Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Balloons and the Human Sign

Most of you know I work in the Construction Industry, more specifically New Homes. I have been doing this for over 10 years now and over the years I have ran across some interesting characters. I have worked in Springville, West Jordan, Layton, Syracuse, Murray, South SL, Sandy. Each city has its own sign ordinances. Some cities we can put signs up, others we cant. Its kind of a pain in the ass.

In Syracuse, they wouldn't allow offsite signs or weekend directionals. So, we had a giant 6-8 ft A Frame sign that was out in this field that we had to knock down to lay flat each night and put back up each morning. Sounds easy enough except when theres a foot of snow in the field and the sign now weighs 2x as much. Oh, we also got to use balloons. The builder I worked for at the time (national builder jackass's) had these gigantic balloons. We blew them up in the model stuffed them in our car and drove out to put them on the sign. Problem was, the static in the car would cause the balloons to pop. Did I mention these balloons were gigantic? I remember the first time one of these balloons popped in my car. Thought I had been shot at, needless to say I had to make a run to get some new underwear. This was a daily ritual. I think those popping balloons took years off my life.

In Springville, we couldn't even do the above. So, we hired a human sign. Some dude or lady would come to my model on the weekends pick up our giant hand held sign drive out to the corner of the busy street and hold/wave the sign. This brought out some interesting people. I was just going through some old pictures and found these.



You see, they had no idea how big the sign was and they came unprepared to drive the 4 blocks out to the main street. I can't tell you how many times I found the sign propped up against the car and them napping inside. Easy job I suppose. Stand on the street, hold a sign, wave at people, listen to some tunes? No, tough and tiring job, must take a nap. There was the pale skinned dude who came to be my sign in the hot summer month of July. No, he didnt have sunblock and after a day in the sun holding the sign he came back and had the worst sunburn. I am pretty sure the 40 bucks he made that day was not worth it. 

There have been several others, but these pictures made me laugh and it brought back some memories. 

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