Tiles in Philadelphia

Most of the original Philly tiles have worn down, but there are still some intact tiles located throughout Philadelphia.
For example, this original tile was found as recently as January 28, 2013.

(Photo credit to http://www.loladelphia.com/)

These tiles are very rare to come across these days, so I encourage my readers in the Philly area (and also along most of the east coast) to keep their eyes peeled for original tiles.  The copycats are cool, sure, but originals are a very exciting find.  If you spot what you think may be an original tile, please photograph it and send the photo to me, and you will most likely see it posted on Toynbee Talk.

Readers Respond!

     I love hearing from fellow Toynbee spotters, so if you find a tile, send me a picture and it could get posted right here on Toynbee Talk!

Here are some recent photos I've been sent:

This tile was found by a reader in Kansas City, Missouri. Interesting pattern around the edges; nice find!  

This tile was spotted in Portland, Oregon.

Tile Removals in Topeka

     Though Toynbee tiles keep cropping up in Topeka, Kansas, the city is removing tiles almost as soon as they are laid.  The city officials of Topeka have stated that they view the tiles as a type of vandalism, while residents disagree, saying that these mysterious conspiracy tiles are works of art.  As of July 4th, the second tile had been removed from Kansas streets.  As soon as the city is notified of the existence of a tile, it is scraped up, usually within days.  After the quick removal process only a square of fresh asphalt is left behind.  The last tile was removed without ever even having a photo taken of it, so we will never know the message it bore.  Topeka isn't the first city to do this, either.  Chicago, among others, is notorious for removing the (now very rare) original Toynbee tiles from its streets back in the 80's.  I urge any readers I have NOT to notify the city if a new tile appears-- feel free to photograph it, but please keep its existence to yourselves and try to help preserve these mysterious little works of art.

Tiles in Salt Lake

Tiles with the same message and side image as this one in Salt Lake have been found in several other states as well.

     Most recently, I found an article talking about House of Hades tiles in Salt Lake City, Utah.  If you visit the article, there's also a news video talking about the Toynbee Tiles.  However, the news journalists are wrong in several respects: first off, the tiles are not "painted" onto the streets, and the original tiles and the copy-cats in Salt Lake are not the same. (Pfft, silly journalists.  No wonder the tiler hates them so much).  At any rate, it was the first mention I'd heard of any tiles in Salt Lake, so I encourage my Utah readers to keep their eyes peeled, and let me know of any other tiles that you might come across.

Tiles in New Mexico

In intersections throughout downtown Albuquerque, I have discovered six different tiles, each with a different House of Hades message.
Here are some of the various tiles I've found:

This was the very first tile I found, with the help of this Alibi article.  After reading the article, I decided to go check it out, unknowingly starting myself out on a life of Toynbee hunting.  As you can see, this tile has undergone a lot of traffic wear, but the original message is most likely the same House of Hades message I mentioned before.  Unfortunately, the date and sub-message (the small message at the bottom of the tile) have entirely worn off.  At the top right, you can see the signature "sexy lady legs", which were found on some of the original Philly tiles as well as the newer copy-cats.  The legs, along with the other side images, were probably a decorative attachment meant to draw a person's attention to the tile.

After I found the first tile, I began going on tile hunts to search for more.  I was confident that if there was one, there could be others, and sure enough, I found five more soon afterwards.  The next tile I found was this one:

As you can see, this tile is far more intact than the first, implying that it has been laid more recently.  Its message is slightly different from the other House of Hades tiles: Instead of the usual "American media in society" it reads "the media machine." Once again we see the recurring "one man" theme, though it's unclear whether this is the same man, a different man, or simply a nod to the original "one man."  The sub-message, "To juz czas!" means "It's about time!" in Polish.  Several other tiles also discuss the concept of time-- as you can see, the side image on this tile is an hourglass, and below you'll see tiles featuring the sub-messages "Time's up!" and "Well it's getting kind of late but it's been fun."

Featuring a different variation of the traditional "House of Hades" text, this tile also plays off the "resurrection of Toynbee's ideas" message from the original tiles.  The sub-message reads, "The media brass have signed their own death warrant."  Both the old and new tiles are very anti-media: Some tiles read, "Tiles made from the ground bones of dead journalists" and "One man versus American media in society".  According to some belief, this hatred of the media began when the original tiler tried to spread his ideas of resurrection through popular news sources and was rejected.  This tile is also unique in that it has no side image at all, and its text color is yellow, which is a variation of the usual red and blue.

This tile contains the same "One man versus American media in society" message as the ones shown above.  The side image is an ashtray, which, along with the traffic light image below, has been spotted on many other tiles across America.  The ashtray could be symbolic of death, which would correspond with the sub-message "Time's up!"

The traffic light shown here is, along with the sexy lady legs, the most common side image on these newer copy-cat tiles.  We also see a slight variation in text color here with green instead of blue.

This final tile is quite grubby from traffic wear, so the sub-message is nearly impossible to read.  From the words that are visible, however, it appears to be the same "death warrant" message shown above.  The tile also has some more intact legs as well as a unique column of dots on the left side.

