This Giant Photo in Fall River Is a Huge Head-Scratcher

We’ve all done it. We’ve all used the Google Maps Streetview feature to get a better sense of where something is, whether it's in relation to a landmark we know, to find the closest available parking, so on and so forth.

In doing some ‘driving’ down the Flint in search of another local business, I had to throw it in reverse to get a better look at a sign. Or is it a billboard?  

On the east-facing side of what appears to be a vacant building in the 1462 area of Pleasant Street is a giant candid photo with no context. The photo is pretty large. At a glance, it looks like it's somewhere around 10 feet tall and 4 feet wide. It shows a woman in a pink T-shirt sitting at a kitchen table with a giant pot in front of her. She is happily holding up a raw t-bone steak in her left hand and what looks like a soft-shell crab in her right hand.

That’s it. That’s the whole photo. There is no branding on her shirt. There are no signs on the wall. There are no logos or text laid over the photo. It is very simply a giant photo of a woman making a surf & turf dish of some kind in the summer of 2021.  

And using some very simple context clues, this was not the work of some amateur. This is a sign properly installed on the side of the brick building and clearly needed a crane or bucket truck to get it up there.

I called a few of the nearby businesses to see if they remember seeing this sign and hopefully get some context around why it was put up.  Unfortunately, all I got was a flat “The city did it.” Someone else mentioned that there was a second similar “head-scratcher” photo downtown but couldn’t recall the exact location. 

Since nothing about this sounds remotely like a serious inquiry, most people seem to think I’m making a crank call and don't have time for shenanigans. I get it.  

If anyone out there in Fall River can give us the details, I’m sure many others would love to know what this was all about.

UPDATE: This mystery was solved; learn more here.