Store’s signs draw on celebrity
SEATTLE – Like so many worthwhile tales, this one starts with Bat Boy.
The fanged, demon-child, cover-beast mascot of the now-closed Weekly World News for years had been making regular appearances in the newsstand inside City Market. “I loved Bat Boy,” market manager Cain Morehead said with a hint of wistfulness. “Everyone did.”
So one day a little more than three years ago, Morehead drew his own rendition of Bat Boy on the sidewalk A-frame that sits in front of the Capitol Hill convenience store. Next to it, he wrote: “Bat Boy stocks his cave at City Market.”
Originally, he hadn’t intended to use the new box of Big 4 inkers for this.
“I was just going to do ‘Potatoes, 49 cents.’ Then I looked at Bat Boy, and I thought it would be funny as a sign.”
Turns out, it was. So came the next one, a sketch of Gollum, the pitiful “Lord of the Rings” character, calling City Market and Deli his “presciousssss.” His customers laughing, his boss content and his markers unfettered, Morehead again regularly tapped his tabloid muse:
A sketch of Children of the Corn (Dog); a post-DUI cartoon of Mel Gibson saying, “I buy all of my beer at City Market”; Lindsay Lohan noting that she shops at City Market as often as she goes to rehab; restroom dalliancer Sen. Larry Craig promising, “I’m going to shop at City Market after I use the bathroom.”
A sketched astronaut once claimed she’d drive 900 miles in a diaper to shop at City Market. Guitarist Jimi Hendrix once knelt on stage in front of a flaming corn dog.
“These signs have taken on a life of their own,” Morehead said.
Signs generally stay a few days to two weeks, maximum. A hard rain can retire one early. So will theft. Not long ago, Seattle police made a Jerry Garcia-themed sign thief march back into the store and return the stolen sheet of poster paper to the night crew.
But now, most get requested by friends and regular customers. Indeed, Morehead’s tapping of celebrities has made him a minor one. The Stranger newspaper has blogged about the signs, and its new editor has Morehead originals on the walls.
Several flickr.com Web sites run updated photos, same for metroblogging and Yelp. Cain’s own Web page, myspace.com/citymarketsigns, has the complete set of more than 140 signs now – 42 months worth of work at the corner of Bellevue Avenue and East Olive Way.
In a city where the over-sidewalk marquee, the coffeehouse chalkboard and the storefront A-frame are not just advertising but also fields of clever combat, Cain has managed to carve out a niche by sometimes carving into a topical target.
He celebrated former City Council candidate Venus Velasquez’s DUI stop by shaping her name’s “Vs” into martini glasses and writing, “Drive on down to City Market … or perhaps walk on down.”
Offered Morehead: “And I voted for her. But sometimes you can’t pass up an opportunity.”