In 1978, Mark Gubin painted “Welcome to Cleveland” on the roof of his Bay View building as a joke for planes passing over on their way to Mitchell International Airport. Despite its age, the sign went viral online in 2015, bringing Gubin renewed notoriety. Credit: Michael Sears

One of the morning news shows wants to fly Mark Gubin to New York for an end-of-the-year celebration of the funniest moments of 2015.

Never mind that it's for something Gubin created 37 years ago — the ridiculously brilliant "Welcome to Cleveland" sign he painted on his roof in Bay View to confuse passengers flying into Milwaukee's Mitchell International Airport.

Media awareness of the sign has come in waves over the years. I first wrote about it in 2005. The Internet went nuts over it this past June, with websites and blogs mostly echoing facts and quotes from my column, which made it go viral a decade after I wrote it.

"It just keeps coming around. It will not go away. Every now and then I'll go online and look up my name and I get an incredible number of hits," Gubin said when I called him this week.

Just last month I was contacted by a production assistant for an online magazine who wanted to reach Gubin because, in her words, "we love his concept and think he and his work are very interesting." I told her what I tell everyone who wants me to pass along Gubin's private contact information: he's in the phone book.

The idea for the sign was born one day in 1978 when Gubin and an assistant were enjoying lunch on the flat roof of the former theater building on Delaware Ave. that has long served as Gubin's home and studio. Now 73, he is a retired photographer and artist.

While watching the low-flying planes in Mitchell's flight path, the assistant suggested a sign on the roof welcoming travelers to Milwaukee. That got Gubin's mischievous juices flowing. "You know what would even be better?" he said.

Using a paint roller, he created the Cleveland sign in 6-foot-tall letters. It wasn't long before the sign was worldwide news and even the subject of a joke by Johnny Carson. In the years that followed, the sign has been rediscovered many times. For better or worse, it's Gubin's Mona Lisa.

"I never did it as any kind of thing to help my business or anything like that. It was just plain madness. You need that in the world," he said.

The city doesn't allow big misleading signs anymore, Gubin said, but his is grandfathered in. He refreshes the paint in white or yellow every half dozen years.

This year, Gubin and his sign were featured on countless websites and TV reports within a few crazy days, including the Huffington Post, GQ, Yahoo, Daily Mail and the "Today" show, to name a few. Some say a post on Reddit got everything started this year. Some say Twitter. Gubin thinks it might have been a small news organization in England.

"I never thought in my whole life Matt Lauer would be doing I don't know how many minutes on me. And then he says, 'I love this guy!'" Gubin said.

He only vaguely remembers the magazine assistant I recently sent his way.

"I think she talked to my 6-year-old granddaughter," he said. "Some of these run together because there are so many of them. A week doesn't go by where somebody doesn't call about something with this Welcome to Cleveland thing."

Not everyone in Cleveland is a fan. During his many media interviews, Gubin has made disparaging remarks about that city, in jest or because he didn't think he was on the air yet. That brought him hate mail. Flight attendants also could do without the extra work when nervous passengers press the call light after seeing the sign.

Gubin isn't sure he wants to go back to New York again for the year-end show. He wouldn't reveal which program has invited him.

He worries about wearing out the joke by overexposure, though that obviously hasn't happened yet. Some groups out there don't even think of it as a joke, like the mysticism society that tried to learn the sign's deeper meaning.

Someone who called him this year even wanted Gubin to create another sign saying welcome to such-and-such city and put it on top of his tugboat, the Solomon Juneau, docked in the Milwaukee River downtown. Someone else from a company that makes prefab housing asked if they could build one of their structures on the roof next to his sign to drum up publicity.

So, yeah, it's been a wild year for Gubin. With apologies to Milwaukee's most famous roof, welcome to way more than 15 minutes of fame.

Call Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or email at jstingl@jrn.com