An anonymous local prankster recently gifted the city of Boston a bit of unsolicited public art.
Reported by Boston.com, the now-removed street sign, installed right next to the iconic Zakim bridge, featured a quote from legendary Boston native Conan O’Brien. He offered a poetic take on the Zakim bridge, one of Boston’s most recognizable landmarks: “This bridge looks like a ***** that’s being held up by wire,” the sign said, followed by an attribution to Conan O’Brien.
The five asterisks are how the word for a male sexual organ was printed on the sign, to be tasteful, but if you’re curious, the five-letter word is penis.
Conan originally made this insightful observation back in May 2020, during the early days of the pandemic, when O’Brien was filming remotely and wearing a T-shirt featuring the bridge’s silhouette.
A Filthy Joke Just Showed Up on a Sign Near Boston’s Zakim Bridge
Conan pointed out that he has no emotional connection to the bridge since it was opened in 2003, and he left Boston in 1985. “This is a new bridge,” Conan said in a video posted to his Team Coco YouTube channel. “You want to remind me of my childhood? Make a shirt that shows my father knocking a hot dog out of my hand because Jim Rice dropped a fly ball.”
The sign briefly stood near the bridge before the state officials swooped in to take it away, celebrating another victory in their ongoing war against fun. “The sign in question is not part of any DOT project,” MassDOT confirmed. “No s**t,” we all responded in unison.
The sign is gone, and its whereabouts remain a mystery, as the identity of the local legend who put it up in the first place remains a secret. The sign may be gone, but for one brief, beautiful moment, the horrors of the world faded away and were replaced with a sign about how a bridge looks like a d**k.
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