Baconmonkey says he spotted this on a building in Oakland:
I don't think he's that good with photoshop, but on the other hand, never trust a clown.
Update: The clown speaks the truth, it's real. Here's an article about the guy responsible.
Hard to tell if it's been tampered with, mostly due to the JPEG compression artefacts. Looks pretty good, either way :)
You just want it to be real though, don't you? *g*
I want it to be real, too. But look at how blurry the sidewalk is... now look at the edge of the green. And look at how saturated it is compared to the rest of the shot.
And while I'm spoiling everyone's fun I might as well point out..... all those mall santas you see every christmas?
that means there isn't a real one.
And bunnies only live so long, so the east...
ok I'll stop.
Wouldn't it be great to replace the radiation symbol in that with
this:
http://www.stanford.edu/class/slavic-gen194a/soviet_flag.gif
?
Uhh... but the parking meter, shadows, and un-painted wall is all pretty sharp, so that that could believably be a less-than-perfect digital zoom artifact...
Hrm. Well. Maybe.
Well, I guess if it's real, it's real. I guess.
But something happened to that region of the image.
Saturation? Sharpened? Something automagic in the cam?
ah well...
Guess I could always drive down and see for myself.
in order to save on compression, I ran a tiny bit of blur on the areas not relavent, like the sidewalk, etc. and yeah, I ran unsharpen mask to strenghthen the contrast a bit.
it is a real building, I pass it every day going to work on the 72 bus on San Pablo, somewhere a little north of 20th.
The biggest question in my mind, other than "why?" is "what are the two figures on the left?"
The artist's logo; see the link Jamie added to the post.
Yes, it's real. I saw this building yesterday near downtown, on San Pablo I think. I almost shot a photo myself. My friend I was with thought it was a commissioned ad from the DHS; I think (and hope) it's parody. But hey, we're talking about it, so regardless of if it's an ad or not, ready.gov's advertising of it's fear campaign is certainly effective.
it is indeed real, i actually took some pics of it for you myself :)
re: I don't think he's that good with photoshop
http://216.239.57.100/search?q=cache:0gpO1OOkADgJ:www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82%25257E1726%25257E1408171,00.html+ready+gov+building+oakland+san+pablo&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
original article is dead.