Though I originally assumed that these tiles were a local phenomena-- an artist's project, perhaps, or created by a student at the nearby university as a tribute to the original tiler-- I later learned that these same tiles had appeared all over the United States.  It's impossible to say whether these were created by the same tiler or a new one, however.  Though the style is slightly different and the same person laying these tiles in the 80's would most likely be too old to still be doing it, the mystery will live on until we can conclusively discover the tiler's identity.

Found a Tile? Contact Me!

I'm always excited to hear about new Toynbee Tile sightings, so if you find one, please feel free to leave a comment on this blog, shoot me an email, or send a picture.  I always respond, and your tile may be featured in a Toynbee Talk post!  Contact me at: thetoothpickchick@gmail.com!

What are Toynbee Tiles?

In the mid-eighties, strange tiles started appearing on the ground in and around Philadelphia, Washington DC, and New York, bearing the message:

TOYNBEE IDEA
IN MOVIE '2001'
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER.

Many have interpreted this to be referring to an obscure conspiracy theory that it is possible for humanity to be reborn (resurrected), after death, on the planet Jupiter. Confused? Keep reading.

The 'Toynbee idea' most likely refers to the writings of Arnold Toynbee, who wrote that:

"Human nature presents human minds with a puzzle which they have not yet solved and may never succeed in solving, for all that we can tell. The dichotomy of a human being into 'soul' and 'body' is not a datum of experience. No one has ever been, or ever met, a living human soul without a body... Someone who accepts—as I myself do, taking it on trust—the present-day scientific account of the Universe may find it impossible to believe that a living creature, once dead, can come to life again; but, if he did entertain this belief, he would be thinking more 'scientifically' if he thought in the Christian terms of a psychosomatic resurrection than if he thought in the shamanistic terms of a disembodied spirit."

This same principle is discussed in Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the main character dies but then is reborn at the end. The movie also discusses human colonization on Jupiter. 

The same idea had been discussed in a play written by David Mamet, called 4 A.M. In the play, a caller calls in to a radio show (supposedly inspired by a real caller on Larry King, but this was never proven.) to try to spread word of his ideas based from Toynbee's idea of resurrection, and the possibility of rebirth and colonization on Jupiter as suggested in 2001. Mamet later claimed that his story was not based on a real caller, but was merely a product of his imagination. We still don't know is this is true, but it seems too large a coincidence to be unrelated to the strange Toynbee tiles. Mamet became convinced that the tiles were created as a tribute to his play, and was very pleased with them.

Other tiles appeared with variations on this message, and one block of four squares in the middle of the road in Philadelphia told about the tiler's conspiracy, stating:

John Knight Ridder is the Philadelphia thug hellion Jew who'd hated this movements guts- for years- takes money from the Mafia to make the Mafia look good in his newspapers so he has the Mafia in his back pocket. John Knight sent the Mafia to murder me in May 1991 [illegible] journalists [illegible] then gloated to my face about death and Knight Ridder great power to destroy. In fact John Knight went into hellion binge of joy over Knight-Ridder's great power to destroy.

I secured house with blast doors and fled the country in June 1991.

NBC attorneys journalists and security officials at Rockefeller Center fraudulently under the "Freedom of Information Act" all [illegible] orders NBC executives got the U.S. federal district attorney's office who got FBI to get Interpol to establish task force that located me in Dover England.

Which back home Inquirer got union goons from their own employees union to [illegible] down a "sports journalist." Who with ease bashed in lights and windows of neighborhood car- as well as men outside my house. They are stationed there still waiting for me.

NBC CBS group "W" Westinghouse, Time, Time Warner, Fox, Universal all of the "Cult of the Hellion" each one were Much worse than Knight-Ridder ever was[,] mostly hellion Jews.

When K.Y.W and NBC executives told John Knight the whole coven gloated in joyous fits on how their Soviet pals found a way to turn it into a...

There the message abruptly ends. 

Another tile stated, "I am only one man," which led investigators of the mystery on a hunt to discover who the one man was.

One tile on the ground in South America had an address in Philadelphia on it, which, some believe, is where the tiler lives. Neighbors have described him as quiet and shy, and that he had a car with a large antenna for jamming nearby televisions (there are several reports of having the same strange Toynbee message come over people's TVs). His car also had the floor taken out on one side, which explains how he could drop his tiles in the middle of crowded streets.  But no one has any concrete proof that this is who the real tiler was, and evidently he no longer lives there. The current residents know nothing about the tiles and are annoyed when people come to their house to ask about them.

Jump to 2012, when I started finding tiles in my own city bearing a resemblance to the originals found in Philadelphia about 40 years earlier-- but clearly, they were of a different style.  Although it is possible that they were made by the same person, these copy-cat tiles could also have been created as a sort of tribute to the original tiler.  Whatever the case, these same tiles (often bearing a variation on the "House of Hades" message: House of Hades/One man versus American media/ in society/[year]) have appeared in numerous cities across the US, including Portland, Oregon, Boise, Idaho, Albuquerque, New Mexico, New York City, New York, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, St. Louis, Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri, Topeka, Kansas, and, most recently, Salt Lake City, Utah. (The Topeka one was, unfortunately, removed soon after it was laid.  Tiles are often lost due to traffic wear or repaving, but cities also occasionally view the tiles as graffiti and intentionally remove them.)