7 ms·

Man ends 20-year Llandegley airport sign joke that cost £25k

204 points by ljf 4y ago

Jiro 4y ago
This reads like a justification for trolling. "Nobody's hurt and it's all in good fun. My fun and my friends' fun, that is." Putting up a fake sign is like dropping a single piece of litter. It's not going to do much by itself, it's just a tiny bit of pollution which makes signs a tiny bit less useful to the general public.
- zaptrem 4y ago
  I'm sure nobody will try to drive to an Airport to which they are unable to buy tickets.
  - bena 4y ago
    Yeah, I'm trying to come up with a scenario in which someone will be harmed by this. It's not like there's an airport and the sign is pointing to the wrong one. I don't arbitrarily visit airports. The worst thing I can think of is to tell someone that I'd be landing at the Llandegley airport and that I need a ride. Then they ride out to a field and I'm not there. But that's just plain old lying. I can say I'd be landing at Heathrow and the effect is the same. Even worse because Heathrow is an actual airport and they'd probably spend a bit looking for me. At least with Llandegley, the bit is up as soon as they pull into the field.
    - tlb 4y ago
      You can spend many hours at Heathrow waiting for someone to show up. And that's if they are arriving on a flight. FWIW, the UK is full of disused airports. Like if you search Google Maps for the nearest airport thinking "I'll have my jet pick me up there" it's probably now an industrial park built on top of a crumbling WWII airstrip. They built a lot of airstrips during the war, so the Luftwaffe couldn't bomb them all.
      - Gordonjcp 4y ago
        A chunk of the M8 motorway just west of Glasgow runs along what used to be the runway of the old Renfrew Airport. It was only open for 12 years and sat derelict after closing in 1966 for about another ten years. A bit of a shame really because it really was a stunning building. https://www.glasgowarchitecture.co.uk/renfrew-airport https://www.glasgowarchitecture.co.uk/renfrew-airport
- cjg 4y ago
  Much like stonehenge.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Imagine having to justify a joke as anodyne as this.
- TheBlobIsReal 4y ago
  FTA : "Mr Whitehead added "as a journalist, whatever you do, someone, somewhere, is going to get upset about it". However, this particular joke has seemingly been popular among locals and tourists alike. "In 20 years, I haven't had a single complaint about Llandegley International," he said. "Loads of people love it, some people might not get it. But as far as I know, nobody is upset or angry about it. That's a first for me." Guess, we found the one person upset...
- petercooper 4y ago
  If you live in a country where there are arbitrary signs almost everywhere, like the US, I could see the argument. In the UK, however, this sign very clearly stands out as unusual and a joke. We don't tend to have large, independent signs and billboards on 60mph roads, especially not on the Welsh borders, so the sign's mere presence is curious enough and unlikely to detract from any other signs in the area.
  - z9znz 4y ago
    As long as Google doesn't mistakenly add the nonexistent airport to their maps, it is harmless to some and amusing to others.
- z9znz 4y ago
  I do get your point related to litter, but there are times when - like with intentional misspellings or intentional wrong grammar - jokes can be made which are harmless to most but recognized as fun to a few.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  I think the cost solves this issue. It would be annoying if there were lots of fake street signs. Many people must get the idea to put up a random sign for something that doesn't exist, and more would upon seeing such signs, but very few people are willing to pay a thousand dollars a year for the joke.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  > Putting up a fake sign is like dropping a single piece of litter. It's not going to do much by itself, it's just a tiny bit of pollution which makes signs a tiny bit less useful to the general public. FWIW, this applies even better to advertising.
Nekhrimah 4y ago
Reminds me a little of the "Welcome to Luton" prank from earlier this year by Max Fosh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya_LluCl16k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya_LluCl16k
- blamazon 4y ago
  Some time after a period of my life where I was routinely traveling to and from Cleveland, I woke up from a nap on a plane to Milwaukee and saw this sign, it really got me: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/welcome-to-cleveland-sign https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/welcome-to-cleveland-sig...
