I read your article about the wayfinder signs. Thanks for publishing it. What the hell is the town spending money for with Otto? A VA Beach ad agency that is off the shore when we have perfectly good sign designers and sign makers here on the Shore? Andy Bucholz of ES Signs is even on the Mainstreet board. What?? Otto was also paid to produce the ridiculous Cape Charles logo that people are still laughing at.
I don’t know who at Mainstreet is doing this, but it is stupid as hell. About as smart as trying to license the LOVE logo and sell merchandise competing with your own town retailers. Crazy.
Andy Bucholz is great with signs, however, being a town councilman it would be a conflict of interest for him to design these new signs and receive payment from the town. That being said, i also believe it is a waste of money and STUPID. This is an extremely small town and it almost impossible to get lost. We already have perfectly good signs and I see no reason to replace them. And, Who in the Hell is Otto?
Who the hell is Otto?
WOW!
And here I was thinking, wrongly, it turns out, that everybody knows who Otto is, but I guess not!
Thanks for disabusing me of that wrong notion, Nioaka.
As for the signs, I think everybody is missing the point of it being sort of a starving artists fund, to put some tax dollars into the arts community in Cape Charles to keep it thriving.
It’s in the Constitution, afterall, in section 8 of Article I, to wit: “To promote the progress of science and useful arts,” and if sign painting isn’t a useful art, then my goodness, what is, anymore?
If it weren’t for all the signs, how would we out-of-towners know when we were in Cape Charles as opposed to out of it?
And all that money the town pays for those signs comes right back into the local economy, so there is a win-win for you!
And seriously, wouldn’t you rather see Otto getting some cash from the town to maintain his standard of living, as opposed to seeing him forced on the dole because people don’t want more signs?
It is a case of a little Christian charity going a long way towards maintaining Cape Charles as the kind of town people from all over the USA and Europe, and even the Russians, who love Ireland, by the way, would want to flock to in droves, which is great for the economy, just to take selfies of themselves standing in front of every sign in Cape Charles just to prove to the folks back home that they really were there, instead of Wildwood, New Jersey, which lacks the charm of Cape Charles, because it doesn’t have an Otto to make signs for it to rival those Otto makes exclusively for Cape Charles, which makes them a kind of collector’s item; hence all the tourists taking selfies with them in the background.
Do we really need to spend more tax dollars to encourage more summer people to visit Cape Charles. Don’t we have enough summer people already? Is Cape Charles a residential town with some summer visitors or are we a vacation town that puts up and tolerates the permanent residents?
While they are at it-designing signs- at least have a few designed to keep skate boarders off the side walks and bicycles ,plus install them . They were taken down and never put back up . Personally, I don’t want to be knocked down by a skate boarder cruising by or a bike . The one sign in the second block “says -NO WHEELS ON THE SIDE WALK-I guess you have to pick up the baby stroller .
Signs, signs, and more signs! With all the “Vacation Rental” signs it looks as if we are back in the good ole days when every other house on a block was for sale.
We have directional signs already. OK, maybe they are not “pretty” but we also have debt to payoff. Why spend money on signage when those funds could be better used to correct malfunctions in our sewer system, or storm drain systems, or beach replenishment or, or, or……..
I moved here because I liked the quiet, quaint, historic, old time character of the Town. Guess that’s gone forever. In all honesty, there have been some great improvements, but the genuine character of the Town has been lost.
Stupid is as Stupid does.
Still wondering who Otto is.
He’s the sign dude, or sign guru if you want to be upscale!
You need a sign for something, Otto’s the dude to make it happen.
And speaking of signs, you ought to consider having Otto make up some signs in Russian with an arrow on them saying “Kelly’s this way,” and get them out on the highway, especially up around Washington where there are a lot of Russians who love all things Irish, and you will have them flocking to Cape Charles in droves just to experience the Irish ambience Kelly’s offers, and think what a boost that will be to the Cape Charles GDP!
Lines of Russians stretching around the block, waiting to get a table!
Business will be booming!
Cape Charles will be on the map, and all it takes is for Otto to wield his brush and turn out some road signs.
Speaking of signs and the kind of quaint ambience that would really put Cape Charles on the map as a GO-TO tourist stop, the town should get Otto to make up some signs that say “Wall Drug 1,784.4 mi,” with an arrow pointing west, which would be out across the water, with the subliminal message, which Otto is good at making part of his overall sign design, which is why he is called the Sign Guru, not for nothing, of “you’d better stop here first.”
People would come to Cape Charles just to take a selfie of them with that sign behind them, because unless some other town further up the coast stole the idea, that would be the furthest east Wall Drug sign anyone could find, which is why all the selfies.
And for nostalgia, Otto ought to reproduce some Burma-Shave signs and have them strategically placed along all the highways down there, because Burma-Shave signs connect people to a simpler past which makes them feel good about themselves, which is an important factor for a world vacation destination like Cape Charles.
Russsia, Russia, Russia!!!!!!!!
Boy, you’re not kidding, David Moore!
Just today, in fact, the Associated Press had out an article titled “‘Russia wants to watch us tear ourselves apart,’ FBI official says ahead of elections” published Feb. 24, 2020, where we learned as follows as to what the Russians are up to now, to wit, and it will scare the hell out of people, which I think it is intended to do:
WASHINGTON — Russia wants to watch Americans “tear ourselves apart” as the United States heads toward elections, an FBI official warned Monday.
David Porter, an assistant section chief with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, accused Russia of conducting brazen operations aimed at spreading disinformation, exploiting lines of division in society and sowing doubt about the integrity of U.S. elections and the ability of its leaders to govern effectively.
end quotes
I kind of chuckle myself at that statement about the Russians sowing doubt about the ability of our “leaders” to govern effectively, as if we people in this country couldn’t figure that out on our own.
And with all the disinformation already spread by the New York Times and Washington Post and that ilk, how can we distinguish the Russian disinformation from our own disinformation?
Getting back to that story, which sounds a lot like it came out of Orwell’s “1984,” we have:
Porter did not address the briefing or whether Russia had a preference for particular candidates.
But he said Russia was generally engaged in “information confrontation” aimed at blurring fact from fiction, eroding American confidence in democratic institutions and driving wedges into society’s fracture lines.
end quote
“Information confrontation” aimed at blurring fact from fiction?
Isn’t that what our own MSM do everyday, which takes us back to this gem from that story, to wit:
“The primary objective is not to create a particular version of the truth but rather to cloud the truth and erode our ability to find it, creating a sentiment that no narrative or news source can be trusted at all,” Porter said.
end quotes
Frankly, David, I personally don’t think we need the Russians to come over here to cloud the truth and erode our ability to find it, creating a sentiment that no narrative or news source can be trusted at all, when we already have our own MSM doing that for us, already.
But it is certain that for the next nine months, that is all we are going to be hearing about – THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
You think that will deter them from coming to Cape Charles to spend their holidays, instead of Ireland?
Maybe time to get Otto to make up some more signs saying “Sanctuary City – Cape Charles Welcomes Russians To Our Community!”
On a closing note, the Irish in Ireland, a small country the size of Vermont, wonder why we Americans are so petrified scared of the Russians when the Irish in Ireland aren’t.
I’m not afraid of the Russians myself, so I was not able to answer that question.
Any thoughts on that, yourself?
The sooner LIBERALISM is put to death the better.