Insurance agent Ronny Bush says he just wants to entertain people driving through the intersection of Lemay Avenue and Elizabeth Street in Fort Collins.
For the past 10 years, he has posted a riddle on a sign in front his office.
“What do you call a 6-foot-tall basketball player?”
“Where do animals go when they lose their tails?”
“How do you fix a broken gorilla?”
The riddle is on one side, the answer on the other. (The answers are, respectively: shorty, retail store and monkey wrench.) If drivers going either way look back fast enough, they might be able to glean both riddle and answer.
“So far, I don’t think we’ve caused any accidents,” chuckles Bush, 59.
Good thing, since Bush represents one of the state’s largest auto and casualty insurers. Sometimes passers-by call Bush’s office from their cellphones for answers. Other times, they go around the block or make a U-turn. What does this wackiness do for Bush’s business?
“Nothing,” he said. He used to post messages about insurance. Those signs didn’t draw customers either.
“This gives me personal satisfaction,” he said, “when I run into people and they say, ‘Oh, you’re the one with the funny sign on Lemay.”‘
Another guy with a funny sign is Kent Davis, 54, an owner of AutoTek on Arapahoe Road in Greenwood Village.
I’ve driven by this landmark for years, enjoying witticisms like: “Are you diagonally parked in a parallel universe?” “Life is a collision with the future.” “Don’t believe everything you think.” “Is there another word for synonym?” And, “The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.”
Davis said he has posted lines like these every month since the early 1990s. The only sign that drew complaints: “This is a good place to take a leak.”
Maybe Davis didn’t have enough letters left to spell “radiator.”
“We are in an industry where there has always been a lot of questions about our honesty and credibility,” Davis said. “The sign generates a lot of good feelings.”
This strategy, however, has backfired with some customers dissatisfied with the auto shop.
“I got a couple of customers who were unhappy, who said, ‘I came to your place because of your sign, and I figured you might be a good guy, and I can’t believe that you’ve done this to me,”‘ Davis said.
Hey, you can’t please everyone. Davis says he bends over backwards to appease irritated customers because it’s the right thing to do. Of course, he’s also the guy who posted this observation: “A clear conscience is often just a bad memory.”
John Harris, 59, owner of Belcaro Paint & Decorating Center on Leetsdale Drive in Denver, has a lighted sign that cycles several messages with the time and temperature.
At the peak of the Atkins diet craze, he began advertising, “Low-carb paint.” His sign has also read, “Get thinner here” and “No paint, no gain.”
Harris has used the sign to brag about his service: “We shake our cans for you.” To offer Valentine’s Day wishes: “Be my turpentine.” And to confront unfounded fear: “We cure chromaphobia.” But often it’s just an ice-breaker: “Can we caulk?”
He believes it generates business.
“I’ve had people say they came in only because of the humor, and that they had to meet the goofy guy who put those signs up,” he said.
The Wine Seller on East Sixth Avenue and Pearl Street in Denver often runs out of letters for its wacky sign, said general manager Lisa D’Alessio, 46. That’s because nearby Brother’s BBQ often borrows the letters for its own creative expression and is slow to return them.
“They think they can just buy us a barbecue dinner,” D’Alessio said. “No, I want the letters back.”
The Wine Seller sits next to a cleaners. When writer Hunter S. Thompson died earlier this year, the sign read, “Beer and clothing on 6th Ave.” Let me explain: Thompson was the author of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” Capisce?
“A lot of people didn’t get it,” said D’Alessio. “I was very disappointed.”
Of course, D’Alessio doesn’t change the sign herself. She makes her employees do it. “The next sign going up,” she laughed, may say: “My stupid boss told me to change the sign, so I did.”
Al Lewis’ column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Respond to Al at denverpostbloghouse.com/lewis, 303-820-1967, or alewis@denverpost.com.
