While we're known for our cynical yet usually correct rants about gentrification, the housing crisis and politics, this week we feel we've earned ourselves a good post-Brexit chillax. So instead we bring you the funniest and wittiest advertising boards outside London town's pubs and coffee shops.
What makes you venture inside a public house or a cafe? Ad boards are usually the first thing you see, and first impressions really do count - a crap sign won't get anyone's attention. There's even a whole course devoted to the art of chalking up signs run by a company called Inn-Dispensable. Here they teach where to place the signs, what to write on them, and how to create the most eye-popping pictures.
Some court controversy. Brick Lane Coffee wrote “Sorry no Uggs (slag wellies)" on their chalkboard, which prompted writer Caitlin Moran to tweet her disapproval over its sexist overtones. It soon made headlines on social media, which of course only gave them extra custom.
Our recent favourites include the Artillery Arms pub in east London, where manager Tony Bennett decided to look on the bright side after a break-in. He wrote “This pub is so good that someone tried to get in eight hours before we open!”
At Ye Old Mitre in Holborn they put "Lord Nelson and Long John Silver may have drank here but it won't cost you an arm and a leg for a London Pride". Fun facts: Nelson lost his arm during the battle to conquer Tenerife, while Long John Silver - a character in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island - had a leg cut off.
The Gunmakers in Clerkenwell is situated between Agent Provocateur and Ben Sherman, hence "Sharp left at the posh knickers, if you hit check shirts, you've gone too far."
Spitalfields' The Bell don't take kindly to hipsters. "You are not in Shoreditch. All hipsters must be accompanied by an adult. No fingerless gloves, no male cleavage. Any unaccompanied hipsters will be drowned in the mainstream."
What's the best sign you've seen? Send us a pic or tell us on Twitter, Google+ or Facebook.
