Today’s batch of burning questions, my smart-aleck answers and the real deal:

Question: I've found small pieces of black electrical tape on the front and back of all kinds of signs around North Asheville. I haven't noticed them in other parts of Asheville, but maybe they are there as well. I thought it could be some kind of signal for city workers to clean or remove a sign, but it appears on signs of all different ages and types. It may also be some kind of post-modern, minimalist graffiti artist. I first noticed the tape seven or eight years ago while I was living in Asheville, but I could never figure out where they came from. Hope you can figure it out!

My answer: And you thought Louis CK had an odd fetish.

Real answer: So, this turns out to be a really fun, oddly Asheville kind of story.

First of all, present city staff don't want to say much about this. City spokeswoman Polly McDaniel said it's definitely not city workers putting tape on signs.

"Tape or any other defacement, such as stickers or spray paint, applied to any traffic sign are considered acts of vandalism," she said.

So I reached out to a former deputy director of the city's Public Works Department, David Foster, who now heads up Public Works for the town of Waynesville. Foster had various duties in Asheville's Public Works Department over 26 years before leaving four years ago.

One of his duties back in the early aughts was overseeing the city's sign shop, so he's quite familiar with the electrical-tape-on-signs situation.

"We called him 'the Tape Bandit,'" Foster said. "His particular fetish was to go around and put a piece of black electrical tape on every single stop sign in the downtown area."

City workers started seeing the same thing on other signs, and then on signs in North Asheville and West Asheville. They assumed the Tape Bandit had moved to West Asheville.

Hey, everybody else has.

At any rate, it looks like the bandit is still at it.

Foster said they could never figure out any real rhyme or reason for the tapings, and they never could catch the bandit in the act. But as soon as they would swap out an old stop sign for a new one, a few days later it would have tape on it.

City workers would remove the tape when they found it.

"There’s no real harm, but our M.O. was, if it's not authorized, we didn't leave it up," Foster said. "It's more of a curious nuisance than something that does any real harm."

OK, so I haven't exactly solved this mystery, but I feel like we're getting there.

If you know who the Tape Bandit is or have any tantalizing clues, or more pictures, feel free to drop me a line!

This is the opinion of John Boyle. Contact him at 828-232-5847 or jboyle@citizen-times.com.