  - samstave 4y ago
    I'm not sure if its that sign, but I have seen one of these before...
_jal 4y ago
A couple years back a sign memorializing the Emperor Norton Memorial Bridge was placed at the onramp around 5th and Bryant in San Francisco. Unfortunately it was taken down fairly quickly. (The history is, some wag called the Bay Bridge the Willie L Brown Jr. Bridge, for some reason people started calling it that, and others who don't know any better perpetuate it. But real San Franciscans know it was and will always be Emperor Norton's bridge, and occasionally reminders of that fact go up.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco–Oakland_Bay_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco–Oakland_Bay_Brid... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton
drekipus 4y ago
Enough fun and games, time to pull down the joke and put the space to good use. Advertising.
- z9znz 4y ago
  I fear your obvious sarcasm will still be missed... or overflown as one might say.
r0m4n0 4y ago
Reminds me of the legitimate freeway sign in Sacramento that says “Ocean City MD, 3073 Miles” I never knew the story behind it but apparently they have the same thing there with miles to Sacramento! https://www.capradio.org/articles/2016/05/06/two-coasts-two-cities-two-signs-the-story-behind-the-ocean-city-md-3073-sign/ https://www.capradio.org/articles/2016/05/06/two-coasts-two-...
- lastofthemojito 4y ago
  Just outside Baltimore, where I-70 begins its journey west, there's a sign listing mileage to Columbus, St Louis, Denver, and... Cove Fort - the unpopulated place in Utah that happens to mark the western terminus of I-70. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cove_Fort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cove_Fort > In 2004, the Federal Highway Administration was testing a new typeface, Clearview, designed to have improved readability at night with headlight illumination. One test sign was placed at Baltimore, Maryland – the eastern terminus of Interstate 70 – that listed Cove Fort as a control city with a distance of 2,200 mi (3,500 km). One employee stated with the number of queries the department received about Cove Fort, the test was a success. The sign became so popular that after the test was over, federal authorities made arrangements with Maryland authorities to keep the sign permanently installed. The sign prompted a series of stories about Cove Fort to be published in the Baltimore area. Since that time, a small effort has been made by people in both states to lobby the Utah Department of Transportation to reciprocate by placing a sign at Cove Fort listing the distance to Baltimore.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    I think Clearview ended up not being optimal but they found this out in the middle or after the nationwide rollout?
- hinkley 4y ago
  Sister City program?
  - bombcar 4y ago
brandonscott 4y ago
how does it cost $1,500 a year to maintain it?
- Gare 4y ago
  Looks like a rented billboard
WalterBright 4y ago
In the 1980s when Reagan sent wheat to the USSR, a sign appeared in Kansas proclaiming "Kansas: Breadbasket of the Soviet Union".
mongol 4y ago
It is the terminals that make the joke right? Airports comes in all sizes.
- xdfgh1112 4y ago
  The UK doesn't do that much domestic flying, only cities tend to have airports.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
blamazon 4y ago
There's an official sign in Boston that advises drivers they need only travel 3,365 more miles to reach Newport, Oregon: https://twitter.com/MassDOT/status/806867577112854529 https://twitter.com/MassDOT/status/806867577112854529
- function_seven 4y ago
  I remember seeing this one[0] when I was younger. There was a counterpart sign in North Carolina[1], but apparently it was stolen too often, and is no longer being replaced. [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/NorthCarolina/comments/bz6ath https://old.reddit.com/r/NorthCarolina/comments/bz6ath [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/WilmingtonBarstow.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Wilmingt...
  - robocat 4y ago
    That leads to an article about the 420 mile marker sign getting stolen so often that they replaced it with a 419.99 mile marker sign. https://www.denverpost.com/2014/01/10/colorado-hopes-a-mile-419-99-sign-on-interstate-70-thwarts-stoners/ https://www.denverpost.com/2014/01/10/colorado-hopes-a-mile-...
- hinkley 4y ago
