Nehaveigur

I used to take a bus past a church sign on 19th avenue in San Francisco every day. The message changed every day. This was no mean feat because the constraints were even greater than the 140 characters on old Twitter. Only 3 lines were available, each with maybe 20 characters. It was even more impressive since the messages were always witty ye never disrespectful to whichever faith the church represented.

The church and the sign still exist, but now the message in stern, boring and unchanging. Either the pastor has changed, or they have lost faith in the power of witty signs.  I now live someplace else and don’t drive past the church much anymore. My commute now takes me past another witty message, but instead of in front of a church, it’s in front of a bar. Like the church messages, the bar messages attempt to entice passers-by to enter the establishment. Their tone and sense of humor are remarkably similar. I like to imagine that the pastor at some point had a mid-life crisis and opened a bar instead. After all, both jobs require the ability to listen to and provide solace to those in need.