Item!

A “legendary local baker” thinks that the symbols on the Espresso Royale sign on West Huron are reminiscent of sperm, Talk About Town reports.

14 Responses to “Item!”


  1. Item! The logo for Real Estate One looks kind of phallic, or maybe I’m just repressed!


  2. There’s an ERC ad of the same type on Stadium - and I, too, thought it was sperm collecting around the ERC logo ‘egg’.

    Re: Real Estate One, I guess I can see it, but the ERC ad is much more… explicit, shall we say?


  3. George - heh! I admit I haven’t seen the sign in question, so maybe it is worthy of mention in the News.


  4. Lots of one-horse provincial backwaters can boast a “legendary local baker.” But how many local bakers were formerly biology teachers? See? Another feather in Ann Arbor’s proverbial cap!


  5. Fertile grounds for speculation.


  6. This just confirms my long-held theory that all Biology teachers and bakers are perverts.


  7. I am so glad I am not the only person who thought that. I drove past the sign on Huron, and I didn’t see the words or the cup first, I just thought, “Why are there 3′ sperm on that sign…. oh, it’s supposed to be steam coming out of a cup. How can they have not noticed…”

    Then OF COURSE I had the juvenile inclination to climb up and paint little smily faces on them. Good thing I’m so old and frail.


  8. is there anybody who didn’t think that the first time they drove by? don’t they have an approval process for billboards?


  9. Erin, Dylan: don’t you think the designers achieved exactly what they wanted? Of course it’s supposed to look both like spoons wiggling towards a coffee cup and sperm swimming towards and egg. That’s the kind of attraction and allure their coffee has, get it?


  10. Yeah, but sperm swimming in coffee is not an effective advertising image.


  11. Well, someone thought it was a seminal idea.


  12. Laura, that remark deserves a standing ova-tion.


  13. (furiously tries, for 15 minutes, to make a pun on “blastocyst,” fails miserably, tips hat to punmeister Brandon).


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