TRUMP'd
June 6, 2014 1:28 PM   Subscribe

How do you destroy the aesthetic integrity of the world's fourteenth tallest building? All you need are five massive letters.
posted by Iridic (76 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wow! Those are some ugly letters!

I'm all for giant pieces of signage, and I love a good oversized word, but that particular style of all-caps is the kind of thing I'd see on a local Thai restaurant's menu.
posted by redsparkler at 1:33 PM on June 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


It's always looked terribly boring but now it looks terribly insecure too.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:34 PM on June 6, 2014 [5 favorites]


I would gladly have bribed somebody to take a few days to put up the "T".
posted by Shepherd at 1:36 PM on June 6, 2014 [25 favorites]


Haha. Yeah. It's also a bit like something you'd see on a casino, but I guess Trump was never known for his great taste.
posted by mosschief at 1:37 PM on June 6, 2014


T R A S H
posted by jeff-o-matic at 1:37 PM on June 6, 2014 [4 favorites]


At least Stark Tower had a neat font for the name.
posted by happyroach at 1:37 PM on June 6, 2014 [12 favorites]


As a warning sign, I suppose bigger = indeed better.
posted by monospace at 1:38 PM on June 6, 2014


CHUMP
posted by Daddy-O at 1:39 PM on June 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Luckily, as "trump" is mild UK slang for "fart", I don't even need them to leave letters off to enjoy some skyscraper sized toilet humour. I am all for it.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 1:41 PM on June 6, 2014 [23 favorites]


I would gladly have bribed somebody to take a few days to put up the "T".

They're actually spelling it from left to right, putting up a new letter every couple of weeks. So far they're up to TRUM.
posted by Iridic at 1:41 PM on June 6, 2014


They forgot the period after the T.
posted by jamjam at 1:43 PM on June 6, 2014


"Hush."
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:44 PM on June 6, 2014 [18 favorites]


What did I expect from a guy who wears roadkill on his head like an ancient Roman ? Nothing less, surely. That guy has been keeping the assy in classy since 1973.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 1:47 PM on June 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Fun fact, Blair Kamin, who wrote the first two articles linked, won the Pulitzer for criticism for his writing about architecture, and I believe he's the only full-time architecture critic at a major newspaper in the U.S. right now. (There are several full-time in magazines, and several who do part-time.)

One thing I love about Chicago is how passionate Chicagoans are about their architecture. You'll be on the Metra coming in from the suburbs and some banker in a suit will see you reading the Trib piece on Trump Tower and go, "It's just terrible they let him build that on the Lakefront, isn't it? So out of proportion." and then you're getting off the train and the panhandler in Union Station sees your paper folded over to the story and says, "Yo, that is one ugly building!" and then you're in line at Starbucks and some tattooed teenager with nose piercings and gigantic pants sees your paper and is like, "OMG, that building is THE WORST. THE WORST. The Calatrava would have been better!"

We could fix the city pension crisis by taxing Trump per letter per pretentiousness. Just sayin'.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:50 PM on June 6, 2014 [21 favorites]


THUG LIFE
posted by Foosnark at 1:50 PM on June 6, 2014


I liked it better last week, when it said TRU. Because if someone said something wise I could point at it and nod slowly.
posted by theodolite at 1:52 PM on June 6, 2014 [14 favorites]


I used to have a framed poster in my office of the planets in our solar system. I printed out "Trump" in the same typeface, color and background as the planet names and stuck it over "Earth". It was good for an occasional laugh when people noticed it.

One day I noticed that "Trump" was slightly out of position. On close inspection it had been peeled up and replaced not quite accurately. Apparently someone on the evening shift was in my office and had no idea what that blue and white planet between Venus and Mars was called, and had to stand on my desk to find out. I hope they felt improved by the knowledge.

Just thought I'd share that.
posted by George_Spiggott at 1:53 PM on June 6, 2014 [28 favorites]


How do you destroy the aesthetic integrity of the world's fourteenth tallest building?

Combover?
posted by R. Mutt at 1:54 PM on June 6, 2014 [5 favorites]


If I were in charge of the work crew, I would install the letters in the wrong order and then leave town.

TMURP
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:55 PM on June 6, 2014 [13 favorites]


I think it's extra-tragic in Chicago which is one of those cities where architects actually seem to pay attention to fitting in with the surrounding structures. If you're ever there for a visit I hope they still have the boat tour of the city architecture.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:55 PM on June 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


I was just bitching about that sign yesterday: (self-link Instagram). It's sickening that it got approved. Here's hoping Trump's empire collapses in scandal and the building gets new owners eager to remove all trace of him.
posted by dnash at 1:55 PM on June 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


I liked the Murphy Brown episode where, as a prank, she stole the T off Trump Towers, so Donald and Marla would wake up in the RUMP towers.

