Cool story about mysterious art-graffiti tiles embedded in American streets. No, it's not a new phenomenon, but this Kansas City Star story offers a fun new take.
"The message wasn't painted. It was some kind of tile, a bit larger than a license plate, that had actually been imbedded in the street. Each letter looked to have been hand carved and inlaid in a plastic or epoxy base. I tried to push my thumbnail into the tile. It was rock hard. Harder than the asphalt itself(…) Since then I've walked right over the thing dozens of times and each time made a mental note to further investigate its origins. And each time promptly mislaid the mental note.
A couple months ago, however, on my way back from Jake's, I made an actual paper note and kept it clutched in my hand all the way back to my cube here at The Star where I "googled" the wording on the strange tile. Bingo. Up popped more than 30 Internet addresses referring to other such tiles found in other cities. Turns out there have been more than 130 documented sightings of these "Toynbee tiles"– as they're nicknamed on the Net — in at least 20 cities around the United States (and two in South America!). In New York almost 50 tiles have been counted, in Philadelphia nearly 30. Twenty have been spotted in Baltimore, including four at one intersection. And there have been at least 16 documented sightings in Washington, D.C., — one a block from the White House.
All the tiles say virtually the same thing. And they all look virtually the same, except some are made with colored letters and others only black letters. The Internet accounts and stories from other newspapers indicate that the first tiles were discovered in the late 80s. Nobody has ever claimed to have witnessed any of the tiles being imbedded. And nobody has ever publicly claimed responsibility for making the tiles."
Link to Kansas City Star story, Discuss (Thanks, ESC)
