Excellent high-voltage warning glyph

I'm having a pretty great time in Vancouver this week on the Pirate Cinema tour. Granville Island has lots to recommend about it, but I'm especially taken with the electrocution hazard glyphs on the access-plates set into the sidewalk. They even beat the lightning bolts that leap out of electric risers on the streets of San Francisco. What is it about the Pacific Northwest and awesome high-voltage signs, anyway? It's like this is some kind of lost valley where the coelacanth ancestors of Reddy Kilowatt never went extinct.

Electrocution warning icon, market, Granville Island (Vancouver Writers Festival), Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: canada • hazard • insertthorjokehere • photos • vancouver • wide • yvr

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edkedz

You know what one of my favourite things about Granville Island is?
When you decide that you actually need to get some food item there in spite of the crazy prices, and people off the tour buses are strolling around the market area four abreast as slow as humanly possible! It’s awesome!

(Honestly, I’m pretty tourist friendly, and never understand people whose automatic response to visitors to their town is hostility, but seriously: they’re gawking at frickin’ groceries, and nobody’s buying any of those perishables to take back to the bus with them…)
inkfumes

Hi, I’m Reddy Kilowatt reporting a dangerous overload at octopus connection in sector 5!
http://twitter.com/writebastard Ian Wood

Tattoo’d on the back of my neck!

But…what does Lileks have to do with this?
dbergen

Lol, yup, my wife says “No Electric-Limbo!” when we pass those signs.
- awjt
  
  & it’s high fiber, too!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Edwin-Austin/742393795 Edwin Austin

This could also read “Don’t piss off Zeus!”
roid

Is Lileks the original trademark holder/creator of the lightening bolt/power outlet/light bulb character? I would have sworn that our local power company (APS) was using that guy back in the seventies.
Snig

It also looks a little like it might give you superpowers.
- http://twitter.com/Skyhawk1 skyhawk1
  
  The Flash did come to mind.
  - http://twitter.com/AbelUndercity Abel Undercity
    
    “In case of emergency, just say ‘SHAZAM!’”
http://twitter.com/Moriash Nathan

What are the markings/scratches? Is that from street sweeper bristles? Kind of a nifty effect, if so.
http://www.kleinbottle.com CliffStoll

I’m impressed – danger graphics are extremely important!

-> Huzzah for BC Hydro & PG&E <-

Now, if only poison graphics were placed on household caustics & pesticides
http://thisisonlya.blogspot.com robcat2075

Since I can’t find a contact page for site problems, I’ll note here that when i come to BB I frequently get redirected to a bestprizedraw.com scam site. It ONLY happens when i visit BB so I presume it is something about your site and not my computer.
- ocker3
  
  What browser are you using? Never had that problem, sounds like a malware problem
- http://www.kleinbottle.com CliffStoll
  
  Sounds like a redirect virus on your PC. Usually these do redirects for google or bing, but I’ve heard of them reported for other ip addresses. The virus substitutes a bad IP address for the desired IP address.
  
  To find out more, enter the following string into your favorite search engine:
  browser redirect malware
  (conceivably, you may have to do this from an uninfected computer)
  
  Several public domain programs are available to cure this: try searching out malwarebytes or TDSSKiller
- Halloween_Jack
  
  I’ve had various problems with BB over the years, but malware has never been one of them.
- Robo-Design
  
  i also had this happen today.
- http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
  
  It could be a bad ad. I’ll block that domain in the ad platform just in case
func

Hey, if you’re still in the area Cory, try to checkout Eat Art – they’re up False Creek, so to speak, a few blocks past Main Street. The Mondo Spider is worth a look see, as is Titanoboa and Daisy.
- ssiess
  
  Cory is speaking at the Great Northern Way Campus this morning, right next door. Part of the same building. It’s worth checking them out, they’re super nice folk with some giant terrifying machines.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000793472262 Simon Garton

Us Kiwis would recognise it instantly from one of our local bands.
- ocker3
  
  I think that basic design is actually pretty common, for example http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-danger-electrocution-sign-image5578750
jetfx

There can be only one!
sqyntz

@Nathan - that appears to be the fiberglass weave where the epoxy resin has worn away
- http://twitter.com/Moriash Nathan
  
  Ah! Makes sense. I’d assumed this was a steel manhole cover.
daemonsquire

That bolt looks a lot more lethal than the li’l Adam’s apple tickle they give you in Luang Prabang. (on a side note, Cory, you in particular might enjoy the faux-Disney bouncy castle I saw there, on the same trip, https://secure.flickr.com/photos/66586176@N00/364681165/in/set-72057594098340531/
- Cory Doctorow
  
  Brilliant!
John Verne

The pic from San Fran you link to is a pretty standard high voltage warning icon. The same image is in the power room of the corp I work at in SW Ontario.
mypalmike

http://img0.etsystatic.com/000/0/5517865/il_fullxfull.236822652.jpg
Halloween_Jack

What is it about the Pacific Northwest and awesome high-voltage signs, anyway?

Not sure if it’s related, but the Pacific NW is/was a big center of hydroelectric power. In the book Cadillac Desert, the author credits the abundant hydroelectric power for helping the U.S. win the Pacific war, as the electricity helped create the aluminum smelting industry in that region–apparently aluminum smelters are basically giant resistors–and the American aircraft industry could turn out aluminum craft faster than the Japanese could shoot them down.
- http://twitter.com/smknghrtdesigns SmokingHeartDesigns
  
  And good guitarists seem to come from here as well. This is also the land of tube amps.
spiderking

Cory, we’re the Lower Mainland – not the Pacific Northwest. That’s an American thing.
Christian Buggedei

I quite like the warning signs in Turkey too – they are quite a bit cutesy: http://brutales-licht.de/cache/alanya-08/Alanya_08_Dim_Cave_08_800.jpg

And also quite metal, when embedded in concrete: http://brutales-licht.de/cache/alanya-08/Alanya_08_Dim_Cave_06_800.jpg
http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Agenbroad/100002463876063 James Agenbroad

I read it as “Don’t be like Wash.” You know, from Serenity. And of course all this talk about Reddy Kilowat forces me to say “Don’t forget Willey Wirehand. http://www.reddykilowatt.org/2007/03/22/willie-wiredhand-history/
ssiess

We also have a Reddy hanging around: http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM2QCN_Reddy_Kilowatt_Vancouver_British_Columbia
TheOven

If you should take the new sky-train out to the airport you’ll notice they mounted all the electrocuted men the wrong way. They appear to be jumping into the electric arc, rather than being blasted by it.