Seemed fitting.
posted by zarq at 1:56 PM on June 6, 2014


> I would install the letters in the wrong order...

URP™
posted by ardgedee at 1:58 PM on June 6, 2014 [11 favorites]


Combover?

There's a building crying out for a huge toupée.
posted by octobersurprise at 2:01 PM on June 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


Maybe we can get the lights in the rooms to spell out IS DUMB under his name. He would be so mad!
posted by Our Ship Of The Imagination! at 2:02 PM on June 6, 2014 [11 favorites]


Also, this post needs a "tinypenis" tag.
posted by dnash at 2:03 PM on June 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


On the new Trump building in Toronto, half-hotel and half-residential, no architectural masterpiece and with revolt soon after opening from the doctors and dentists who had invested as owners of hotel rooms, the sign on the one sign of the building was left saying TRUM. I can't find one now, but there were pictures of the remaining letter P laying discarded on the roof. May have been fixed by now, I haven't seen the building for awhile.
posted by TimTypeZed at 2:04 PM on June 6, 2014


I was there the other week when they only had up the T R U.

My tour guide joked about putting up another sign that said F A L S E.
posted by mochapickle at 2:04 PM on June 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


In light of Jon Mitchell's comment I am suddenly a lot more curious (not to mention apprehensive) concerning the etymology of the phrase "trump of doom."
posted by Nerd of the North at 2:04 PM on June 6, 2014


Thick-fingered vulgarian, indeed.
posted by psoas at 2:05 PM on June 6, 2014 [4 favorites]


That is 100% casino lettering. Wonder which one they stole it from.
posted by PMdixon at 2:07 PM on June 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Perhaps this sounds naive or is something most were already aware of. Upon visiting Donald Trump's Wikipedia page just now I could not help but notice under the subeading "Political party": Democratic 2001-2009. His racism becomes all the more obvert.

Oh yeah, ugly sign.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 2:11 PM on June 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Huh, I did not know that "trump" could also refer to the sound of a trumpet. I expect that is the (boring) etymology of the sense meaning fart.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:12 PM on June 6, 2014


PTURM
posted by The Vice Admiral of the Narrow Seas at 2:13 PM on June 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


C L O W N
posted by chance at 2:14 PM on June 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


In London, I hear the Donald will soon be putting RUT MP on his exclusive property across the river from the Palace of Westminster.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:16 PM on June 6, 2014


If you're ever there for a visit I hope they still have the boat tour of the city architecture.

Yup, it's still going. It's my #1 recommendation for visitors.
posted by JoeZydeco at 2:17 PM on June 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


A S S H A T (surely he could afford one more letter)
posted by kozad at 2:17 PM on June 6, 2014


He appears to have an edifice complex.

Sorry
posted by Bovine Love at 2:20 PM on June 6, 2014 [12 favorites]


Action footage!
posted by darksasami at 2:22 PM on June 6, 2014


I was able to observe him for a good half-hour once 20 years ago, while interning on a TV show. No one on staff spoke to him, except the producer for his segment, not even the studio security. I never spoke to guests anyway (except for Dolly, who is, of course, the anti-Trump), but I watched as he stood silently in the corner of the hallway, waiting for the segment producer to take him into makeup. He looked so pathetic and sad as everyone rushed around him doing their jobs. But if someone happened to look his way, and there were people passing in the hall who were, I thought, high enough on the totem pole to warrant a nod, he'd turn his head away. It was just... sad. I wondered why he was there if he was too good for us peons in the room. I've also thought that maybe he is one of those super-sensitive types? Why try to get all this attention? Or maybe as long as he can control the type of attention...? I don't know.

But then I think about how much money the taxpayers must have covered in his various shady real estate deals and ugly buildings over the last 40 years, and his racism, and I just want to kick him in the nuts - and then SHAKE HIS HAND.
posted by droplet at 2:23 PM on June 6, 2014


Doonesbury is relevant.1

Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury has had a lot of fun with Donald Trump over the years.

He is, for example, one of the only "real" characters Trudeau attempts to render accurately, or at least in caricature, rather than relying on associated set-pieces (à la the Nixon White House) or icons (à la the Clinton Waffle).

