Park Here? No.

When I am faced with tough choices about what to invest The Chronicle’s time in covering, sometimes an interesting sign beats an emailed press release.

What I like about this one is how the doubly-delivered message, “No”, is softened with hearts and and a patriotic color scheme.

Direct confrontation is not any easy job. When it’s your job to challenge parking scofflaws, a sign eliminates most, but not all, of the need to confront people directly.

The sign maker lamented the fact that the pen ran out of ink while writing the letter “G.” Using this information to reconstruct the evolution of the sign’s message, sandwiched with “No”, I’m left with more questions than answers. I was distracted by the fascinating life story of the signmaker, else I would have focussed more on sign’s curious question marks and the apparent plan from the get-go to begin and end with the word, “No.”

There’s no guarantee of course, but for folks whose job it is to send out press releases, if you were to write your news on a piece of cardboard with a colorful marker and nail it to a telephone pole somewhere, I might see it and take a picture of it, and maybe even write about it.