Graffito, Pyrmont, near Channel Ten

On Monday when I was out to get some lunch I saw this graffito on a traffic signal box near Miller Street where you cross to get to the Fish Market. I wondered what it might mean. The arrow seems to be pointing to the percentage sign, the function, rather than the zero, the quantity. Perhaps the person who had made the graffito was a libertarian, bringing attention to the limiting nature of the “out of a hundred” of the function rather than the absolute, the zero. It also looks a little bit like a face, with a lopsided smile. I couldn’t make up my mind. 

But you can see in the background a cyclist riding across the mouth of Miller Street where it connects with Bank Street, which proceeds along underneath the approaches to the Anzac Bridge. The cyclist came down on my left, crossed the road, then presumably completed the “zag” of the zigzag by entering the Fish Market. The zigzag resembles the percentage symbol. You start at a single point on a plane, then head horizontally until you arrive at the head of the slash, turn down and make a sharp drop to end up directly underneath where you started, then turn and head horizontally once again, to finish at the end point. The slash is like a bishop’s move in chess: directly across at an angle to the horizontal. But the move that most resembles the route the cyclist took was the knight’s move, where you go along then turn at right angles and head across. I ended up no wiser but on the way home at least I had a full belly.