He has been featured so prominently in the strip, in fact, that as of March 2001 (where my survey of the strip becomes less comprehensive) he was ranked #6 among the "real" characters, behind only five former presidents, and ahead of such luminaries as Dan Quayle, Henry Kissinger, Newt Gingrich, and Gerald Ford.

From his numerous appearances and mentions, the strip I linked at the top, and the narrative that follows, best illustrates his artistic sensibility -- or lack thereof -- as it was understood twenty-five years ago.
  1. The storyline continues for twelve more strips, including (in a relative rarity for Doonesbury's narrative format) an intervening Sunday strip, and concluding with the strip published March 25, 1989.

posted by The Confessor at 2:26 PM on June 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


Christ, what an asshole.
posted by schmod at 2:26 PM on June 6, 2014 [5 favorites]


Once in a while here in Brunswick, GA, the "nation's armpit," I hear someone talking animatedly about taxes and how gobberm'nt types are taking his hard-earned money, that he worked for. Sometimes I engage these people in an argument, but not often. People are rarely convinced by random bystanders.

Sometimes people, often rich people and friends of the Republicans, will defend having huge amounts of money as if there were somehow something moral about it. I get the same sense out of that as I do from the ranting strangers of Brunswick. If you have money, you must be moral, and conversely, if you're moral, you must have money. Taking that away from someone is thus immoral.

These people, of course, are wrong. There is absolutely no righteous authority derived by having a single red cent. Virtue exists on a different axis. Money is just counters, exchange tokens, arbitrary units that we happen to need to live, the implication of the rules of a badly-designed board game projected on our world. And there is no greater proof of this fact than DONALD TRUMP, he makes it clearly obvious that luck matters far more to wealth than any skill or integrety, makes it obvious to anyone with a brain, and for that, one could contrive to be thankful.
posted by JHarris at 2:32 PM on June 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


Why does that guy have to put his "Trump Stamp" all over everything, anyway?
Insecure much, Donny?
posted by Jefffurry at 2:34 PM on June 6, 2014


schmod: "Christ, what an asshole."

That's a lot of letters but I guess the words could be stacked vertically... the building's big enough:

CHRIST
WHAT
AN
ASSHOLE

Also, yeah, there should be giant toupe on top of the building.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 2:40 PM on June 6, 2014


From the Defending the Donald: Why I'm with Trump On His Towering Sign link:
“He really has built a brand that means something,” says Tim Calkins, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. “It stands for quality and elegance and luxury.”
If I were in Chicago, I doubt the name on the building would bother me much, but I'd definitely be pissed if I'd paid $43,380 / year to take classes with that guy.
posted by straight at 2:41 PM on June 6, 2014 [12 favorites]


In defence:
“He really has built a brand that means something,” says Tim Calkins, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. “It stands for quality and elegance and luxury.”

A consumer who is impressed to see “Trump” on an opulent skyscraper is more likely to try a cologne with the same name.
posted by unliteral at 2:48 PM on June 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Jinx straight.
posted by unliteral at 2:49 PM on June 6, 2014


Thick-fingered vulgarian, indeed.

Short-fingered, if you please.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:49 PM on June 6, 2014 [5 favorites]


CHA
posted by Metroid Baby at 2:52 PM on June 6, 2014 [9 favorites]


He doesn't seem to be aware that, regardless of the size and robustness of his all-caps name, "trump" is a term used by the under-5s in the UK to refer to flatulence. As in, "phew, did you trump? Teacher, Donald trumped!"

As seconded here, where Donald is referenced, as well as Ivana. I cannot believe I missed the comedy milage in "Ivana Trump" as a child.
posted by davemee at 3:26 PM on June 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


S M U R F
posted by Schadenfreude at 3:36 PM on June 6, 2014


Mr Put.

Also, I was hoping this post was about someone changing the sign to say "chump".
posted by loquacious at 3:59 PM on June 6, 2014


I kind of liked the letters when they were lying higgledy-piggledy on the ground. If they'd left them like that they would have at least been in keeping with the architectural zeitgeist, rather than being an utterly banal tagging of a skyscraper.

Any excuse to say 'zeitgeist', really.
posted by pipeski at 4:12 PM on June 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


BrotherCaine: "If you're ever there for a visit I hope they still have the boat tour of the city architecture."

They do and it is still great. (I try to go on it every few years and it is always great.)

I did not like the building at first, but I've grown to appreciate it at some point this year. Trump adding the ugly letters to it just as I had decided I like it feels like the most Trump-action ever to me.

Of course, taking someone else's unrelated-to-you actions as a personal slight is also fairly Trump-like as well.

