The Streams of Lakewood
Lake Worth, OH
When it comes to urinating in public, Lake Worth is No. 1.
“It’s a huge problem,” said Lake Worth Mayor Marc Drautz.
So huge that Drautz decided to use his neighborhood crime walks as an opportunity to remind residents not to use their city as a big outdoor toilet.
To do that, the mayor ordered up some door hangers. And being that Lake Worth is a city of many languages, he decided to point out this problem without relying on any words.
The computer image on the door hanger shows a stick figure standing the middle of a residential street.
“Don’t stand in the middle of the street?”
That’s what I said to myself when I saw the image, which was circled in red with a red slash through the middle of it.
But it turns out that what I thought was a dotted line in the middle of the road was actually supposed to represent staccato bursts emanating from the stick figure.
Computer whizzes don’t do clip art
Drautz admits that he, too, was confused when he first saw the door hanger.
“I thought it looked like somebody walking down the middle of the road,” he said.
The mayor called the effort a “first draft” and said that it’s just plain difficult finding computer clip art to remind people not to urinate in public.
Although, he said, even if people just think the door hanger is urging residents not to stand in the middle of the street, it isn’t a total loss.
“That’s not a bad message, either,” Drautz said.
Found in the Palm Beach Post
October 22nd, 2006 at 7:45 am
They’re going about it all wrong. You know those “Calvin” decals you see on pickup truck windows (the one with the naughty little boy peeing on the logo of another brand of truck)? Take that art, (pay Jim Watterston if you have to, but I think it’s PD as parody), and replace the logo with the words “Lake Worth, OH” Then put the red circleslash over it. If that doesnt get the message across, then just use the text “Don’t pee all over Lake Worth”, and translate it into as many languages as you can think of. It’s a short statement, and there’s quite a bit of room on a 3 to a sheet doorhanger.
October 22nd, 2006 at 7:46 am
Personally I think he’s pi$$ing in the wind, though.
October 22nd, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Well, I could think of a lot of things that people just leak out in public that are alot less sterile than pee…
October 22nd, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Seems to me that guys like to pee just to hear themselves peeing. From what I’ve seen and heard (living in a boat, tied to a dock, I observe a lot of tribal Wharf Rat behavior), it’s not as much about where they pee as it is about how they pee: the noisier the better, it seems. What could be noisier than releasing torrents of “leased” beer into an already susurrant fluid?
October 22nd, 2006 at 10:45 pm
Besides, clip art is created for the masses; strictly G-rated. And the computer whizzes I know are too left-brained to think in pictures, so they should ask just about any normal high-school kid to create a “no peeing” sign — they’d love the chance to work on such a community-sanctioned project without fear of being “yelled at” or labled a pervert.
October 24th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
That’s a good idea mike. I would hate to visit this town , I bet it stinks literally. Here’s another sign thought watch out for the yellow puddles. The fact that people are urinating in the streets is just plain nasty!!