Milwaukee rooftop welcomes visitors to 'Cleveland'
Prank has been going on for nearly 40 years
Milwaukee is connected to Cleveland in the world spotlight, and it has nothing to do with basketball.
It's all about a sign that was posted nearly 40 years ago, but it has just gone viral.
If you have flown into Milwaukee during the past 37 years you might have seen the sign on Mark Gubin's Bay View roof saying “Welcome to Cleveland.” The self-proclaimed jokester thought it was funny.
"A lot of people just thought it was funny and fine, but there are always some people who complain about everything,” Gubin said.
He even received a bag full of hate mail. Some of it reached City Hall. The then-Common Council President Ben Johnson wrote Gubin a letter about it.
The city eventually banned others from such displays, but since Gubin's was already up before the ordinance they let him keep it.
"I've got to keep it up, and refreshed, so I don't break the law. If I redo it or change it to ‘Welcome to Cudahy’ or something, then I've broken the law,” Gubin said.
He said he chose Cleveland because it was easy to spell and easy to poke fun at.
"They said, ‘What's so bad about Cleveland?’ and I said, ‘Well, that's the kind of place where if you're on the ocean and the tide goes out and never comes back,’” Gubin said.
That earned Gubin some more nasty letters but people kind of forgot about it.
Now, with the spotlight on Cleveland in the NBA finals, the sign is in the news again and this time it's everywhere. The Internet is crawling with stories, and Gubin is getting calls in his sleep.
"That was the one from Singapore, 2 o'clock, 2 something in the morning, you know, you're sort of groggy. You can't figure out what's happening, and this is the first one I got,” Gubin said.
What started out as a simple little prank, turns out to be a joke that's making people laugh around the world nearly 40 years later.
The sign has caused some passengers to freak out over the years, but pilots are used to it now and know to advise passengers that their eyes are fooling them.