Speaking of raging narcissts, as has been noted here, it's been stuck at T-R-U for a couple of weeks, and I was hoping that it was because they had lost the M and then I would find it and we could hang it outside my apartment.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 4:14 PM on June 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


Speaking of raging narcissts, as has been noted here, it's been stuck at T-R-U for a couple of weeks,

I wish someone had thought to shoot some video of themselves lipsyncing to Spandau Ballet with that visible in the background.
posted by George_Spiggott at 4:37 PM on June 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


This is so upsetting to walk past every day. I'm a really big fan of the building, but always felt a little embarrassed due to the association.

....now it's just ruined.
posted by graphnerd at 4:48 PM on June 6, 2014


UP MR T
posted by George_Spiggott at 4:51 PM on June 6, 2014 [6 favorites]


I've been giggling imagining an alternate universe with big tacky letters displaying FART on all sorts of buildings

“It stands for quality and elegance and luxury.”

A consumer who is impressed to see “Trump”, "FART" on an opulent skyscraper is more likely to try a cologne with the same name.

posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:17 PM on June 6, 2014


No one is going to regret Donald Trump's death. Many will be relieved. Whatever legacy he thinks he's creating, it will be pass like a fart in the wind.

Thank goodness.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:41 PM on June 6, 2014


hoT RUMPs
posted by gottabefunky at 6:00 PM on June 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Frump seems like an easy modification to make for an intrepid climber.

No one is going to regret Donald Trump's death.

except for the tribble.
posted by srboisvert at 6:27 PM on June 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


That is a fantastically written article. Just amazing.

It's a shame that the article is significantly more pleasing than the actual tower in question, even before the T I N Y P E N I S was added.

(Yeah, the tower is very nice from a couple of angles, but aren't architects supposed to be concerned with how it looks from all angles?)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:39 PM on June 6, 2014


Our local sports arena was recently renamed after a corporate sponsor. The letters went up slowly and out of order. For a while, we thought it was an ad for some sort of wacky "hangman" game. DA C N R
posted by vespabelle at 6:45 PM on June 6, 2014


They do still have the architecture boat tour. It's fantastic.

I'm from Chicago, so as Eyebrows says, of course I have a view on the Trump tower. I don't mind it. I don't love it the way I love Aqua. (And Jeanne Gang is an Illini!). It's a wasted opportunity. But the form from SOM is in keeping with the Sears Tower, and the color goes well with the River.
posted by persona au gratin at 6:55 PM on June 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


When I die and finally arrive at my eternal destination in the netherworld, I fully expect to see that the sign's been changed from Hell to Trumpville. Please let me be the guy that sets his wig on fire.
posted by mule98J at 7:09 PM on June 6, 2014


That building is awfully reflective. It'd be a shame if someone across the way bought some backwards letters...
posted by condour75 at 7:50 PM on June 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Hey guys look: for a mere $32M you can own the whole 89th floor! Check out the sweet minimal opulence of ... well nothing, actually. And with all that money you'd save not having to rip out someone else's design decisions, you'll be able to afford the condo fees of $12,442. Per month.

Someone's gotta keep that sign lit.
posted by Westringia F. at 9:40 PM on June 6, 2014 [2 favorites]


The funniest thing about that ad (and there is a lot to enjoy, like the fact that it is 5 bedroom, 10 bathrooms) is the inclusion of which school district it's in.

Because any hypothetical owner of that unit is certainly going to send their hypothetical children to CPS schools.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:50 PM on June 6, 2014 [4 favorites]


I just realized one my my Chicago wallpaper images has to have been taken from the top of this building, which:

A) Means this is clearly the best place to take pictures of the Chicago since said pictures will never include this tower.
B) Makes me feel a little bit like throwing up.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 10:21 PM on June 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


GO STICK YOUR HEAD IN A PIG
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 10:26 PM on June 6, 2014 [5 favorites]


What's the difference between Donald Trump and some punk with a can of spray paint who goes around tagging every flat surface in the neighborhood? Money.
posted by Daddy-O at 5:02 AM on June 7, 2014


Well, now that you mention it, I didn't expect Banksy to reveal himself this way either....
posted by sendai sleep master at 1:07 PM on June 7, 2014


Trump owns the building he is tagging? I'm sure if Trump went and put his name on the World Trade Center or something that the owners wouldn't tolerate it anymore than the punk.
posted by Mitheral at 6:11 PM on June 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


Trump Tower floods; cause not yet known


DO NOT ANGER THE SPIRITUAL PROTECTORS OF CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:06 AM on June 26, 2014 [3 favorites]


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