Maybe you’ve seen them standing on street corners all around
Gilroy, wearing giant boards that read things like,
”
Quizno’s
– Get Toasty.
”
Maybe you’ve seen them standing on street corners all around Gilroy, wearing giant boards that read things like, “Quizno’s – Get Toasty.” In one of the fastest growing industries in California, they’re known as sign twirlers, sign flippers, banner shakers, and human arrows, but the officially correct term for them is “human directional.”
Reminiscent of the sandwich boards that men wore during the Great Depression, a human directional becomes a sign and stands on a corner for five to six hours at a time. These days they earn anywhere from $8 to $20 an hour, which you may think seems like a lot for just standing around holding a sign. But local human directionals say it is not as easy as it looks. Hazards include heat and bugs in the face during summer and bone-chilling cold in winter; wind is a problem, and the sheer boredom can make you feel as if your “brain is melting,” as one sign twirler put it.
It’s not just signs that they hold up; some human directionals become characters. When Dave’s Famous BBQ came to Gilroy, the restaurant hired a human directional in full pig costume to stand outside and attract attention.
Human directionals learn to endure taunts and gestures from passing motorists. “There’s something about wearing a costume that makes people forget that you’re a person and not just some caricature,” according to one anonymous human directional in a clown suit. If they’re lucky, the people pelting them from cars are throwing coins and not something worse, as is sometimes the case. With only a five minute break each hour and no bathroom close enough to use in that amount of time, it can mean that some human directionals become very dehydrated from being careful not to drink anything for hours before reporting for duty. Local sign twirlers tell me they spend a lot of time giving people directions to places other than what their signs advertise, such as Bonfante Gardens or Hecker Pass.
But those businesses who do hire sign twirlers often see an increase in traffic flow, and sometimes thousands of dollars in added revenue. Drivers who are deciding where to go next do sometimes take the sign on the corner as a – well – “sign.” Business owners say that human directionals often work best in conjunction with ads in print. The ad gets the person out on the road, and then the human directional makes sure the customer successfully finds his way to the new housing development or the pizza place with the best garlic calzones in town.
Another reason for the rising success of human directionals is the tendency of American consumers towards impulse buying. Throwing a sign in the air or dancing around with one grabs the prospective customer’s attention in a way that no inanimate ad ever can.
Field supervisors oversee teams of five to 15 human directionals available for hire from companies like Alluring Advertising and Eventz Extraordinaire. “For anyone who needs to bring more traffic into their business, it’s ideal,” said Alvin Morrison, co-owner of Eventz Extraordinaire, an Irvine-based promotions company that is credited with first conceptualizing the directionals.
“Our sign twirlers-human directionals are twirling to thousands of impulse passer-byers. Only an intersection away, thousands are ready to buy and simply need to be pointed in the right direction,” according to Alluring Advertising.
There is also another kind of human sign sometimes spotted around Gilroy. A haggard- looking man whose face has seen too much sun holds up a sign that reads, “Jim Ferguson, Vietnam vet, I need work, God bless.” It’s handwritten on a small piece of cardboard. His faithful dog sits tied to the stop sign pole next to him. They sit together and look hopefully towards the cars coming off the freeway exit ramp.
Another day I notice a woman in a red tank top holding up a sign. Her front teeth are missing, and her brow is wrinkled and weather-beaten. Her sign says simply, “Help.” I am in too much of a hurry to stop, but I wonder what kind of help she most needs.
I consider all these different human directionals- – these “signs” of our times – and I wonder what they have to tell about us and our town.
Kat Teraji is communications coordinator for a non-profit organization benefiting women and children. Her column appears every Thursday in the Take 2 section of the Dispatch. Reach her at ka****@ve*****.net.