  Once in a while I'll see someone talking about Portland and get very confused as I slowly work out that they're talking about Portland, Maine. Why would people in <New England State> give a shit about what's going on in Oreg... oh. Probably the Boston sign is having a jab at Newport Rhode Island.
  - cestith 4y ago
    Oddly enough Portland, Oregon is named for Portland, Maine. If the coin toss had gone the other way it'd be named after Boston.
    - hinkley 4y ago
ilaksh 4y ago
Note that the article doesn't say that the town has put up the money to keep it going. If it is driving tourism, they might try to organize a bit and raise the funds.
- netsharc 4y ago
  Feels like nowadays you can just put up a GoFundMe and the money will show up, providing the subject "went viral".
- tomcam 4y ago
  > driving tourism I see what you did there
justinator 4y ago
> “I remember, after Boulder approved same sex marriage certificates (back in 1975 or earlier!) someone doctored a photo of the sign to say something along the lines of 'Welcome to Lesbian Homoville' (I think it was quoting testimony from a city council meeting.)” https://at.tumblr.com/thefuckingflatirons/boulder-welcome-to-lesbian-homoville-i/9ugrlgrwu52h https://at.tumblr.com/thefuckingflatirons/boulder-welcome-to...
Rebelgecko 4y ago
This was a much more poignant article than I was expecting "The sign can come down but the airport is still there. The airport exists in the same way that songs exist. If you set fire to the scrap of paper on which Paul McCartney wrote Yesterday, that wouldn't destroy the song. E
- nyc111 4y ago
  Coincidentally, I was thinking about this example today. The paper in fact is not the song. It becomes a song when it is sang. When it is given voice. In fact it is hard to say what the song is. You can play it with different instruments. You can play it in its recorded form on various media. All these will sound different. I was thinking "reality" is like this too. So I don't think the sign can make the airport.
  - TylerE 4y ago
    This is what a meme really is.
    - markburns 4y ago
      The vast majority of our waking hours are spent pondering things that are not in the least bit real like this. Just memes that only humans are aware of and believe in. This airport is as real as a song, as santa, as a country, a law, the value of money, words. In fact, an overwhelming majority of things that we generally perceive to be real are only things that exist in the shared consciousness of human beings. The only difference between santa and a law is just how strongly people believe in and how many people willingly support the latter. But santa and laws are of the exact same category of made up ideas that we choose to believe in and that influence our group behaviour. Some things do exist, like the combination of materials that make up buildings that we inhabit. But their meaning and purpose and ownership and the reasons we enter them and the vast majority of what buildings mean to us aren't in the least bit real. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised to find out that ant and bee colonies also share their own memes that help structure their societies.
mftb 4y ago
Sign Hacking in the LA Freeway Dystopia - https://thelandmag.com/richard-ankrom-guerrilla-public-service-los-angeles-free/ https://thelandmag.com/richard-ankrom-guerrilla-public-servi...
tomjakubowski 4y ago
my favorite highway sign prank was when Harvey Mudd students changed a sign on the 210 which read: California Institute of Technology Pasadena City College Next Exit to: California Institute of Technology (Pasadena City College) Next Exit
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  They could have fixed the one in the other direction that incorrectly said Cal Tech until recently. But more into easier is probably the guerrilla freeway sign heist adding an I-5 NORTH indication on the 110 north by Dodger Stadium before the tunnels
  - Fatnino 4y ago
    I remember seeing that one and thinking it looked a tiny bit wonkey but what can you expect from a last minute patch job. I thought it was official and it was very useful.
dang 4y ago
As long as we're talking Welsh road sign stories, there's this classic: E-mail error ends up on road sign - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=350186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=350186 - Oct 2008 (12 comments)
- dcminter 4y ago
  That's a gem. I have a copy of volume 2 of "Signs of the Times" from the 1970s, which is a catalogue of similarly amusing signs sent in by readers of The Times newspaper. My personal favourite is "Please do not throw sticks, stones, or this sign over the edge" from a cliff edge in South Africa :)
cestith 4y ago
Way cheaper than a social media giant.
hsuduebc2 4y ago
Wholesome.

