Out of all of the stickers I've found over the last couple of years, I do believe this may be the weirdest. It's not every day you come across an accusation involving a mayor, drug money, and Sasquatch. Now I'll admit I don't know much about Sasquatch/ Bigfoot, this isn't something I've ever put much stock in and therefore never bothered to look into before. I will admit that I do find it interesting how much of a following this cryptid gets. I mean there's actually 11 seasons of a TV show on Animal Planet just focused on people attempting to find this fictional creature. But while I may not think too much of this creature, Allegheny County certainly does. Sightings by people from the area are the highest in the state, although the state as a whole does fall behind places like Florida and Oregon. Along with the oddity of Sasquatch there is also the fact that this has an element of a conspiracy surrounding it. I mean there are all the bits that will make any good conspiracy story: the local government is involved, drug money is being used to fund unrelated tasks, and there is an exposé on a website mentioned at the bottom of the sticker. Although I have to wonder what exactly a Sasquatch farm would do. Would they help cultivate more Sasquatch to put out in the wild or for slaughter? Or is it a farm that uses Sasquatch labor to perform the every day tasks?
Going to the Sloover.com unfortunately doesn't really explain the story behind this sticker. Well it could but the man behind this site is a fairly frequent poster. I think the site said I was on page 12 of it and I was only in June of this year. Looking through the posts I have to say it is certainly an interesting collection of things on there. In many ways it feels like a place where the author just lets his mind wander. Sloover is run by a man who works in a warehouse as well as write and play music on the side. There isn't too much about him in the about section or the bio but he does seem to be a fairly well traveled individual. He apparently has appeared on Pittsburgh's KDKA in the past and now seems to be residing in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His page is filled with Youtube videos of songs he feels fit his mood for that day and brief posts about those small things that make his life. There are also far more political leaning discussions squeezed in there, just for good measure. While I couldn't find definitive proof that this sticker is his, I don't feel like it's a far stretch to assume that this is the mind behind it. Since he has spent some time here in Pittsburgh, it does make me wonder if the mayor creating this apparent scandal is in fact Peduto or one of his predecessors. It's quite reasonable that the man is just making a generic statement to shock people into visiting his site or it could be targeted towards a specific individual. Either way, you've got to watch out for the Sasquatch scandals.
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So the last time I featured a heart sticker it was an anatomically correct version by the artist Jeremy Raymer. Or at least I've come around to thinking that it's one of his since it's featured in his Instagram feed multiple times, but I digress. Since I wasn't sure who created it at the time I featured it, I ended up looking at how the more traditional heart symbol developed and what an anatomically correct one represented. Tonight's sticker is clearly an example of the more socially acceptable symbol, well at least the base of this image is. Like any piece of art though, it is certainly a bit more complex once you start looking at it. The heart is generally used a symbol for love and affection. What makes this particular heart interesting is that it's bleeding, which as a phrase is typically used to disparage someone who is showing excessive sympathy for people of alleged persecution. Often this just means that you are liberal and are being called a bleeding heart because you again seem to be throwing a fit over some new "outrage." And while this may be a bleeding heart, it is also silenced. With the x over that spot you would normally associate with a mouth, it's an easy jump to the idea that this sticker is keeping it's mouth shut. Now it becomes a question of whether this silence is self-induced, out of a sense of fear of those around them not understanding, or if it is imposed on it by the society around them. Being a bleeding heart tends to be a dangerous thing nowadays.
