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This billboard has been up for an indeterminate amount of time near the intersection of Seattle’s Broadway and Pine, in the heart of the Capitol Hill neighborhood, where I can’t imagine too many people are at risk of forgetting September 11. Yesterday I walked by it once again, this time with my fella Jake.

ME: Who is that billboard aimed at?!

JAKE: Alzheimer’s patients. They’ve got to start somewhere, and getting individual billboards for each grandchild’s name would cost a fortune.

Dear God: Thank you for sending me an angel.

David Schmader—former weed columnist and Stranger associate editor—is the author of the solo plays Straight and Letter to Axl, which he’s performed in Seattle and across the US. His latest...

28 replies on “Today in Baffling Advertising”

  1. I bet it’s the same guy who does the pro-life billboards along 15th in Interbay and Ballard. I’m thankful they’re not the gross kind. And imagine what mischief that money could do if some intelligence were controlling it.

  2. There’s a similar one on 99 as you head north, near Pagliacci. It says “When you vote, remember September 11th”. Passive aggressive Republican advertising? Wow, they really have keyed into the Seattle market… Can we replace them now that the election is over, though? (And you’d better believe I was remembering September 11, 2001 when I proudly cast my vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. MmmHM. Never again.)

  3. A couple of weeks ago, I was staring at that billboard trying to figure out what it MEANT, and almost rear-ended the car in front of me.

    Advertising should be easily intelligible, otherwise it’s a traffic accident waiting to happen!

  4. “There’s a similar one on 99 as you head north, near Pagliacci. It says “When you vote, remember September 11th”.”

    Just noticed that one on Aurora for the first time over the weekend, and said out loud to my wife, “as in, remember how W ignored the explicit intelligence warnings and allowed 9/11 to happen on his watch, while bin Laden is still a free man more than seven years later, so vote for Obama? Check.”

  5. @11: OMG I love to read that crazy ramblings of that guy. Is there a picture of what he looks like? I imagine he looks like elmer fudd, but older and with more crazy uni-bomber facial hair.

  6. @17: OMG, you too, Brian? We have the best birthday ever– nobody ever forgets. They have these helpful billboards!

    @Mr. Poe: I never notice it either.

  7. I first noticed it a couple days after the election, and I interpreted it to mean, “Don’t you gullible city folk realize that you just elected a big ol’ muslim?”

  8. @11 – that’s hilarious.

    Y’know, I’m not going to do the following, and I’d never encourage others to do the following, but I still think it would be funny (in the abstract) if someone spray-painted “, 2001” at the bottom of these things, just to emphasize the point that it’s kinda starting to have been a long time since 9/11/01 happened.

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