204 points by ljf 4y ago

Jiro 4y ago

This reads like a justification for trolling. "Nobody's hurt and it's all in good fun. My fun and my friends' fun, that is." Putting up a fake sign is like dropping a single piece of litter. It's not going to do much by itself, it's just a tiny bit of pollution which makes signs a tiny bit less useful to the general public.

zaptrem 4y ago
I'm sure nobody will try to drive to an Airport to which they are unable to buy tickets.
- bena 4y ago
  Yeah, I'm trying to come up with a scenario in which someone will be harmed by this. It's not like there's an airport and the sign is pointing to the wrong one. I don't arbitrarily visit airports. The worst thing I can think of is to tell someone that I'd be landing at the Llandegley airport and that I need a ride. Then they ride out to a field and I'm not there. But that's just plain old lying. I can say I'd be landing at Heathrow and the effect is the same. Even worse because Heathrow is an actual airport and they'd probably spend a bit looking for me. At least with Llandegley, the bit is up as soon as they pull into the field.
  - tlb 4y ago
    You can spend many hours at Heathrow waiting for someone to show up. And that's if they are arriving on a flight. FWIW, the UK is full of disused airports. Like if you search Google Maps for the nearest airport thinking "I'll have my jet pick me up there" it's probably now an industrial park built on top of a crumbling WWII airstrip. They built a lot of airstrips during the war, so the Luftwaffe couldn't bomb them all.
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      A chunk of the M8 motorway just west of Glasgow runs along what used to be the runway of the old Renfrew Airport. It was only open for 12 years and sat derelict after closing in 1966 for about another ten years. A bit of a shame really because it really was a stunning building. https://www.glasgowarchitecture.co.uk/renfrew-airport https://www.glasgowarchitecture.co.uk/renfrew-airport
cjg 4y ago
Much like stonehenge.
pessimizer 4y ago
Imagine having to justify a joke as anodyne as this.
TheBlobIsReal 4y ago
FTA : "Mr Whitehead added "as a journalist, whatever you do, someone, somewhere, is going to get upset about it". However, this particular joke has seemingly been popular among locals and tourists alike. "In 20 years, I haven't had a single complaint about Llandegley International," he said. "Loads of people love it, some people might not get it. But as far as I know, nobody is upset or angry about it. That's a first for me." Guess, we found the one person upset...
petercooper 4y ago
If you live in a country where there are arbitrary signs almost everywhere, like the US, I could see the argument. In the UK, however, this sign very clearly stands out as unusual and a joke. We don't tend to have large, independent signs and billboards on 60mph roads, especially not on the Welsh borders, so the sign's mere presence is curious enough and unlikely to detract from any other signs in the area.
- z9znz 4y ago
  As long as Google doesn't mistakenly add the nonexistent airport to their maps, it is harmless to some and amusing to others.
z9znz 4y ago
I do get your point related to litter, but there are times when - like with intentional misspellings or intentional wrong grammar - jokes can be made which are harmless to most but recognized as fun to a few.
ALittleLight 4y ago
I think the cost solves this issue. It would be annoying if there were lots of fake street signs. Many people must get the idea to put up a random sign for something that doesn't exist, and more would upon seeing such signs, but very few people are willing to pay a thousand dollars a year for the joke.
TeMPOraL 4y ago
> Putting up a fake sign is like dropping a single piece of litter. It's not going to do much by itself, it's just a tiny bit of pollution which makes signs a tiny bit less useful to the general public. FWIW, this applies even better to advertising.

Nekhrimah 4y ago

Reminds me a little of the "Welcome to Luton" prank from earlier this year by Max Fosh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya_LluCl16k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya_LluCl16k

blamazon 4y ago
Some time after a period of my life where I was routinely traveling to and from Cleveland, I woke up from a nap on a plane to Milwaukee and saw this sign, it really got me: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/welcome-to-cleveland-sign https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/welcome-to-cleveland-sig...
- samstave 4y ago
  I'm not sure if its that sign, but I have seen one of these before...

