Read the signs: Grand Isle spouts off about oil spill

GRAND ISLE, La. — SpongeBob SquarePants and his friends in Bikini Bottom have a message for the BP contractors, cleanup crews and news media that have crowded the small beach town of Grand Isle, where oil washes up almost daily.

"Seriously ... When Can We GO BACK IN THE WATER?" they ask in a painting, staked on the side of the main road that shows oil marring the ocean.

If you want to know how residents feel about the oil spill, read the signs posted on seemingly every electrical pole, planted in front yards or along the roads.

Some are funny, such as the six-painting SpongeBob series or the old toilet labeled "BP Headquarters." Some are angry and contain misspellings: "Cannot fish or swim. How the hell are we suppose to feed our kids now?"

Water is the center of life in Grand Isle, an eight-mile scrap of land between Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico that has been hard hit by the oil spill that followed the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. BP has sent hordes of contractors to the island to clean up the beaches and skim oil off the waters, and the TV cameras have followed.

Something to do

The signs are the handiwork of people who think there is little else they can do to keep their culture and industry alive. Many cannot work because commercial-fishing waters are closed, and they cannot play because the beaches are lined with miles of orange tiger boom to keep the oil at bay.

That means there is plenty of time to brainstorm new signs.

"I had to scream for help some kind of way," said Bobby Pitre, who crafted one of the most jarring displays. "It was like an SOS to the world."

Pitre created a statue of a man holding an oily fish, wearing oil-stained clothes, a gas mask and holding a sign that says, "God help us all." He placed it in front of his tattoo parlor, Southern Sting. Soon, folks were stopping to take photos.

That inspired Pitre and his friend and co-worker, Eric Guidry, to paint murals along the front wall of the shop. They re-created the famous Obama "hope" poster and covered it with question marks and the words, "What Now?" They painted a water tower that now holds oil.

And for a final touch, they turned a mannequin into a bloody torso and attached it to a billboard: "BP took our arms. The government is taking our legs. How will we stand?" Pitre said the sign is a reference to commercial-fishing closures and the deep-water drilling moratorium that have ravaged the local economy.

"Those are the two things we thrive off of," Pitre said. "We really needed to get people's attention."

Signs abound

Perhaps this is just a region that wears its heart on its billboards. There are all manner of homemade signs along the winding state highways. One spray-painted sign warns drivers that "U-turners will be shot at"; another features the graduation photo of a newly minted lawyer with congratulations.

Several newer signs take aim at residents who have rented their homes — they call them camps — to BP contractors working on the cleanup. "It's all about greed," one sign says.

Grand Isle Mayor David Camardelle said the signs express the frustration many residents feel with the pace of the cleanup and the flood of newcomers.

"They're afraid that all these contractors coming in, they don't know nobody," he said. "We're born and raised on this island. We leave our windows open, our keys in the car. The neighbors know each other. ... It's not bad people, it's just a change of life."

Darleen Taylor is one of the roughly 1,400 full-time residents of Grand Isle. The oil spill put her four brothers out of work as fishermen, so they joined BP's cleanup crew. They try to laugh at their misery, which is how they started talking about SpongeBob.

Taylor said they were making a family dinner when one brother mentioned it would be funny if Patrick, the starfish who is SpongeBob's sidekick, mistook the oil for chocolate. He said he would put it in his front yard if she painted it. That became the first of six oily SpongeBob signs now on roadside display.

Taylor used to paint scenes of cypress trees and egrets until Hurricane Katrina destroyed her home five years ago. She hasn't painted a single thing until now.

Four more SpongeBob paintings are in the works.

"They all wait every weekend to see what's next," Taylor said.