Slashdot Log In
Mystery Tiles From Around the World
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Sep 08, 2003 09:15 AM
from the where-do-they-come-from dept.
from the where-do-they-come-from dept.
puppetman writes "The Kansas City Star has an interesting story about Toynbee Tiles.
They show up embedded in streets, and can be found in the US (Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Aberdeen, Edgewood, Washington, etc), Chile, Argentina and Brazil. They are made of "epoxy or super hard plastic that's actually inlaid in the asphalt itself."
The tiles invariably state, "Toynbee Ideas in Kubrick's 2001 Resurrect Dead On Planet Jupiter".
Sometimes there are secondary tiles that request people make more while others are of a more paranoid slant.
Toynbee was a religious historian who believed that "well-being of a civilization depends on its ability to respond successfully to challenges, human and environmental". There is even a Ray Bradbury book, The Toynbee Convector.
Toynbee.net has a link to a Usenet posting where someone ask's Kubrick's daughter if the man himself knew of the tiles.
To date, the origin of the tiles are a mystery. Any /.'ers able to provide the location of additional tiles, or perhaps clues for solving the mystery?"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Would everyone who wants to claim responsibility.. (Score:5, Funny)
googling reveals more interesting leads... (Score:5, Informative)
google turns up a funeral home [gy.com] in philadelphia called "verna sevrino funeral home", hmmm what might a funeral home have to do with resurrecting people on mars?
more googling turns up philadelphia councilwoman Anna C. Verna [phila.gov], who is married to " husband, Severino Verna, a funeral director, were born and raised in South Philadelphia.".
And finally, everything you ever wanted to know about Anna C Verna is here [hallwatch.org] I, for one, welcome our new neptune resurrectionist overlord.
Parent
Interesting. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting. (Score:5, Interesting)
Geocache [geocaching.com]
Parent
Re:Interesting. (Score:4, Funny)
World: There are weird tiles!
Slashdot: We need coordinates for our GPS!
Why can't we light candles or leave flowers or something normal people would do?
Parent
Re:Interesting. (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Interesting. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
My guess? (Score:4, Funny)
Kubrick promised us the Monolith... (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, thinking about 2001 depresses me. When I was a kid I had every expectation we'd be flying around in Pan Am Space Shuttles and learning how to use zero-g toilets.
Instead we live in a world where Pan Am goes bankrupt, and NYC still hasn't figured out how to install restrooms in the city.
These tiles are nothing more than a cruel reminder of just how lame the 21st century is turning out to be.
Re:Kubrick promised us the Monolith... (Score:5, Funny)
These tiles are nothing more than a cruel reminder of just how lame the 21st century is turning out to be.
Don't worry - you'll miss most of it.
Parent
Thats ok. (Score:3, Funny)
He can keep the psycho-killer computers. I have enough problems when they "seg fault".
Re:Kubrick promised us the Monolith... (Score:5, Funny)
I dunno, that yellow line that shows the first down marker on football games is pretty cool, and phrases like "don't touch that dial" have become a quaint anachronism. Sure, we're still driving gas-guzzling behemoths and cell phone coverage is spotty at best, but progress is being made.
Parent
Re:Kubrick promised us the Monolith... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe that we're all still living, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, on "an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think [touch-tone phones] are a pretty neat idea."
Parent
Re:Kubrick promised us the Monolith... (Score:4, Insightful)
don't forget, we are only 3 and a bit years into the 21st century and already we have private astronauts (ok, for a few mill - but its a start!)
Parent
I've seen some of those (Score:5, Interesting)
This suggests it's the old guy (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:This suggests it's the old guy (Score:3, Interesting)
Plus they said this probably required heavy equipment. I can't see some guy in his 70's out in the middle of the night(Old people don't stay up late) lugging equipment around.
The clue which points to him certainly is the best starting place, but I'm guessing its some other wacko who heard what he said and decided to make hi
Re:This suggests it's the old guy (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Google cache of text (Score:5, Informative)
Google Cache [216.239.37.104]
These media(?) hacks are getting out of hand (Score:3, Insightful)
Szo
He's already here! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
a big AAAAAHHHHHH (Score:5, Interesting)
i honestly could not tell you where they are, but after seeing the picture it came back. i don't remember what the local ones say but the style of text in the same and the size of the tiles and whatnot.
for people in Philly, i am 99% sure there is one in a crosswalk on South street maybe around 4th and south? i guess when the
Re:a big AAAAAHHHHHH (Score:5, Funny)
That's cold, man. Cold.
