OKI Wanna Know is a chance for you to get an answer to that question that’s bothered you for years, but isn’t exactly headline-grabbing. This week, we find some illumination on a traffic control device around Cincinnati.
Andre Atkinson of Corryville says ever since he moved to Cincinnati about 22 years ago, he’s been fascinated by the yellow, acorn-shaped lamps you can find in a number of Cincinnati neighborhoods.
“They’re not just a local neighborhood kind of lamp, but they’re so far out, it must have been some project, some lighting project, and it’s curious to think about the history,” Atkinson says. “And also the shape. The shape is just… I’ve never seen that shape anywhere else. I’ve only seen it in Cincinnati, and you see it all over.”
Atkinson isn’t alone. Levi Hagedorn of Price Hill is also a big fan of the lights.
“They’re just kind of cool things, I think,” he says. The 10-year-old will spend the summer trying to get pictures with as many as possible.
Hagedorn says he knows they won’t be around forever.
“There’s one that recently got crashed into, and it is no longer there. It got hit by a car. It’s photo-documented, so there’s a picture of it before and after.”
Hagedorn first started his quest last summer, with a picture in front of a light.
“I actually went to the one up on Cleves-Warsaw and Glenway. I have a short list of some because I found this Google Maps that shows the location of most of them,” he says.
That map was created by another fan of the yellow lamps.
“I’ve done kind of a poor job of keeping up with that, but at its height, I had over 60 locations marked as current on there,” says Christopher Fellerhoff.
Read more: OKI Wanna Know: What are those yellow lampshades in the road?
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