STREET SIGN APOCALYPSE

First of all, as you might have heard, one of our baseball guys did an Important Baseball Thing last night. I tried and tried to think of some unique angle on this but I got nothing. So props to you, Matty Cain. You are Earth's Biggest Badass and, honest to God, no one - NO ONE - deserved it more than you.

(ONE PERSONAL SIDENOTE - I just want to point out that I did my best to help out by keeping the 2 other people I was watching it with from saying the words "no hitter" or "perfect game," and pretty much succeeded, so I'm partially responsible for this, in that I kept it from being jinxed. So when you're handing out the Rolexes, Matt . . . well, I don't want to say anything, but you know what to do.)

OK. LET'S GET TO THE TOPIC AT HAND.

One of the most iconic and immediately noticeable features of Our Town is the street signs.

(Image from vdored123's Flickr stream. Hopefully he doesn't mind.)

Unlike the bland, boring, white-on-green street signs of other bland, boring places, our Much Better Street Signs are ALL CAPS, black on white. Cool looking. It's one of the first things you notice when you come here from somewhere else.

So you can imagine my horror when I was proceeding down Stanyan a while back and saw this:

I know, it's kinda heard to see. You have to give me a break, I shot this pic with an iPhone out of the window of a moving 33 bus yesterday. Anyway, it says "P a g e," not "P A G E".

(It just occurred to me that SF street signs are also notable in that they don't include the road type - i.e., street, boulevard, avenue, whatever. That's probably why a lot of people don't realize that it's Grant AVENUE, not Grant Street, or Arguello BOULEVARD. Last night I was reminded that the street in the Mission is Treat AVENUE, not Treat Street, which is even weirder because there used to be a bar on 24th near Treat called "Treat Street," but I'm getting way off course here.)

SO WHAT THE FUCK! As it turns out:

In 2009, the city adopted something called the Federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, which says street signs are harder to read in all capital letters, he said.

Therefore, new signs will capitalize the first letter and make the rest lowercase.

"However," Rose [i.e., spokesman guy] said, "we are only doing it as signs need to be replaced."

DO YOU REALIZE WHAT THIS MEANS? We will slowly convert citywide to boring, lowercase signs. In fact, we may be the last generation of San Franciscans to enjoy ALL CAPS street signs. I wonder how long before there aren't any left.

Ugh. Soon they'll all look like this (courtesy of Instagrammer rickinsf):


Just fucking great.