A town built the world's tallest barber pole out of spite

A 73-foot barber pole stands in a park in Forest Grove, Oregon, red-white-and-blue stripes running up its full height, and it has been there since the 1970s. The town built it after a group of local barbershop singers decided that Texas had no business holding the title of tallest barber pole. So Forest Grove took it. There is no grand plaque, no carefully managed visitor center. There is parking nearby and a quiet patch of grass, which is more than most monuments to a petty rivalry can offer. The pole has outlasted the argument that produced it, and nobody seems in a hurry to measure it against anyone else. It just stands there, striped and enormous, owning the place.