Parent
Toynbee Tiles violate DMCA (Score:4, Funny)
Here's one! (Score:4, Informative)
For now, geocache away, Toynbee followers!
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_
For a message board on this topic, go here (http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Zone/3790/geoboo
Are We Really, Really Sure We're "Seeing" Tiles? (Score:3, Funny)
I have seen many of these! Spooky! (Score:5, Funny)
I've seen a large number of these mysterious tiles. They too have strange writing on them, which sometimes makes lewd suggestions or tells offensive jokes. I have always wondered how that writing was created on all those tiles. I've usually noticed these mystery tiles in restrooms stalls at schools, offices, and even airports in many major cities around the world! It's good to know people are starting to investigate the matter.
It's a small world (Score:4, Insightful)
And from the article: "in at least 20 cities around the United States (and two in South America!)"
It kind of reminds me of the times when Europe was the known world.
Tell me more (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Quoting the article (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, as if a person insane enough to put prophecy tiles into asphalt would drop the idea due to risk of being alone in a downtown environment.
Does anybody know of similar things? (Score:4, Interesting)
There were times when I thought of charting them and trying to find out who the guy is (yes, I had nothing much to do), but I reminded myself of what can happen when one goes overboard with those things [paulauster.co.uk] and thought better of it
A crackpot, sure, but one with a hell of a determination
"This could be a place of historical importance" (Score:5, Interesting)
Seeing this story finally inspired me to Google this phrase, and it turns out to have been the work of one Braco Dimitrijevic, and apparently other similar slabs can be found around St Martin's College in London.
Obviously no Kubrick reference, so not so geeky, but still a pretty cool bit of public-space art.
a link between (Score:5, Interesting)
Submit. Obey.
Could this be an attempt to link into the Obey [obeygiant.com] phenomenon? Sure, the tiles started in the 80's, but perhaps a new breed of social engineers are trying to plug us into the idea of examining our surroundings?
Or maybe some folks think that graffetti doesn't have to be a bad spray job that says "dave love's jessica" or "metallica rules!"
Downtown St. Louis (Score:5, Interesting)
I walk by one everyday! (Score:5, Informative)
Creepy.
In Chicago (Score:5, Informative)
thang (Score:5, Informative)
funny thing: most of the sites that are linked to from this page seem to have ... dissapeared.
http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/15831 [metafilter.com]
TechTV spot w/ the "foremost expert" on it (Score:5, Informative)
TechTV did a thing on it about a month ago... [techtv.com]
Toynbee Mystery
Mysterious plaques with a prophetic message have been appearing all along the Eastern seaboard. Tonight, Bill O'Neill, the foremost expert in this phenomenon, joins us via netcam from Atlanta to talk about who or what is leaving these plaques and shed some light on their meaning. The plaques read:
"Toynbee Ideas
In Kubrick's 2001
Ressurect Dead
On Planet Jupiter"
Other article (Score:5, Informative)
It has a picture of a much larger tile with some sort of manifesto written in it, next to the standard Toynbee tile. (This picture is also visible from the picture gallery for the original article.)
an image here... (Score:5, Informative)
Toynbee Tile here [availabledark.com]
space invaders (Score:5, Informative)
you can check it out here [space-invaders.com]. for fellow londoners who are interested...i, personally, have seen two in london. one on brick lane outside vibe bar and one in the notting hill area on some bridge that the carnival goes over - dunno which one, i live in the seeouthhhhh.
How the tiles are made and baked into the street (Score:4, Insightful)
As for how they're baked into the street, this is simple also. You'll notice most of the Toynbee Tiles are placed in busy inner city intersections with plenty traffic. In [U.S.] cities streets are often fixed with small patches of asphalt covering just the worst cracks and potholes. Who notices a new black patch on the road? Well, the Toynbee feller knows nobody does.
So his secret is this. He carves the tiles, then wraps them neatly in a parcel of layers of tar paper and wood glue with the tile at the very bottom. This slim dark parcel can be fairly inconspicously placed on the street in the dark of night. It'll resemble just another patch of road repair.
