Milwaukee Artist Writes “Welcome to Cleveland” on His Roof to Mess With Airline Passengers
For decades Mark Gubin has used the roof of his art gallery to host a "Welcome to Cleveland" sign with six foot tall letters. This would be a nice welcoming gesture if it weren't for the fact that Gubin lives in Milwuakee, Wisconsin.
"There's not a real purpose for having this here except madness, which I tend to be pretty good at," Gubin said Tuesday when I stopped at his place in Bay View to see the sign.
Gubin, a nearly retired photographer, has an art studio in this building that once housed a movie theater here on the corner of Delaware and Rusk avenues. And his living quarters are where the balcony used to be.
And above that is the roof, where he was having lunch one day in 1978 with a woman who worked as his assistant. Taking note of all the low-flying planes, she said it would be nice to make a sign welcoming everyone to Milwaukee. "You know what would even be better?" Gubin said.
The next thing you know, he's out there on the black roof with a roller and white paint creating the sign that would bring more notoriety than anything else in his long career. A story about his confusing message ran in thousands of newspapers and magazines, on national TV news, "The Tonight Show," Paul Harvey, all over.
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