I fully admit that I am probably reading way too much into this sticker. Looking through the creator's work I can't say that I really found an in depth discussion of why he made this particular image. But then again I have to put that English degree I'm still paying for to some use right. The man behind this sticker is known by the tag Grizzye. Browsing through his Instagram it looks like he started off as a street photographer and has gradually worked his way into more illustrative work. A lot of his doodling tends to be done over photos, making fairly original mixed media pieces. I tried to watch his artist statement that he made on Vimeo, to get a better idea of who he is, but my computer decided it was time to be uncooperative. One site that I found featuring Grizzye and his work mentioned that he is currently located in New York City and only about 18. It's little tidbits like this that keep me fascinated with these stickers. Seeing the wide variety of people who create these little pieces of daily art and how they manage to migrate around the country will always keep me enthralled. I have to say it'll be interesting to see where Grizzye goes in the future, he's certainly off to an intriguing start. Sorry, I accidentally dozed off as soon as I got back from work and as a result I didn't give myself time to do this sticker justice. I could try to do more research on it and just post late, like I normally do, but I still feel like I'm going to pass out any second. So I figured I'd share my short thoughts on the image tonight and do a real post another time. I know I've got a few exposures of this sticker, it's just a matter of figuring out which one I like other than this one. Hmm now the big question is what to talk about tonight. I guess what I like the most about this sticker is that I don't quite know what it is depicting. You have a cartoon man in plaid that looks like he could come out of Sunday comic strip or maybe Guess Who. He is surrounded by a little cloud of smoke and has a spooky border along the edge. So he could be a ghost of some kind, a grumpy one that sits around annoyed with the living. Or he could be exploring an old house and this is the dust settling around him. I mean there are bats and cobwebs on the sticker as well that works with this idea. I've also gotten a bit of a Adams Family vibe from this sticker, probably just those adorably spooky elements from the border. It also feels like it could belong in a card game of some kind. I'm interested in seeing if this is something I can managed to find a creator for, to find out if this is their typical style. Well until I try to find it for real, I guess that's it for now. Night folks.
Since it is the end of the month, I guess I will finally concede that it is now the Christmas season. It isn't that I hate the holiday, I just strongly dislike the pomp and circumstance that surrounds it. Decorations start to appear in the stores in October while the streets and public places hang garland and lights in the middle of November. Every commercial is about how you need to find those perfect gifts and you can't escape the freaking Christmas music. I honestly admit that I avoid pulling my Christmas tree out until the very last minute, if at all some years. It just gets to be too much for me and every year it seems like the season is getting longer. Now there are elements I enjoy, even a couple of songs that I don't mind. I like the holiday parties people tend to organize and the Christmas baking. I enjoy looking for gifts for people, trying to think of those little things that feel right for each individual. And I really love what few family traditions we have. One of which does actually tie into tonight's sticker, I promise. Growing up we had a couple of holiday specials and movies that we always watched to get in the mood. There was Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, the original How the Grinch Stole Christmas, multiple viewings of A Christmas Story, and most of the Rankin/Bass collection. One of my personal favorites though was always A Charlie Brown Christmas. I can't really explain why I love this special so much but I always make sure I watch it each and every year. I mean I've always been a bit of a Peanuts fan but I'm certainly not a die hard one. Even though I'm pretty sure my only real exposure to the Peanut's gang were the holiday specials and the occasional Sunday comic strip, they are something I am regularly drawn to. One of my favorite shirts is actually a Snoopy shirt. Going back to the Christmas special though, I think what makes it so timeless is how simple it is. There isn't some grand adventure, the holiday doesn't "need" to be saved, and they fully admit that even in the 60's this holiday had its issues. Everyone but Charlie Brown is more concerned about the gifts and celebrations than they are about the "true" meaning of Christmas. Now I'm not saying Christmas needs to be about Christ but I do like that mildly playful reminder that there is more to the holiday than just the pomp and circumstance. Tonight's sticker is of Snoopy while he is pretending to be the famous World War I Flying Ace. Sitting on top his dog house, Snoopy flies the air above Europe fighting the dangerous Red Baron. It's always a very dramatic battle and generally ends with Snoopy landing his "plane" full of holes. I'm pretty sure this may be one of the more iconic appearances of Snoopy, other than Joe Cool obviously. This version is so popular that there are actually two older video games out there where you battle the Red Baron, Snoopy and the Red Baron and Snoopy vs the Red Baron. I was a little surprised when I found this sticker on the street but it looks like Snoopy is a bit of thing here in Pittsburgh. I found a couple of images where they gave Snoopy a Steelers logo or where he's dancing in front of some trophies. Apparently there was even a bit of a local scandal involving a wooden Snoopy and his house being taken from Boulevard of the Allies years ago. While he doesn't technically show up in the Christmas special, the World War I Flying Ace does have his own Christmas song. It's a terribly kitschy thing recorded by a group called the Royal Guardsmen that details a fight and celebration between Snoopy and the baron. It is one of the few Christmas songs that I can't say I hear 30 times a week though, probably because it is such an odd thing. I adore a good mystery whether it's a well-developed plot twist in the TV show I'm watching, a classic bit of Film Noir where the witty private eye manages to stumble into the solution, or a beautifully crafted novel by one of the greats. I love that slow build up of tension as the details of the crime are divulged and all of the puzzle pieces come together. Those occasional moments where you happen to pick up on the essential clue that lets you figure the mystery out for yourself. The final breakdowns that explains all the bits you missed and dissects the human psyche. Now I can't quite recall if my love of mysteries has always been around, I definitely remember Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Great Mouse Detective being favorites of mine growing up, but college was definitely the clincher. My favorite class throughout my four years at Pitt was definitely Detective Fiction. Sure I enjoyed my photography classes and watching the development of the movie industry, however I just loved reading and discussing the wide variety of interpretations there are of the detective. Luckily for me, my general love of mysteries and puzzles has paid off since a reasonable amount of the recent trends seem to focus on these elements.
