There’s a good story behind this picture, and I don’t deserve credit for catching this great piece of signage, it goes to a former co-worker at Business Wire. Two or so years ago, while heading uptown to Fordham for a St. Bonaventure/Fordham Men’s Basketball game my friends and I stopped at the Pick-a-Bagel right next to the 77th Street 6 train entrance. While having our bagels and coffees, my co-worker laughed at this sign right across the street. Everywhere else on the Upper East Side this sign reads “No Horn Blowing Except for Danger,” which is usually preceded by a sign that displays if you do honk, its some ridiculous $250 fine.
The sign is just another case of “Mall Manhattan,” the thought that goes behind the extreme-gentrification going on in Manhattan where in a couple of years this entire island will become completely uninhabitable for people who are anything other than investment bankers. The sign, with the “d” in “danger” blocked out displayed to me the anger behind the kind of thought that now feels the need to fine your ass if you honk in this yuppie neighborhood. I mean, seriously, twenty years ago would anything like this be taken seriously in anyway? No, it just shows who Manhattan caters to these days.
