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Decorate with Raleigh
Downtown Raleigh, North Carolina 
State Capitol, Raleigh, North Carolina 
Fayetteville Street, Raleigh, North C... 
Greetings from Raleigh, North Carolina
Oct
8
Hello again friends. This time out, I have a brief comment on an issue not at all related to education, schools, or why a certain commissioner whose name rhymes with “surly” (coincidence? Nay.) needs a crème pie in his grille. Nay, my comments this evening are in an automotive aesthetic vein.
I just have to vent for a bit on the gross profusion of black and white oval stickers on motor vehicles in Wake County. You’ve been to the Outer Banks. We get it. How much cache does that really have when you live in Raleigh? It’s not like you live in Idaho or Jakarta, et cetera. I don’t know; maybe people in those places have “SPUD” and “INDO” on their cars. I doubt it.
Also, it’s not just the OBX that chaps my hide. It’s making every possible geographic location, airport code, school (any level, any affiliation, any place), or communicable disease into a pithy oval sticker. I’d like to think that my fellow Wake Countians (we’ve got to come up with some smoother nomenclature than that, by the way…) have a bit more originality than the unintentionally ironic display of finding something else to redact into 3-4 letters in an oval. Places you’ve been? Do something useful, if you must display on your motor vehicle: how about a map of those places in a rear window sticker? If you’re going to advertise your travels, at least help teach the rest of us learn some geography (since they can’t do it in middle school any more…sorry, an ed. comment) while we’re sitting at the Glenwood/Peace intersection for half an hour…”oh, that’s where Kentucky is!” I won’t hold my breath.
The fact that these decals most usually are affixed to vehicles somewhere close to the size of Qatar (which is also, coincidentally, the gross national petroleum output it takes to power such a vehicle) only exacerbates my irritation. If your car is big enough to be an Outer Bank, shouldn’t that suffice as your vehicular expression without an inane sticker?
I really think there are a few bucks to be made in producing similar, but uber-mocking, black and white stickers with the word “OVAL” in the middle. I’d buy that in a second and slap it next to my “Support your local Brewery” sticker on Debra, my Honda. If any of you decide to follow through on that, I just want credit given to me…in Chicago style formatting in a footnote on the sticker—no money, just that.
I swear that I could write a month worth of columns on inane things on cars around here, but I promised the boss that I’d be briefer than usual this time. For now, this one takes the cake; I’ll save the terrific kids and the God as co-pilot for another time. I will say this for the oval-decorators: at least they don’t pretend that slapping a sticker or magnet on their car somehow equates to support for the troops…the ovals might be superficial, but at least they’re not that fatuous.
Until next time…
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17 Responses to “OBX/OMG”
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Stay Informed
And right after I got in my shipment of RFP stickers! Guess I’ll have to go with rubber wristbands instead…
Agree about the stickers. Are you British?
No, I’m not British…I’m from NC, but I occasionally work for an organisation in the UK that demands I spell things their way, and it usually just sticks.
I think Donkey’s question was to those that have the stickers….
what about the inane license plates on vehicles…..always fun trying to figure out what some mean.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, how about those circle stickers…now they get my goat! There MUST be something else going on in Raleigh?
nope, RonT…nothing else going on.
just creative, humourous types complaining about editorials on an online paper.
Confirmed. At the time of printing, this was the only story in all of Raleigh.
Fret not though loyal readers, this just came across from TBJ: “Raleigh in running for new pro football franchise.” Could be a nice alternative to watching rolling derby at Dorton.
what about a pro-baseball team??
Re: Baseball team - Amen to that. I’d give the rights to name my first born for an MLB team in Raleigh.
This is the best article I have ever read.
About 3 years ago, when I thought that oval stickers had hit a saturation point (I was wrong), I developed 2 oval stickers of my own: BFE (Bum F*ck Egypt) and ABH (Anywhere But Here). I still have some of the ABH stickers left, but the BFE went quickly. Perhaps it’s time for a re-release!
These oval stickers have been around for a very long time. Evidently, the UN came up with it in 1969 as a means to distingush country of origin.
http://www.stickercafe.com/ovalstickerhistory.htm
I’m aware of the origins of the stickers viz. European nations with coterminous boundaries. I didn’t, however, know that Bald Head Island was a sovereign nation within the US.
Wow. So I’m not the only one. :) My blog post about it from 5 years ago still continues to generate hate mail.
http://www.tonyspencer.com/2002/08/28/obx-um-if-you-say-so/
BTW, this Sunday morning while walking the dog in Wilmont I saw a good one.
“Country music makes me horny”
My girlfriend who lives in New Market, MD, is repulsed by the OBX stickers she sees on myriad vehicles there. When she and I recently spent a couple of days on Topsail Island together, I told her she needs to purchase an oval OBX sticker, place it on her car and cross it out. Then she needs to place a round TI sticker beside it. Ta-da!
OBX euro-stickers do have cache in the hinderlands of America. In Oklahoma they were rare, but always prompted good conversations about the OBX experiences between landlocked kindred spirits.