Tonight's sticker is an advertisement for one of the many Escape Rooms that have popped up all over the city. For those that haven't been exposed to the concept, an Escape Room is a themed room that you get locked into for an hour with the goal of finding the many clues that will eventually let you get out before time runs out. It's a truly intriguing concept although I will admit that I was a bit skeptical when I first heard about them. I happened to be out of town when my group of friends discovered their first room, so I just saw the excited posts on Facebook about their experience. I had a fairly hard time wrapping my head around the concept of paying to have someone else lock you in a room, for an hour... for fun. But after a while my friends ended up getting me to my first room, Escape the Room's The Newsroom. Apparently this was not the best one to start with, as all of my friends profusely apologized afterwards for it. I personally was just baffled with what to do for most of it. Since everyone else had done so many other rooms before, they all had a vague idea of what needed to pushed or looked at so I did a lot of standing around. At this point I've added two more rooms to my repertoire, The Haunted Dollhouse and IQ Escape's Contagion. Admittedly it's been a bit of a mixed bag for me so far but I'm still intrigued by them. Now as far as I can remember, I don't think anyone I know has attempted Daring Escapes although I've generally lost track of who's done what at this point. Daring Escapes looks to be located in the Shadyside/ East Liberty area of the city, which kind of surprised me. Somehow I've managed to not realize that there was one located near me, well another one since the Dollhouse is over on Ellsworth. This company seems to only have two rooms for you to try, a zombie themed one and a cabin in the woods one. It looks like the zombie themed one is the bigger of the two, since it has more of a description on the site. I will admit it is a bit of a different concept, you're locked in a room with a zombie who will actually slowly gain more access to the room as its chain gets loosened every five minutes you stay in there. It also seems like the company specializes in doing large group events with the intent of team building. Unlike most of the rooms I've been to where they just give you a bit of a rundown on the items or clues that you may have overlooked, this company appears to analyze the group's performance and tell you how you could have actually done better. It certainly seems like a different way to work on a team's cohesion but I will admit that I'd be hesitant to try one of these without being good friends with the people in there. On the other hand it's not like I've gotten out of enough of these to actually have a solid opinion. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Unfortunately, I have to admit that I don't quite have a complete idea for tonight's post. I ended up spending a good portion of the day in the kitchen cooking or just sitting around chilling with my family, so this is a bit of an after thought. While I was looking through my photos to find a post for tonight, I stumbled across this find from Lawrenceville. Maybe it's just because I was in a bit of a "Susie Homemaker" mode with my cooking but this sticker struck me as an appropriate image for tonight. I like how realistic it feels and its subdued coloring, although that could just be a result of the normal wear and tear of being outside. Its style gives me that vibe of the late 40s/50s housewife, something that feels mildly reminiscent of Norman Rockwell or Edward Hopper. I can't quite pinpoint why it reminds me of Rockwell or Hopper though, it might just be the combination of her hairstyle and the fact that she's leaning forward with a plate. Even though I get that homemaker vibe from the sticker, I honestly have no idea what she's actually doing. If you look closely at the image the woman is holding a plate of something red, so it could be tomato sauce, paint, or even blood if you feel like going dark. Her other hand appears to be covered in the red from the plate and is putting it on the counter. There might be dough or something similar in front of her but that seems like an odd way of transferring things. However other than cooking, I really have no other ideas as what this sticker could be illustrating. Hmm, that's all I've really got tonight so I'll just keep it short and sweet. Good night folks and I hope you had a pleasant holiday.
