Originally published 2021-04-28.
In April 2021 two neighbouring shops in Christiansburg, Virginia, used the letter boards outside their buildings to trade puns with each other. Bridge Kaldro Music fired the first shot, Super Shoes answered, and within days photos of the exchange were circulating far beyond the town. Other local businesses joined in, regional TV covered it, and people as far away as Canada asked why their own high streets could not do the same.
That is the short answer to what the "Christiansburg sign war" was: a friendly, entirely voluntary pun battle between small businesses that turned into free publicity for everyone who took part. Below is how it unfolded, why this kind of joke spreads so well online, and what a business owner can borrow from it.
How the sign war started
Bridge Kaldro Music is a music shop and Super Shoes a footwear store, both just off North Franklin Street in Christiansburg. Both have the kind of changeable marquee sign that small American retailers use for sales and opening hours. According to Roanoke station WDBJ7, it began when Jim Bohon, a music instructor at Bridge Kaldro, started putting short haikus on the shop's sign and then decided to raise the stakes by asking the shoe store, in so many words, whether it fancied a sign war. When WDBJ7 reported on the duel on 15 April 2021, it had been running for a little over a week.
The rivalry was never real. Ed Bridge, co-owner of the music shop, told the station there was no animosity at all and described Super Shoes as his best neighbours, with the two businesses side by side for 15 years.
Super Shoes accepted by boasting that its shoelaces were tougher than any guitar string, which is the reply visible in the photo at the top of this page. The music shop hit back that a shoelace had never landed anyone a date. Super Shoes then turned the music store's dating jibe against it with a line about specialising in "solemates", the pun that many readers remember best.
None of this was planned with an advertising agency. It worked because it looked spontaneous: two neighbours, one ladder each, and a box of plastic letters.
Who else joined in
Once the photos began spreading, other businesses in Christiansburg wanted a turn. One of the first was Kabuki Japanese Steakhouse, whose sign squeezed music and footwear into a single sushi joke, telling both rivals they had to "b-sharp to make good shoe-shi". Other shops and restaurants in the town reportedly followed with their own boards, each trying to work its trade into a pun about guitars, shoes or the growing feud itself.
The joining-in is what turned a two-shop joke into a town-wide event. Every new sign gave people a reason to drive past again, take another photo and share an update, and every new participant brought its own customers and followers into the story.
Photos from the Christiansburg sign war
Many of the best-known photos of the exchange were collected and shared on Facebook by COOL 106.3 FM on 23 April 2021. One correction is worth making here: COOL 106.3 is not a Virginia station. It broadcasts in Sarnia, Ontario, in Canada, and its own post asked whether a Sarnia business would please start a sign war like the one "currently happening in Christiansburg, Virginia". That detail shows how far the story had travelled within about a week. The posts themselves are no longer available, but their record is kept below.
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The radio station's photo set was reportedly shared hundreds of thousands of times; a figure of more than 400,000 shares was widely repeated at the time, though it can no longer be checked because the posts have been removed.
Why a pun battle spreads so fast
Sign wars have a few things going for them that most local advertising does not.
- They are stories, not adverts. Each sign is one line in a conversation, so people want to know what the next reply will be. That pulls them back, both online and on the road.
- They are easy to photograph. A single phone picture of a letter board says everything. No video, no context and no link is needed for the joke to land.
- They feel harmless. Nobody is being mocked except, gently, the other shop, and both shops are in on it. That makes the content safe to share with family groups and workmates.
- Puns invite participation. Readers start composing their own comebacks in the comments, which pushes the posts further on social media.
Timing mattered too. In spring 2021 many people were still avoiding crowds because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and a cheerful story about neighbours being playful with each other was a welcome change from the news.
Did it actually help the businesses?
At the time, the hope was that the attention would bring extra customers to shops that had had a difficult year. That is a reasonable hope, but it is worth separating two different things. Shares, likes and TV segments are attention. Sales are something else, and none of the businesses published figures showing how much the sign war changed their takings.
What the episode clearly did produce was name recognition. People who had never heard of a guitar shop in a Virginia town of about 23,000 residents (23,348 at the 2020 census) suddenly knew its name, and so did viewers of regional TV news in south-west Virginia. For a small independent retailer, that kind of reach would be expensive to buy.
How to start a friendly sign war of your own
If you run a local business and want to try something similar, a few lessons stand out from Christiansburg and similar exchanges elsewhere:
- Pick a willing neighbour. Have a quick word with the other owner first. The joke only works if both sides enjoy it.
- Make fun of the product, not people. Every good line in this sign war played on strings, laces, soles and dates. Nobody's staff, customers or appearance was the target.
- Keep the replies short. Marquee boards hold only a few words per line. A pun that needs explaining is a pun that will not travel.
- Photograph every round. Post each new sign on your own pages, tag the other business and let local media know. The radio and TV coverage did much of the spreading here.
- Welcome latecomers. The best moment of this story was when other shops jumped in. Leave room for that.
- Know when to stop. Ending with a joint sign, a shared offer or a charity collection keeps the goodwill and gives everyone a final photo to share.
A small-town story that travelled
The Christiansburg sign war is a reminder that local businesses do not need large budgets to be noticed. Two letter boards, a sense of humour and a neighbour who was happy to play along were enough to put a small Virginia town in front of an audience across North America.
Sources: WDBJ7, 15 April 2021; Upworthy; COOL 106.3 FM (Sarnia, Ontario); Christiansburg, Virginia (Wikipedia).
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