ROSES 14-OODZ

[mmcirvin]

The ROSES 14-OODZ van (sometimes other numbers of OODZ) has baffled newcomers to Cambridge and Somerville for many years through the power of poor sign lettering.

Fans of the Doctor Who story "The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit" have made the obvious joke.

I have heard that this van is visible in Google Street View, but it's not parked by that Foodmaster any more and at the moment I've forgotten exactly where it moved to. It's not far from there.

Correction: It is there at the Foodmaster! The key is to look from the direction of Broadway, not from Alewife Brook Parkway. The pictures must have been taken at different times, some when the van wasn't open for business.

Comments

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Apparently we haven't seen the last of the Oodz.

[smashingstars.livejournal.com]

Took me a second to get it; the missing apostrophe is apparently the key. (And I was expecting "Roses 4 Oodz.")

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

It took me months to get it.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...What the van was actually trying to say, that is, not the Doctor Who joke.

[lots42.livejournal.com]

Google Street View worries me slightly. Of course, I can't even make Google Maps Regular work reliably, and when I do, I have to do a screen capture just to have a printable version of the map. End rambling.

[prog.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that when I first moved here in 2000 the number was 13, and so I always read it as ROSES! BLOODZ!

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

It goes up and down; the market price of roses is famously seasonal and volatile. I've seen it as low as 8 and, I think, higher than 14 as well.

[zmook.livejournal.com]

what the buck *is* the van trying to say?
I remain mystified.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Replace the hyphen with a decimal point and it becomes a little clearer.

[zmook.livejournal.com]

Is that a hyphen? I thought it was a misprinted, half-covered-up L. I couldn't figure out if Loods was a name, or a word for flowers in some language I was unfamiliar with, or why they were covering it up with a piece of paper. (Which, it seemed to me, is/was usually blank. But maybe I gave up trying to figure it out and stopped noticing at some point.)