I know I've featured the "Catcalling is Harassment" sticker before but I have to admit, I picked tonight's photo because I just had one of my weirder experiences walking around the city this evening. If you haven't seen my previous post I did a semi-interview with the man behind it and I highly suggest checking it out. In this interview, Cornelius said that a big reason he created this statement sticker was to try and start a conversation about this ever present issue. It was an idea that stuck with him after talking with his friends about their personal experiences with catcalling. I know this certainly is an issue that I've dealt with over the years, like most women around the world. Typically it just involves a guy stopping me to ask why I'm not smiling or to say that I should smile more because I'm such a beauty. My response generally ends up being an awkward smile as I quickly walk away in an attempt to avoid making this situation even more uncomfortable than it already is. I know this doesn't actually help things, since it gives him what he wants and I just feel weird, but I generally don't know how else to handle these random interactions. Tonight though leaves me fairly baffled.
I was walking down Ellsworth with my headphones in, all bundled up against the cold, when a man walking in the opposite direction happened to catch my attention. Normally I do my best to avoid getting stopped by people, since only about half of these conversations actually end up not being terribly uncomfortable, but tonight didn't work out for me. He got me to pause in my walk and quickly did that "fake" apology for inconveniencing me. I was a little skeptical about stopping to talk but you never know, he might have just been looking for directions (not that I'm very good at that either). I don't recall if he told me his name but he asked for mine and definitely shook my hand. Then he said that he just wanted to tell me that he "happened" to notice how beautiful I was. Well I ended up thanking him cause what else does one say to something like that. I know don't know if he really felt like he was following up on an advantage of some kind but he proceeded to ask, "Would you like to make 200 bucks?" He actually even reached for his wallet. I was absolutely floored, who seriously says things like that. I raised my eyebrow, said no, and started walking in my original direction. He called out asking if I wanted to know what I'd have to do and I just shook my head. There is the possibility that he was reaching for a business card but quite honestly I don't even want to know. I just don't get why anyone would think this was ok or why this is type of interaction is becoming more of a common thing in my life. Like I said earlier I'm just baffled. To end on a happier note I wanted to quickly share what the other big sticker on the pole is. Even though it's pretty worn away, it's clear to see that it's for Artisan Tattoo. Located on Penn in the Garfield/ Friendship area, Artisan is an interesting mix of shops. They are a tattoo parlor, a small art gallery, a boutique that sells a variety of local artist's pieces, and a cafe. A couple of years ago they even had a piercing gallery, it's actually where I got my cartilage done. The artists in the shop have quite a variety of styles and seem to be a popular place to get ink done. They are also very involved in the local community, always participating in the Unblurred gallery crawl that happens on the first Friday every month. I'm terribly intrigued by the overall style of the shop and will definitely have to reach out to them the next time I find this sticker. I really should have known better than to think that a sticker asking to "trust us" would actually work out for me. Part of the problem is admittedly because it is a vague enough phrase and symbol that successfully finding the people behind it would generally be a stretch any way. But the other reason I should have known better is that any time someone is asking you trust them it's always a bad sign. My friends love to play board games, so much so that we have a bi-weekly game night and a small group that has started their own podcast Men on Board. While we do tend to play anything, our go-to games are usually social deduction games. Games like Werewolf, Resistance, Two Rooms and a Boom, or even Mafia where the main goal is to figure out who the "bad" guy is. We've played these games for so long that at this point they very quickly devolve into a blur of yelled accusations, often accompanied by those ubiquitous trust mes. Now I can't say I'm innocent in any way, when I end up being the bad guy in these games my main goal is always to throw the game into as much chaos as I possibly can, but I have developed a general distrust of that phrase.
