Street sign theft occurs when street signs are stolen, often to be used as decorations, but also sometimes to avoid obeying the law by claiming later the sign was not there. Although the theft often seems arbitrary, signs that are unusual or amusing tend to be stolen more frequently. Sometimes considered to be a prank by the perpetrators, the theft is often costly and inconveniencing for the municipality or agency that owns the sign. In the United States, each street sign generally costs between $100 and $500 to replace.
Popular culture can act as a catalyst to street sign theft. Bands such as The Beatles and Lynyrd Skynyrd have exacerbated street sign theft as their songs and albums include real place names including Penny Lane, Blue Jay Way, Abbey Road, and Brickyard Road.
A provocative street name or other name on the sign can also trigger thefts. Well-known examples include Ragged Ass Road in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories and Butt Hole Road in Conisbrough, Doncaster, England. Also frequently stolen are place name signs for the village of Fucking, Austria.
Read more about this topic: Traffic Sign
Famous quotes containing the words street, sign and/or theft:
“During the Suffragette revolt of 1913 I ... [urged] that what was needed was not the vote, but a constitutional amendment enacting that all representative bodies shall consist of women and men in equal numbers, whether elected or nominated or coopted or registered or picked up in the street like a coroner’s jury. In the case of elected bodies the only way of effecting this is by the Coupled Vote. The representative unit must not be a man or a woman but a man and a woman.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Grant me the treasure of sublime poverty: permit the distinctive sign of our order to be that it does not possess anything of its own beneath the sun, for the glory of your name, and that it have no other patrimony than begging.”
—St. Francis Of Assisi (c. 1182–1226)
“The childless experts on child raising also bring tears of laughter to my eyes when they say, “I love children because they’re so honest.” There is not an agent in the CIA or the KGB who knows how to conceal the theft of food, how to fake being asleep, or how to forge a parent’s signature like a child.”
—Bill Cosby (20th century)