Saturday, November 29, 2003

By Bob Batz Jr., Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Mark Stroup is urging people to add to his collection of Pittsburgh signs, but there's no need to call the police.

	Mark Stroup of Friendship has posted on his Web site signs that define Pittsburgh, including the sign at Kelly's Bar Lounge in East Liberty. (Mark Stroup) Click photo for larger image.

The Friendship man just wants people to take photographs of landmark signs and e-mail them to him so he can share them online at http://markstroup.com -- his Web site.

"What I'm really after is some kind of Internet-inspired, viral, people-powered groundswell that gets all of Pittsburgh to get out of the house and pay attention to the environment," e-mails the 42-year-old writer, who says he was inspired by seeing an Internet collection of cool Denver signs.

Signs have their own way of defining the landscape, he muses on his site in an explanation of this open-to-anyone project.

"Signs can comfort with familiarity, they can irritate you with their distraction, they might please you with their symmetry or illustrate the decay of a once-proud neighborhood. Signs are always trying to say something."

But he wants the signs to speak for themselves, and so he invites participants to capture images of the signs that move them -- quirky or otherwise.

He asks that you e-mail (to mark.stroup@verizon.net) JPEG format images no larger than 640 by 480 pixels and include your name, shoot date and location, plus 50 words or less on why you shot that sign. Visitors to his signs of Pittsburgh page can get that information, and a bigger view, by clicking on the thumbnail images.

There already are several posted on a page under the link "Signs of Pittsburgh," including his own shot of Walsh's Lounge & Bar in East Liberty and a Jeff Maurin shot of the Wholey's Strip District fish unlit during the day. Stroup is soliciting other landmarks, such as the Bayer sign on Mount Washington. But he's posting much smaller ones, too, such as a hearing notice on a home in Oakland.

Eventually, Stroup would like to display some of this "book" of images at some kind of arty show, and who knows where the project could go from there. It could be taped to a wall.

"The 60 best signs in Pittsburgh," he says, "would make a really interesting poster."

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