The World’s Most Ridiculous Stop Sign

Its absurdity is also its appeal.

What you see above looks pretty straightforward: a car — my car, as it happens — parked in front of a Stop sign at the intersection of 81st Street and 77th Avenue in the Queens neighborhood of Glendale. The photo was taken two days ago — Sunday, April 13th, a little after 6pm. What you can’t tell from the photo, however, is that this is New York City’s, and perhaps the world’s, most ridiculous and unnecessary Stop sign.

Here, let me pull back and give you a better view:

That right — this “block” is actually a teeny-tiny stub of a dead end, shorter than many driveways. There’s no way for it to have any outbound traffic unless someone drives to the “END” sign and turns around.

Here’s another view, which I think makes the situation look even sillier, although you can see only a sliver of the back of the Stop sign:

And just for good measure, here are a couple of photos without the car, just so you can evaluate the situation without any distractions:

The funny thing about this is that I thought I had already located NYC’s most unnecessary Stop sign. It too is located on a very short dead end, in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Gerritsen Beach. I went out to visit it yesterday so we could compare it to the Queens sign: