The Tribune

By DIANE PHILLIPS

Humans are amazing creatures. We get used to our surroundings, even if we don’t really like them. We just stop seeing the bad stuff.

It’s a positive trait in some ways, showing our adaptability. Our senses are so malleable we can adapt to just about anything given enough time. A smell that is so offensive it makes us gag at first whiff becomes tolerable after a while. We hardly notice it. A charred building crumbling from the intense heat catches our eye the day after fire destroyed it. We wonder when they will tear it down. When weeks go by and it is still standing in shambles, it becomes just another blight on the drive to take a child to school.

Our adaptability is killing our demand for better.

We see that which offends - and we just plain adjust. At least that is the only excuse that I can think of that would allow hundreds, if not a few thousand, Bahamians and other residents to pass by areas of New Providence strewn with a forest of mish-mash signage, billboards from one end of a strip to another, a solid plywood storm of tackiness, stare it with all its tackiness in full display, drive on, and accept that it is okay.

It is not okay. And it makes me wonder, when did we stop being Little Nassau or Funky Nassau, a small city that everyone adored and felt proud to be part of, and become Tacky Nassau, a place that we tolerate, because we get used to what we see. Even if it offended us at first, given time our senses get numb to it.

Call it the numbing effect – like the Novocaine the dentist gives you before a procedure to numb the area that would feel the pain.

That is the sole excuse I can offer for the fact that hundreds of Bahamians and other residents pass by Montagu bend with tacky billboards staring them in the face day after day and they do nothing about it. They were offended when the first signs went up blocking the stunning view of a redeveloped Montagu foreshore. There were a few to begin with, then a few more. Today, there are 16 blasting everything from events that have already ended to beverages, from a $99 tourist attraction to some sort of human resource management. Now, the passersby have simply stopped seeing them.

The billboard blasphemy is a sign of a different kind – a sign of total disrespect for the environment.

Commercial signage has its place. That place is not blocking the view of one of the last remaining open vistas of a shoreline, beach and bay in an otherwise densely populated Nassau. Nor is it appropriate on a road that is among the first views of The Bahamas for more than a million visitors, or returning residents, leaving LPIA heading into town.

This is not an anti-signage campaign. This is an end-the-tackiness, carelessness, sloppy signage campaign and I will repeat it until enough voices join the cry to restore our view and our pride in a place as beautiful and as special as Little Nassau and until the powers that be understand that Tacky Nassau brings all of us down.

And while I am not afraid to speak up about the Novocain effect that allows such visual carnage to go unchecked, I am also a solutions-oriented person so please allow me to offer positive suggestions. Why not schedule workshops with public consultation on areas that should be designated as appropriate for commercial signage, then have sign companies or other enterprises submit proposals for attractive uniform style signs that individual businesses or institutions can lease space on.

Perfect example – the walkway at Nassau Cruise Port. We also need to create historic plaques for buildings on the Historic Register. And why not create a competition for art students to design story telling signs along Bay and Shirley Streets at specific locations telling the story of the history of Nassau? Signs just large enough to be Instagrammable without being offensive…or in the Family Islands where once the first session of Parliament was held in Cupid’s Cay, Eleuthera, since the building has since been torn down and there is no testament to its existence.

Well-designed signage in the appropriate place can help tell our story. Right now, the story our signage is telling is that we don’t care about how we look. We are going out in public like the emperor who had no clothes and pretending to be finely dressed. Maybe the Novocaine will wear off, our numbness will pass and we will awaken to the reality that tacky signage is painful and it’s time to do better for all of us, those who stopped seeing it and those who saw it all along.