THE SAlAD PlACE

Last time, on lowercaseL, an "unknown" commenter offered this tempting teaser:

Go onto Google Maps and check out the corner of Persia and London in San Francisco's Excelsior district. There's a place called THE SAlAD PlACE, whose name appears thusly on a large hand-painted mural. The l's are a carrot and a celery stalk, but methinks that cutesy conceit would have worked far better had they made the other non-initial letters lowercase, too.

So I followed up, and using the free 21st century spying software, I was able to find the offending sign in just a few seconds. Thank you, UNKNOWN lOWERCASE L SOlDIER.

Purim SPIEl

In celebration of the Jewish holiday, Purim, Rabbi Matt brought a gragger to shul that he bought from a street vendor in PUERTO VAllARTA, Mexico years ago. Today, for the first time, he noticed a particular deficiency in the uppercase L department.  We cannot be silent when it comes to lowercase L misuse, it's time to make some noise about this important issue!

And Happy Purim!

PlUSH RUGS

How about some PlUSH RUGS from True Value Hardware to ring in the New Year?  From Jamie in Hollister, CA.

Graphograph

Example: lOWERCASE

From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

PlZ

The Pedantic Nerd submits this trash topping message, "DO NOT PUT RUBBISH IN THIS BIN!!! PlZ".  It seems people are following instructions, otherwise the notice itself with it's inexplicable use of a lowercase L in the phonetically abbreviated PlEASE would be in the bin.

lIVE IN PEACE

There is a serious problem in the Middle East right now.  No, I'm not talking about the recent flareup of violence between Gaza and Israel.  I'm talking about the proliferation of lowercase L's in countries that do not  even use a Latin-derived alphabet system.  While young Yousef Abusabha of Palestine may be READY TO lIVE IN PEACE, I have my doubts this day will come soon, as long as lowercase L's inexplicably make their way into otherwise entirely uppercase sentences with CAPS LOCK ON.

I have a feeling Yousef is probably learning English at this school.

Thank you, lowercase L reader, GAl, for this exemplary find.

I'm Looking Over a Lowercase ClOVER

Spinning Girl returns, with an explanation:

It's been a while since I have submitted an "l", though I do keep my eyes open. Sometimes slamming on the brakes is just too dangerous... But for this one I was in a slow-moving line at Starbucks in Darien, CT. They have some new brewing system that they keep pushing, called Clover. Luckily the hand written told me to "see over" (Get it? ClOVER?)... And I could indeed see the machine when I looked over the counter. It just looked like a single-batch brewing machine of some kind, nothing to cheer about. Their sign, however, made me turn cartwheels of GlEE.

Look closely at the paper notice below the ClOVER.  They're hiring: someone new to handwrite the chalkboard menus.

Little ITAlY

Found by Matt G. at an Italian restaurant in Cleveland, this lowercase L is truly baffling.  The IMPORTED ITAlIAN BEERS heading makes use of small caps for lowercase letters. You can tell because they are shorter than the uppercase first letter of each word.  That means the lowercase L in ITAlIAN was purposefully typed as an uppercase i!  Maybe it's the beer talking, but I find this beautiful.

Matt also points out that, while most brand names correctly begin with tall uppercase letters, some mysteriously start with small caps, the equivalent of a lowercase letter. Can you find them all?

Peace of the WORlD

When the Power of Love overcomes the Love of Power, the WORlD will know PEACE.

My question is, when did spelling WORlD in all uppercase letters except the lowercase L become such a WORlDWIDE phenomenon?

First discovered on the 11ElEVEN Project Facebook page.

FlAT FIX

Skooter submits this FlAT FIX photo, taken at the corner of 4th Ave and Prospect Ave here in Brooklyn, and asks the obvious question: do they only fix Italian cars?  Besides the obvious hand painted FlAT FIX on the metal gate, the awning above has both a prominent, correctly typed FLAT FIX, and a subversive, tucked away FlAT FIX on the side.  Very meta that someone needs to fix the FlAT FIX sign.