Update: Bomp, We Hardly Knew Ye
A fairly amazing number of coincidences are piling up here.
Our story so far: About two weeks ago I did a fairly deep dive on the nuances of speed bumps, humps, and lumps. About a week after that, I posted a follow-up report on how my girlfriend, E, had found a block in her neighborhood where the roadway was emblazoned with “Bomp” (as shown in the photo above), which was apparently the work of either a playful street vandal or an illiterate city worker.
As I mentioned in that follow-up report, I hadn’t yet seen the “Bomp” in person — I had only seen E’s photo. We went out of town for a couple of days right after that, but we got back on Friday night, so on Saturday morning we hopped on our bikes and E brought me to the “Bomp” site so I could see it for myself.
When we arrived, we were surprised to find the following scene unfolding:
I talked a bit with the guy in the foreground of that photo. English wasn’t his first language and I don’t speak Spanish, so our conversation was a bit limited, but it went something like this:
Me: What’s going on?
He: Someone put an “O,” so we’re changing it to “U.”
Me: Do you work for the city?
He: No, for a company.
Me: Oh, a city contractor?
He: Yeah.
Me: Was the “O” done by someone who works for your company?
He: I don’t know. I just know we have to fix it.
Me: Did your company do the asphalt patch that went over the top of the letters?
He: No, another company did that.
Me: How long was the “O” there?
He: I don’t know, but not long.
Me: Who noticed it and complained about it?
He: I don’t know.
The worker said they were just applying the black cover-up patch, effectively creating a lowercase “u.” He said the full capital letter will be restored on Monday. (The orange safety barrier was to allow the black paint to dry, which he said was almost done.)
There are several layers of improbably good timing, good luck, and coincidence at work here. One at a time:
E never intended to drive down this block last week. She had made a wrong turn and was detouring to get back to her original route. If she hadn’t made that mistake, she wouldn’t have been on the “Bomp”-ified block.
Moreover, the worker said the “Bomp” only existed for a short period. So it was pure chance that E went down this block during the short “Bomp” window. She was truly in the right place at the right time!
In addition, even if E had intended to go down this block to begin with, she might not have noticed the “Bomp” — and almost certainly wouldn’t have stopped to photograph it — if I hadn’t just published the bumps/humps/lumps piece a week earlier.
Finally, how crazy is it that we visited the “Bomp” just as the workers were fixing it? That was a really small time window!
All these coincidences are almost enough to make up for my disappointment over the de-“Bomp”-ification. It was such a fun little quirk, and I’m sure it wasn’t a safety hazard. I’m sad it had such a short lifespan.
And that’s not the only thing I’m a bit crestfallen about. If you go back to E’s original photo at the top of this article, you can see that while the roadway said, “Bomp,” the accompanying yellow sign still said, “Bump” — an inconsistency that E and I had decided to remedy by making a surreptitious adjustment to the sign. Technically speaking, of course, that would be vandalism, but it felt more like we’d be engaging in a participatory art project combined with an inside joke. We had fun discussing how we’d do it and were looking forward to executing our plan.
But now that the original road lettering is being restored, there’s no more need for that — unless the original “Bomp”-er returns to the block and changes the “U” back to an “O.” Here’s hoping.
Period Piece revisited: Those of you who enjoyed my deep dive on J.D. Vance’s name will be interested to hear that Wikipedia has now removed the periods from his name.
Paul Lukas has been obsessing over the inconspicuous for most of his life, and has been writing about those obsessions for more than 30 years. You can contact him here.
I vote that all bumps be converted to bomps. It could be a WPA-like project to stimulate the economy (not that it needs it.) It would also provide an ancillary benefit for lexicographers, who have not yet, apparently, deemed "bomp" to be a word. It is too good a word to confine to one street. Especially harsh bomps should be indicated by the addition of an exclamation point.
The culprit was no doubt a Bomp! Records fan.