Dildo, a small township on the Canadian island of Newfoundland, has had its own imitation Hollywood sign since 2019.
US chat chow host Jimmy Kimmel was made an honorary citizen of Dildo after featuring the unusually-named town several times on his show.
Kimmel, also the tiny community’s honorary mayor, erected the sign two years ago on a hillside overlooking the town.
But it’s become something of a tourist attraction, and now locals are begging visitors not to get close to the offbeat monument.
In a post on the town's official Facebook account, Local Service District representative Andrew Pretty explains that getting too close to the Dildo sign could be dangerous.
He says for reasons of both privacy and safety it's best to enjoy the sign from a distance.
It perches on a steep rocky cliff, surrounded by thick undergrowth, and one wrong step could sent visitors plummeting to their doom.
The sign is also, Andrew points out, located on private property – so technically anyone posing for a selfie against the now-famous Dildo sign is trespassing.
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Some people think the request is fair enough, but of course there are critics: "If trespassing is such an issue," writes Levi Blair on Facebook, "then just take the sign down. Problem solved.
"Sounds to me like someone wants attention but doesn't want attention at the same time. You can't have your cake and eat it too."
It’s not known for certain how the town came by its bizarre name, which dates back at least to the early 1700s.
The name could be derived from a roughly penis-shaped component of a rowing boat.
Social scientist William Baillie Hamilton writes that Captain James Cook and his assistant Michael Lane, who mapped Newfoundland in the 1760s, often chose quite playful names for some geographical features.
Several campaigns to change Dildo’s name to something less controversial have ended in failure.
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