in the trunk of a police car. The sign thieves got evicted two months later due to this and other, ongoing problems.

[Argabarga]

My father has a funny story about sign theft. He lives in a university district, so he sees plenty of stupid behavior, but three years ago he had some neighbors who took the cake. These guys decided to display a sign on the front of their rental house.

The problem? It read in part, "No trespassing by order of the United States Air Force."

That's right. These geniuses put up a sign they had stolen from a military installation on the front of their house. Five minutes after my dad (gleefully!) called the cops, the sign was down and in the trunk of a police car. The sign thieves got evicted two months later due to this and other, ongoing problems.

That's some special stupid right there, now they're on the hit list of both the boys in blue, and the boys in dress blues....... nice going!