_jal 4y ago

A couple years back a sign memorializing the Emperor Norton Memorial Bridge was placed at the onramp around 5th and Bryant in San Francisco. Unfortunately it was taken down fairly quickly. (The history is, some wag called the Bay Bridge the Willie L Brown Jr. Bridge, for some reason people started calling it that, and others who don't know any better perpetuate it. But real San Franciscans know it was and will always be Emperor Norton's bridge, and occasionally reminders of that fact go up.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco–Oakland_Bay_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco–Oakland_Bay_Brid... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton

drekipus 4y ago

Enough fun and games, time to pull down the joke and put the space to good use. Advertising.

z9znz 4y ago
I fear your obvious sarcasm will still be missed... or overflown as one might say.

r0m4n0 4y ago

Reminds me of the legitimate freeway sign in Sacramento that says “Ocean City MD, 3073 Miles” I never knew the story behind it but apparently they have the same thing there with miles to Sacramento! https://www.capradio.org/articles/2016/05/06/two-coasts-two-cities-two-signs-the-story-behind-the-ocean-city-md-3073-sign/ https://www.capradio.org/articles/2016/05/06/two-coasts-two-...

lastofthemojito 4y ago
Just outside Baltimore, where I-70 begins its journey west, there's a sign listing mileage to Columbus, St Louis, Denver, and... Cove Fort - the unpopulated place in Utah that happens to mark the western terminus of I-70. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cove_Fort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cove_Fort > In 2004, the Federal Highway Administration was testing a new typeface, Clearview, designed to have improved readability at night with headlight illumination. One test sign was placed at Baltimore, Maryland – the eastern terminus of Interstate 70 – that listed Cove Fort as a control city with a distance of 2,200 mi (3,500 km). One employee stated with the number of queries the department received about Cove Fort, the test was a success. The sign became so popular that after the test was over, federal authorities made arrangements with Maryland authorities to keep the sign permanently installed. The sign prompted a series of stories about Cove Fort to be published in the Baltimore area. Since that time, a small effort has been made by people in both states to lobby the Utah Department of Transportation to reciprocate by placing a sign at Cove Fort listing the distance to Baltimore.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  I think Clearview ended up not being optimal but they found this out in the middle or after the nationwide rollout?
hinkley 4y ago
Sister City program?
- bombcar 4y ago

brandonscott 4y ago

how does it cost $1,500 a year to maintain it?

Gare 4y ago
Looks like a rented billboard

WalterBright 4y ago

In the 1980s when Reagan sent wheat to the USSR, a sign appeared in Kansas proclaiming "Kansas: Breadbasket of the Soviet Union".

mongol 4y ago

It is the terminals that make the joke right? Airports comes in all sizes.

xdfgh1112 4y ago
The UK doesn't do that much domestic flying, only cities tend to have airports.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

blamazon 4y ago

There's an official sign in Boston that advises drivers they need only travel 3,365 more miles to reach Newport, Oregon: https://twitter.com/MassDOT/status/806867577112854529 https://twitter.com/MassDOT/status/806867577112854529

function_seven 4y ago
I remember seeing this one[0] when I was younger. There was a counterpart sign in North Carolina[1], but apparently it was stolen too often, and is no longer being replaced. [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/NorthCarolina/comments/bz6ath https://old.reddit.com/r/NorthCarolina/comments/bz6ath [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/WilmingtonBarstow.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Wilmingt...
- robocat 4y ago
  That leads to an article about the 420 mile marker sign getting stolen so often that they replaced it with a 419.99 mile marker sign. https://www.denverpost.com/2014/01/10/colorado-hopes-a-mile-419-99-sign-on-interstate-70-thwarts-stoners/ https://www.denverpost.com/2014/01/10/colorado-hopes-a-mile-...
hinkley 4y ago
Once in a while I'll see someone talking about Portland and get very confused as I slowly work out that they're talking about Portland, Maine. Why would people in <New England State> give a shit about what's going on in Oreg... oh. Probably the Boston sign is having a jab at Newport Rhode Island.
- cestith 4y ago
  Oddly enough Portland, Oregon is named for Portland, Maine. If the coin toss had gone the other way it'd be named after Boston.
  - hinkley 4y ago

ilaksh 4y ago

Note that the article doesn't say that the town has put up the money to keep it going. If it is driving tourism, they might try to organize a bit and raise the funds.

