Comments on: The Mysterious Toynbee Tiles

By: Cayleigh

Cayleigh — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 03:46:44 +0000

I got really excited today because I remember reading an article similar to this one and while I was in New York City I stumbled across two while walking in and near time square! It’s so interesting!

By: TourguideStan

TourguideStan — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 15:11:03 +0000

Many of the tiles are in Manhattan, mostly in Midtown, where I work as a guide. I’m out on the street a lot and have seen many tiles over the years.

One is on 5th Avenue at 53rd on the north side of the intersection.
One is at 5th & 50th, again on the north side of the intersection.
One is at 5th & 48 on the north side of the intersection.
One is on Park at 95th, on the southbound side, on the south side of Park.

There are others. I’ve been tweeting them under the name TourguideStan, with the hashtag #ToynbeeTiles. Watch for them.
Stan
P.S. I’m unlikely to return to this site, but you can find me on Twitter, where I post photos of New York City.

By: mmagbee

mmagbee — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 17:06:18 +0000

I think everyone is WAY overthinking this. The whole Toynbee quote is from a one-act play that David Mamet wrote in 1969.
Here is a link if anyone cares to read it:
http://convozine.com/1883-inside-the-hotdog-fa/5905

By: SF

SF — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 04:38:04 +0000

[quote]SF said: “These tiles may have been made by someone who was paranoid/schizophrenic and or bipolar. He had tried to get his message out the conventional way and people thought he was crazy. He then did the unconventional way with the tiles. He used this method because it confirmed to his mental attitude that something has to be more of a concrete message, something that should be on the road. He or she actually cut these letters out of a stencil of a tile type that was put onto the road with tar paper. Why the road, we don’t know.
Justin Duerr really was obsessed with these tiles to find out who the person is who made them, He went through many avenues to find this guy. Even going to a short wave radio workshop. He found a guy who had actually been in contact the guy who was at the top of their list of suspects. Sevy. Interesting.
Here in San Francisco, we have a kind of famous wander who carries a sign down in the Financial District. I have seen this guy since the early nineties, and people say he has been roaming around with a sign even before that. When I first saw him, an Asian guy, young, in a suit and tie with glasses carrying a sign that made sense at the time. It was about how the government was screwing things up. After years of this, his sign began to make no sense. His signs also talked about space and Jupiter. But not resurrection. I found out he was bipolar and after he lost his job he would roam the streets with this sign about how the government was the problem. The media got a hold of him and paid him to put their ads on the back side of his sign.
I haven’t seen him for a couple of years now.”[/quote]

By: SF

SF — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 04:36:11 +0000

These tiles may have been made by someone who was paranoid/schizophrenic and or bipolar. He had tried to get his message out the conventional way and people thought he was crazy. He then did the unconventional way with the tiles. He used this method because it confirmed to his mental attitude that something has to be more of a concrete message, something that should be on the road. He or she actually cut these letters out of a stencil of a tile type that was put onto the road with tar paper. Why the road, we don’t know.
Justin Duerr really was obsessed with these tiles to find out who the person is who made them, He went through many avenues to find this guy. Even going to a short wave radio workshop. He found a guy who had actually been in contact the guy who was at the top of their list of suspects. Sevy. Interesting.
Here in San Francisco, we have a kind of famous wander who carries a sign down in the Financial District. I have seen this guy since the early nineties, and people say he has been roaming around with a sign even before that. When I first saw him, an Asian guy, young, in a suit and tie with glasses carrying a sign. It made sense at the time. It was about how the government was screwing things up. After years of this, his sign began to make no sense. His signs also talked about space and Jupiter. But not resurrection. I found out he was bipolar and after he lost his job he would roam the streets with this sign about how the government was the problem. The media got a hold of him and paid him to put their ads on the back side of his sign.
I haven’t seen him for a couple of years now.

By: patrick47

patrick47 — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 18:18:08 +0000

why not take the man a bird both of you are bird men and start from there.

By: PirateLordxX

PirateLordxX — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 20:05:59 +0000

Love the article. Very interesting. I did however wish to point out that the song in 2001 was called “Thus Spake Zarathustra” which references a book by Friedrich Nietzsche. So that Has nothing to do with Toynbee.

By: MacAvity

MacAvity — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:21:22 +0000

Has anybody yet hypothesized that there was a person, named Toynbee, not necessarily related to Arnold, who did in fact come up with the idea, used in 2001: A Space Odyssey, to resurrect dead humans on Jupiter, but his idea was stolen by Kubrick, and Kubrick got all the credit, fame, and money, and Toynbee was left with no way to prove it had been his idea and get his share of the profits, so he went crazy, and instead of going on some bloody rampage set out to tell the world, in attention-getting arcane medium and grammar, of his role, and thus claim his immortality in association with his idea?

Where the common footnote “LAY TILE ALONE AS HELLIONS AND FEDS INFILTRATE AND HARVEST YOU TO PRISON” fits into that hypothesis, I know not.

By: sally

sally — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:31:54 +0000

One of these tiles appeared in Margate, N. J. on or about March 1, 2010. The streets department appeared to be amused.

By: Limemil

Limemil — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 06:44:12 +0000

[quote]mystupidmouth626 said: “Zoroaster was a proponent of monotheism? That’s just interesting because Zoroastrianism is the ONLY recognized dualist (dual-theistic?) religion ever believed in. That’s an odd connection then. Anyone know about that at all?[/quote]

It was the first religion to basically state that there is only one God, thus being monotheistic. Another important concept in it is Good vs. Evil, it sort of introduced that.