A big thing I find interesting about this sticker though is the possible symbolism throughout it. First you have the crossed fingers above the phrase. Now crossing your fingers is a fairly well known action but one that curiously has two possible meanings. Some times you cross your fingers to try and give yourself a little bit of luck, generally hoping for the best. Other times you're giving yourself a way out of a promise and lying through your teeth. According to one site I found there is some thought that the reasoning behind both meanings of this action actually comes from the same idea, that you are asking for God's help to accomplish your task. Crossing your fingers is thought to have developed from early Christianity as a way to indicate that you were a Christian and gradually turned into a method of wishing others the best of luck. The lying portion is thought to have developed since you were asking God for his help in keeping the fact that you're a Christian a secret. Either way in combination with the phrase "trust me," the people behind this sticker are looking for you to take things on faith. Along with the obvious crossed fingers, there's also the skull above crossed snakes in the middle of the phrase. The skull has quite a few possible meanings but all are generally associated with death and mortality. Whether you're looking to warn people of danger, using it to be a memento of those who have passed, or even just to prove your strength to others, the skull is a common enough sight for people to have their own personal association with it. The skull and crossbones takes on again a similar meaning of death but more commonly seen as a warning of poison or with pirates. Substituting the snake for the bones adds a bit of a different connotation. The snake is often associated with the duality of good and evil or with the ideas of fertility and rebirth depending on the culture. Another way that the snake is a bit of a contradiction is that they can be seen as representations of medicine and poison. But no matter whether you take any of these symbols in a negative or a positive light, this sticker leaves a lot up to your interpretation. While all of the possible symbolism is rather interesting, what's annoying about this sticker is that it really seemed like I would actually find something for it. If you zoom in right above the word trust, you'll find a site. Unfortunately when I tried to look snakespgh.com up on the internet, the site was no longer available. Even trying to look it up in Google didn't return any useful results. So I don't know if this was band at one point or a shop or even what's it's connection is to Pittsburgh. For some reason though it did keep bringing up the tattoo parlor 4 Horsemen Tattoo in connection to some hashtag I wasn't seeing. Who knows that Snakes was but it certainly doesn't bode well for getting you to trust them if you can't find them. Even though I've managed to keep up with this blog for a little over a year now, I still find blogging to be a fairly odd concept. While I do feel like it's a great method to gather exposure for your writing or your products if you're a company, I think there is still a bit of a societal mental block out there regarding blogging. My personal block probably comes out of the fact that I honestly stumbled into this writing medium. One semester as an elective I decided to take a class that was described as a magazine focused subject matter, something that was supposedly going to help you develop the skills to successfully write those longer articles. Well I apparently missed the memo or misread something because I walked into the class and discovered that it was actually going to be focused on blogging. Granted the professor actually worked for a major magazine, flying into the Pittsburgh every week to teach this class, so he probably based the class on what he was seeing in the industry.
Whatever the reasoning behind the class was, it took a lot for me to really wrap my head around this particular writing concept especially since I had never given blogging much thought. My only real exposure to it before the class was a couple of high school friends who used the forum more as an online diary than a focused subject matter. I was also mildly thrown by the fact that I had to create a blog for the class. It's one thing to spend a couple of days (or an all nighter the night before it was actually due) trying to come up with a successful piece of writing, it's another to dedicate a couple of hours every day to be able to post on a regular basis. I think it's that combination of being able to dedicate the time to keeping the posts up and finding a subject to really focus on without going to far off the "personal" deep end that gets most people blocked. When I originally found this sticker, part of me really hoped that the missing letter from the first word would be a J. I kind of liked the idea of a company being called Jaded Industry, although I have no idea what you would sell for it. But in the end the name ended up being Faded Industry and pretty easily found. Faded Industry is a local company that is... well a bit of a hodge podge of things. They do promotional work for events, artists, products, and a couple of other things typically associated with the entertainment industry. They sell products and artwork on their Big Cartel site. It also seems like a fair amount of their time is spent working to promote a couple of alcohol brands like Clique Vodak, which would make since they merged with Premier Innovations Group a