A 'Toynbee Tiles' Week

[peteryoung]

The last week has been somewhat weird, skirting the edges of a strange urban mystery, resulting in godelescherbach and myself being on something of a Toynbee Tiles bender at the moment.

Back in June on a wet afternoon in Philadelphia I was waiting for the pedestrian lights to change at the intersection of 15th Street and Kennedy, when glancing between my feet I spied this strange item:


As its science fictional content was obvious, I took this photograph just for its curiosity value. It was only two weeks ago that out of idle curiosity I googled the first two words 'Toynbee Idea', not expecting to find anything but instead discovered that dozens of similar tiles have been appearing across the North-Eastern US since as early as 1983. They've also made a few appearances in, of all places, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile and Rio de Janeiro. The tiles have at least two dedicated websites, plus a few discussion lists, and in 2003 they also got a mention at BoingBoing. Currently there is no hard and fast explanation as to who is putting them there or what, precisely, they mean, but Wikipedia provides some balanced, analytical and current information about this strange link between the late English philosopher Arnold J. Toynbee with Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The text most commonly features the phrase Toynbee Idea Movie 2001 Resurrect Dead On Planet Jupiter or some variant thereof, and is usually accompanied by other text, usually of a conspiratorial nature.

The tiles usually appear at intersections where both vehicle and pedestrian traffic will slowly embed the tiles into the tarmac, and while this process is under way the tile is covered by a protective tar paper layer, almost indistinguishable from the surrounding tarmac or concrete. When exposed, over the years they will gradually break up under the stress of constantly being driven over. Most people just walk over them completely unaware they are there, and certainly I have walked many of these streets before not knowing of their existence.

Last week godelescherbach and myself met up in Philadelphia to look for some more, and not only did we see quite a few, we found at least a dozen more previously undocumented ones, and actually uncovered three to the light of day.

As I don't have a website of my own on which to put this stuff, I spent part of yesterday setting up the LJ community toynbee_tiles, so why not join if you're curious and feel free to post your own tile photos if you have any: when these things disappear under fresh tarmac they're lost forever. There are plenty of links on the community's info page; it's an unmoderated community and there are already more than a dozen posts up already, showing what we found in Philly last Thursday.

Comments

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

*is fascinated*

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Fascinating.

I'll start to keep an eye out for them too when I'm in the US...

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

There's a rather outdated list of known locations at toynbee.net (http://www.toynbee.net). So far none have been discovered west of Kansas City.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

Freaky. Have any turned up in the UK yet?

Keep an eye out...

[godelescherbach.livejournal.com]

I've heard that one LiveJournal user has been seen perusing a copy of The Anarchist's Cookbook, cackling gleefully about "The Tun" and other strange names and plans for invading London...

But I won't mention any names.