When I moved to Cooke Town in 2015, I used to eat lunch every day at Manjit da Dhaba. My office used to be on High Street so it was a short walk to Manjit. Today, there is a foot over-bridge across the railway line that divides Cooke Town from Cox Town, but back then, I would just walk across the tracks.
There was a new apartment being constructed in front of the railway line, and it eventually got a name and a sign - Arafa Classic. There was nothing particularly special about the apartment but its signboard caught my eye, which was odd because there was nothing particularly special about the sign either.
For the next few days, every time I walked to lunch, something deep inside my brain felt uncomfortable. I did not like the sign and I did not know why. Was it the metal letters? The uninspiring Monotype Corsiva-esque typeface? A combination of the afternoon heat and hunger?
It took me more than a week to figure it out: it was the s.
One of the s letters in Classic was upside down, making the curves of the two letters mismatched.
I spent a few days laughing about the fact that my subconscious had noticed this detail, while also being quite worried that my subconscious had noticed this detail. Finally, I came to terms with the simple truth that if I let this mistake be, I would have to move neighbourhoods or find a new lunch spot. Unacceptable.
So one day, I walked into the construction site and found the contractor in charge. I spoke to him at length about how easy it would be to fix the sign, and he thoroughly ignored me. Thankfully, one of the junior architects was on site that day, and they did not ignore me. I don't know if they believed me or simply wanted to be left alone, but someone was asked to go and invert the s.
I still walk past the sign sometimes, and it continues to be correctly classic.