while back. Their site also occasionally publishes different articles where they write about various events and subjects that they find interesting. Their latest posts focused on the recent Thrival Festival back in September, although I can't tell if it's because it's a local event they feel deserves attention or if they are tied to it in some way. While the posts to the actual website may be infrequent, they are a large presence on Facebook and Twitter. I think a big reason for this may just be because it's easier to reach your target audience on these social media outlets than to make them regularly check your site. I know I generally find out what's going on around the city through Facebook more than any where else. It's also probably because being able to dedicate a lot of time to writing interesting and relevant pieces for your blog or site can get to be a difficult thing to balance. I feel like this is a big thing you find on a lot of these types of sites. They started the blog but then realized they needed to dedicate their time elsewhere. But I am impressed that they are at least keeping up with it, even if it is only a couple of times a year. Tonight's subject might be one of my weirder entries. Not because it's actually bizarre or unique but because it's honestly fairly banal. Although I do have to admit that I did end up in a fairly absorbing research spiral, who knew you could get that intrigued by the mushroom. When you think fungus, the mushroom is probably the image that comes to mind first. Well that and maybe moldy bread. With a cap full of spores and a prevalence in wooded areas, the mushroom or the toadstool can mean a terribly wide variety of species. Some of the mushroom and toadstool varieties have that expected stem and cap, like the button mushroom, but a good portion of them simply have similar reproductive natures and look far more bizarre. Granted toadstool is typically used to describe the poisonous/ inedible varieties but technically there is no actual difference between it and a mushroom. For me the mushroom has generally just been one of those family food controversies, where the suggestion of adding fresh mushroom to any dish is an absolutely horrifying thought. I generally don't see the problem with eating fungus but then again there isn't much out there that I won't eat either. However along with being a problematic food stuff, the mushroom does have a fairly interesting cultural significance. Now I am probably oversimplifying things but there seem to be two main avenues that the mushroom takes within cultures from around the world, fantasy and drugs. A lot of the fantasy derivation most likely stems from the fact that for many people the circles of mushrooms that can be found are know as fairy, sorcerer, or even witch's rings. In England a fairy ring was a place where fairies would come to dance and were generally considered to be good luck if you had one growing on your property. However, these rings were also a dangerous thing to enter and could cause you to become blind or to disappear into a deadly underworld. It certainly isn't a far leap to go from fairies to gnomes or even to Smurfs, with their mushroom homes. These tend to be depictions that most people see, especially in children's literature. Along with the happy fuzzy depictions of magical creatures living in mushrooms, this fungus can also take a darker meaning. Often in art they are seen as a symbol of death and decay, which makes sense since the fungus does typically grow out of rotting things. Admittedly when I was looking for this sticker tonight, a good portion of the designs out there centered on the mushrooms from Mario. The Mario mushroom even tops a list of the five greatest uses of mushrooms in popular culture. But then again I can't say that's not terribly surprising since our generation grew up more on video games than traditional folklore. A lot of the graffiti designs I found tonight also focused on that second cultural avenue, drug use. Magic mushrooms, or shrooms, are any mushroom that contain the natural psychedelic compound Psilocybin. The use of mushrooms to get high has been around for millennia and was often seen as a necessity for spiritual enlightenment or rights of passage. It seems like recreational use of shrooms started in the late 1950s and really took hold during the 60s. I personally have always associated shrooms with bands like the Grateful Dead, although I really have no idea why since they don't have mushrooms in any of the imagery typically associated with them. Maybe it's just the psychedelic bears messing with me. Obviously the use of mushrooms in fantasy and within drug culture are not mutually exclusive. Alice in Wonderland depicts the mushroom as a method of growing or shrinking, which in turn becomes the focus of many college papers as a clear reference to drug use in Victorian times. Even Mario and his use of the mushroom to power up during game play can be seen as a reference to drugs, and often is depicted that way in graffiti. If you have a moment I highly suggest looking though some of the links I shared, they are fairly interesting reads. To sign off tonight I thought I would share one the only videos that I can think of that highlight the mushroom. While I could have gone with the Dancing Mushrooms from Fantasia, I decided to opt for the more annoying option. Good old college memories :) |
Maggie Ondrey
An amateur photographer and writer capturing a small portion of the city. Archives
August 2017
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