It's important that the parcel be placed about as far from the curb so as to get run over by the street traffic as often as possible, because the 'baking' process is actually just the combination of pressure and weather over a period of a couple of weeks where the combined forces of pressure, weather and sun erodes the paper until just some of the tar remains, which is forced into the street and around the spaces between the tile letters, which are gradually revealed as the tar above wears away. The finished impression a couple of weeks later is that just the letters themselves remains, forced thoroughly into the street.
The tile by itself would have cracked and never survived if it had been just left there on the surface. The tar paper sandwich is quite ingenious and simple to make, though it probably takes a few tries to get the formula just right.
How Tiles are Made (Score:5, Informative)
Date: Wed, 03 May 2000 17:36:37 -0400
Subject: Toynbee Mystrey Solved!...(almost.)
Hello, my name is Justin K*H* and I am sending you this to let you know of my research into the "Toynbee Idea" phenomenon. I have been obsessively photographing & documenting these tiles since around 1992-'93, when I first started noticing them. I have a very extensive collection of photographs, but this is not my reason for contacting you. My reason in sending this E mail is to let you know that I have figured out EXACTLY how these tiles are "made & glued". You see, sometime this past winter I left my house on a mission to my lacal convinience store for a late Sunday night snack (about 4:00 A.M.,so perhaps "early morning snack would be more appropriate wording.) On my way back to the house I noticed a black mound in the street which had made it's appearance there sometime in the 10 minute period that I was in the store. Upon closer inspection I discovered it to be a mound of tar paper, intermingled with what appeared to be wood glue. Being the inquisitive soul that I am, I lifted the top layer to see what may lay underneath----a "TOYNBEE IDEA" TILE!!!!!( This was discovered at 12th. & Race ST. in Philadelphia, if you want to add it to your sightings list.) Needless to say, I examined the tile for quite a while, my heart racing all the while, knowing that I had missed catching the "mad tiler" by only a matter of minutes. Here are my findings - The tiles are indeed that - tiles. If you heat a standard floor tile it will rubberize and become as easy to cut as butter. But when it hardens it will not be able to withstand the pressure afforded it by car tires as it will be too brittle (I have tried making my own tiles, as you can infer.) However this tile was some kind with a higher rubber content than a standard floor tile, and therefore able to absorb greater weight and shock. It's inlayed letters were of a slightly less malleable substance, but were held in place neatly, even if they were to crack, by the white tile which surrounded them. All of this intricate stencil-esque tile work appeared to have been done with an X-acto knife or razor blade, judging by the angle of the cuts and my own failed attempts with cutting letters into standard floor tiles. The tile was sandwiched between thick layers of intricately folded and glued together tar paper. The effects of the weather(the paper decays, but the tar remains behind as an anchor to affix the tile to the street) and passing cars(they serve as the force which squashes the tile into - literally INTO - the street. Over the course of the next few days I took a series of detailed photos which display the entire process visually. I hope my explanation of all of this is understandable, and I apologize for typos ( I am in a rush. ) Anyways, I hope this gives you some sense of satisfaction as to at least HOW these "plaques" are made.
P.S. I checked out that Philly adress from the Rio tile - no luck, although I did find a SLEW of Toynbee tiles in the surrounding South Philly neighborhood. (Rather unusual for the tiles to be seen in such a residential neighborhood!) 9th. & Shunk St. is the only specific one I can think of off the top of my head. There are three tiles there which have to be seen to be believed. O.K......Put up my sightings & mention my findings! Thank You, Justin K*H*
Re:GPS coordinates (Score:3, Informative)
Re:GPS coordinates (Score:3, Funny)
Troc
Re:Already (Score:3, Funny)
My God! Could this mean people are actually taking the time to read the article?
Re:Harder than asphalt (Score:4, Informative)
So, the fact that the tiles are also harder than the asphalt is about as shocking as the tiles themselves.
Parent
Re:Harder than asphalt (Score:3, Informative)
Depending on how hot it was, the asphalt could get pretty soft.
Yes, just ask anyone who has come back to their motorbike on a hot day to see the sidestand 3 inches deep in asphalt. :-(
Re:I prefer penrose (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Arthur C. Clarke!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent