There is a rotating sign for The Sunset Foot Clinic on West Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, between Silver Lake and Echo Park that has become an icon and has been written about in novels and in song. The sign was first installed by Dr Gary Jamison about 1996. One side of the sign has a happy foot and the other side of the sign has a sad foot. The legend is that if the happy foot is facing you when you first see it for the day, you will have a good day. However, the curse is that if you see a sad foot, it means you will experience bad luck that day.
Rotate the street view below to see it: View Larger Map
Video of the Happy Foot/Sad Foot Street Sign:
The Sign in the Local Community:
The podiatrist’s sign above marks the entrance to our neighborhood. It charmed us the first time we saw it: It’s a foot–with feet! And we immediately named it the Happy Foot/Sad Foot sign. Soon we learned that other people called it The Happy Foot/Sad Foot Sign as well. The name seemed predestined and universally applied, and it was recognizable enough that we could pinpoint our location off of Sunset Blvd. by saying, “You know the Happy Foot/Sad Foot sign?”
From Our Happy Foot/Sad Foot Sign
The Sign in the Literature:
In the Jonathan Lethem 2007 novel You Don’t Love Me Yet, the main character can see the sign from her apartment window. She makes decisions based on which side of it she sees at her first glance in the morning:
Lucinda’s view took in a three quarter’s slice of the sign as it turned in its vigil over Sunset Boulevard: happy foot and sad foot suspended in dialog forever. The two images presented not so much a one-or-the-other choice as an eternal marriage of opposites, the emblem of some ancient foot-based philosophical system. This was Lucinda’s oracle: once glance to pick out the sad or happy foot, and a coin was flipped, to legislate any decision she’d delegated to the foot god.
Letham is quoted as saying:
When I was researching my novel, I visited L.A., and at one point I was driving down Sunset Boulevard with someone who’d agreed to be a source on the area. I laid eyes on the sign, and asked about it, and that’s when the Happy Foot/Sad Foot lore was unfolded for me.
The sign is also allegedly in David Foster Wallace’s novel The Pale King as well. However, the sign is relocated to Chicago. Students can see it from their dormitory and they make decisions based on which side of the sign they see first.
The Sign in Music:
The band, Eels, even had a song about the sign (written by Mark O Everett):
Sad foot sign, why you gotta
Taunt me this way
The happy side is broken now
It’s gonna be an awful day
And if I have to drive back by
To see from a different side
Would it be enough to say
The first time was a lie
Sad foot sign, the end is comin’
That’s what they say
Maybe you could, see it in
Your heart for one dayTo let me feel what it’s about
To really be alive
To live and breathe
And see and feel, then I can dieAnd when I come back to this room
I’ll put on a uniform
And go into, the foot sign shop
Where you were born
The sign has even been made into jewelry:
And is available to buy as a pin here:
External Links:
How a podiatrist sign became a literary icon (article from Salon.com)
Our Happy Foot/Sad Foot Sign (essay by a local resident)
Related Topics:
Podiatrists > USA > California > Los Angeles County > Los Angeles > The Sunset Foot Clinic
Comments are closed.