netsharc 4y ago
Feels like nowadays you can just put up a GoFundMe and the money will show up, providing the subject "went viral".
tomcam 4y ago
> driving tourism I see what you did there

justinator 4y ago

> “I remember, after Boulder approved same sex marriage certificates (back in 1975 or earlier!) someone doctored a photo of the sign to say something along the lines of 'Welcome to Lesbian Homoville' (I think it was quoting testimony from a city council meeting.)” https://at.tumblr.com/thefuckingflatirons/boulder-welcome-to-lesbian-homoville-i/9ugrlgrwu52h https://at.tumblr.com/thefuckingflatirons/boulder-welcome-to...

Rebelgecko 4y ago

This was a much more poignant article than I was expecting "The sign can come down but the airport is still there. The airport exists in the same way that songs exist. If you set fire to the scrap of paper on which Paul McCartney wrote Yesterday, that wouldn't destroy the song. E

nyc111 4y ago
Coincidentally, I was thinking about this example today. The paper in fact is not the song. It becomes a song when it is sang. When it is given voice. In fact it is hard to say what the song is. You can play it with different instruments. You can play it in its recorded form on various media. All these will sound different. I was thinking "reality" is like this too. So I don't think the sign can make the airport.
- TylerE 4y ago
  This is what a meme really is.
  - markburns 4y ago
    The vast majority of our waking hours are spent pondering things that are not in the least bit real like this. Just memes that only humans are aware of and believe in. This airport is as real as a song, as santa, as a country, a law, the value of money, words. In fact, an overwhelming majority of things that we generally perceive to be real are only things that exist in the shared consciousness of human beings. The only difference between santa and a law is just how strongly people believe in and how many people willingly support the latter. But santa and laws are of the exact same category of made up ideas that we choose to believe in and that influence our group behaviour. Some things do exist, like the combination of materials that make up buildings that we inhabit. But their meaning and purpose and ownership and the reasons we enter them and the vast majority of what buildings mean to us aren't in the least bit real. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised to find out that ant and bee colonies also share their own memes that help structure their societies.

mftb 4y ago

Sign Hacking in the LA Freeway Dystopia - https://thelandmag.com/richard-ankrom-guerrilla-public-service-los-angeles-free/ https://thelandmag.com/richard-ankrom-guerrilla-public-servi...

tomjakubowski 4y ago

my favorite highway sign prank was when Harvey Mudd students changed a sign on the 210 which read: California Institute of Technology Pasadena City College Next Exit to: California Institute of Technology (Pasadena City College) Next Exit

selimthegrim 4y ago
They could have fixed the one in the other direction that incorrectly said Cal Tech until recently. But more into easier is probably the guerrilla freeway sign heist adding an I-5 NORTH indication on the 110 north by Dodger Stadium before the tunnels
- Fatnino 4y ago
  I remember seeing that one and thinking it looked a tiny bit wonkey but what can you expect from a last minute patch job. I thought it was official and it was very useful.

dang 4y ago

As long as we're talking Welsh road sign stories, there's this classic: E-mail error ends up on road sign - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=350186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=350186 - Oct 2008 (12 comments)

dcminter 4y ago
That's a gem. I have a copy of volume 2 of "Signs of the Times" from the 1970s, which is a catalogue of similarly amusing signs sent in by readers of The Times newspaper. My personal favourite is "Please do not throw sticks, stones, or this sign over the edge" from a cliff edge in South Africa :)

cestith 4y ago

Way cheaper than a social media giant.

hsuduebc2 4y ago

Wholesome.