The average Toynbee Tile is a license plate-sized piece of art lodged in a busy intersection in the business district of a major US city. “You can draw a lot of connections between the two, depending on how far out you want to stretch it.” “The meaning of the message on the tiles is pretty open-ended,” said Justin Duerr, a Toynbee tile fanatic who is working on a documentary film about them. Toynbee, while Kubrick of course refers to Stanley Kubrick and his film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Some theorize that the messages in the tiles refer to late British historian Arnold J. Somehow, someone is managing to embed these tiles into public roads, some of which are extremely busy without being spotted. Some have even shown up in South America in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Similar tiles have appeared in many US cities, including Washington DC, Pittsburgh, New York City, Baltimore, Boston, and many more. Tiles have been known to contain additional messages that delve deeply into paranoia and ambiguity. Others change the wording slightly and take on a colorful style of their own. Many of the tiles look identical, as if made with a cookie cutter. Some of the tiles mention Kubrick, the filmmaker responsible for 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was a movie that made implications that a man was reborn on a mission to Jupiter. Toynbee, a religious historian born in England in 1889. The tiles all mention “Toynbee,” most likely Arnold J. The tiles, or plaques as some call them, have taken on a certain cult status, and tile aficionados have spent years trying to discover the meaning person or persons behind them. No one has ever been caught or taken credit for this caper that dates back to at least 20 years. Some have called the tiles the urban equivalent of crop circles. They varied a bit in color and arrangement, but they were all made of an unidentifiable clay-like substance. They were generally about the size of a license plate, and each had some variation of the same strange message: “TOYNBEE IDEA IN KUbricK’s 2001 RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPiTER” in a distinct style that artistically resembles stained glass. In 1992 Bill O’Neill starting noticing strange tiles randomly embedded in local roads and streets of Philadelphia.
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