Ask Chicagoist: Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs
By Thales Exoo in Miscellaneous on May 5, 2006 2:54PM
dear chicagoist staff -
the billboard just east of the clybourn metra stop - it says, "6+6+06 the signs are all around you" on a black billboard in white font. no links to any websites or companies or anything...can you guys get to the bottom of this? i've done my own googling research with no answers and i just want to figure out what this is all about.
thanks!
nancy
Hi Nancy!
Wow, we hadn’t seen that billboard, but it sure sounds ominous, doesn’t it? Even if we don’t really take things like signs too much to heart, we can play along enough to creep ourselves out. We take the Metra everyday to Ravenswood, so we were staring around all the buildings and other trains like a fool the other day when we were stopped at Clybourn in the hopes we could see the sign from the train. We never did find the actual billboard (although we got plenty of funny looks from the businessman sitting next to us), but we did manage find out what all the fuss is about.
You weren’t the only one wondering about the sign. People all over the Internet have been posing the question to each other. Luckily most are savvy enough to realize it’s a marketing campaign, and aren’t really too concerned about what’s going to happen to the world on June 6 this year, although there are those who are certain that because of the "666" in the date, the world will in fact be ending on that day (at promptly 6:06.06, of course). But most people, like you, just want to know what it’s all about. Theories abound online, a lot revolving around video games and the Xbox 360 -- we think because of the placement of banner ads on message boards.
The truth is it’s the day the remake of the movie "The Omen" comes out, and that creepy Damien kid and his friends are using the "666" for all that they can – even the trailer for the movie on the official website is 66 seconds long (sorry, "6econds"). We’re not completely sure if marketing campaigns without the actual name of the product are ever too effective, but we suppose it got us writing about it, so maybe they rely on people who are intrigued enough to want to solve the mystery.
The real question, we think, is going to be whether or not remaking such a classic thriller (that is actually pretty scary) is a good idea in the first place.
Image via soleilani
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