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Photo: Michael Sears/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

This guy is a legend. Just a God and hero among men. Mark Gubin is an artist and photographer in Milwaukee and decades ago he realized that his studio was along the flight path to the local airport. He had the brilliant idea to paint on the roof of his studio in giant letters "Welcome To Cleveland." Why? To mess with people mostly.

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Photo: Michael Sears/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The sign is decades old, and is having new life today after being passed around Twitter. For years the sign has caused passengers on planes to freak out about going to the wrong place. There apparently was a Denver to Cleveland flight that stopped over in Milwaukee and the sign caused all sorts of confusion from passengers who thought the plane must have skipped the layover.

Here’s more according from an old Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article:

Gubin has kept a winking letter from then-Common Council president Ben E. Johnson saying that the sign was causing "outrage and panic" for some air passengers, but the city planned to take no action. "I was in Cleveland not too long ago and I agree with Mr. Gubin that anybody who wants Cleveland is welcome to it," Johnson wrote. No one from the airport or airlines ever complained for real about his humorous bit of misdirection, although he did hear that some of his Bay View neighbors were embarrassed when the sign first went up. You have to hope their sense of humor has since improved.

"It was all tongue-in-cheek, just for fun. Living in the world is not a dress rehearsal. You better have fun with it," Gubin, 62, told me.

How can you not love Mark Gubin?