Less than a month after installing a massive Wells Fargo sign atop 550 South Tryon, city officials have already begun taking it down for the simple reason that it looks shitty as hell.
“We fucked up,” said a city spokesperson in an early morning email. “We thought people would like it. They didn’t.”
The 14-foot red letters, airlifted into place by helicopter on Father’s Day, were approved unanimously by the Charlotte City Council in February. Now, without public announcement or ceremony, they’re being removed by a few guys from the original install crew who couldn’t live with themselves anymore.
“It’s been haunting me,” said one contractor, pausing to light a cigarette. “Every time I looked at the skyline, I saw that I was—even in some minute way—responsible for this abomination.”
Work began before sunrise. One letter at a time was lowered onto flatbed trucks and quickly covered with tarps, as if to spare the public any further visual trauma.
City officials—who are normally either half-drunk or in the middle of quietly settling ethics complaints—acknowledged that they underestimated how much the public cared about an issue that objectively does not really matter.
The letters will now be placed on top of the Bank of America tower.
