Arrow Dynamics

In this county where real estate is king, they are the court jesters.

They call themselves human arrows, and they are the people you don’t know what to make of when you spy them at a red light.

There they are, outside this development or that, wielding giant, arrow-shaped signs pointing to what could be YOUR NEW HOME! But not content to just stand there waving the things, the best of the human arrows flip the signs in the air, spin around and catch them on their way down.

They dance. They wrap the arrows around them. They show off.

And why not?

Paris gave the world couture. New York the bagel. Now Orange County can claim to have given the planet the real estate cheerleader.

An Irvine marketing firm boasts it created the human arrows in 1990, and now fields more than 500 crazies out spinning the unwieldy things on street corners throughout California and Nevada every weekend.

A Fullerton company with its own arrows platoon argues that claim. But no one disputes that the arrows are an Orange County original.

With at least three more Southern California companies joining the arrow fray in the last few years, and some developers pushing their own employees out on the streets to copy the idea, some weekends it’s a wonder there are any arrowless street corners left in the whole region.

“It’s the most Orange County job there could be, right? I mean, if half the county is gonna spend their weekends house hunting, they might as well get a chance to laugh,” said Dave Olsen, gallivanting through his six-hour shift one Saturday practicing his niftiest arrow tricks.

“But hey, the main thing is to attract attention, and I’m good at that. I guess you maybe have to have a screw loose to do what I do.”

These days the human arrows have been joined by the costume brigade. There’s the guy dressed like a penguin advertising a development of the same name. The Irvine Co. fields someone dressed like a house.

But the purest form of the art remains the arrow. Just a man or woman with a sign. Showing the way.

The folks who guide us to our dream homes are students and professionals, out-of-work actors and failed burger flippers. They are people adventurous enough to answer ads in the classified pages that read mysteriously, “Human Directionals Needed.” They are chosen. They are trained. According to the people who hire them, more than a few have been U.S. Marines.

In their all-white garb, sporting sunglasses and, often, baseball caps to guard from the sun, they are, above all, cool.

“They could not pay me enough to get me in a costume,” Olsen said.

A student of history would doubtless say the human arrow has its roots in the sign-wearing guys of, say, colonial America. Or in the town criers and pamphleteers of Dickensian England. Or maybe not.

But one thing seems obvious to anyone driving the new suburban frontier on a Sunday: No one has perfected the arrow-as-advertisement like the folks filling Southern California’s corners these days.

There is the question of flimsiness. Solved, with a cardboard and plastic composite used by most major arrow purveyors. The question of weight. No problem. Today’s arrows, despite being more than 6 feet tall and 2 feet wide, are only about 7 pounds. And besides, most people crazy enough to undertake the job are in pretty good shape. Gone are the days when the human arrows made their own. These days some lucky firm has the arrow-making contract.

For monotony there is the Walkman or the compact disc player. For the sun? Sun block, of course. And one human arrow interviewed in Rancho Santa Margarita showed off his latest comfort invention: a mat made of Astroturf to cushion his feet, rimmed on one side by a 2-inch-thick strip of wood “to stretch the calf muscles.”

Then too, there are moments of excitement.

“A woman flashed me once. That was cool,” Olsen said. Another time a woman in a Corvette asked him out. But she didn’t flash him. Olsen demurred.

If all the stimuli doesn’t work, Eventz Extraordinaire, the Irvine human arrow specialist, has a more sure-fire method of keeping the directionals jumping. Dozens of supervisors drive around all day checking up on the sign holders. Through the magic of cell phones, they can report any laziness or malfeasance instantly to Arrow Central.

“The human nature is to slack off because they think they’re not being watched, but we keep a close eye on them,” said Raewyn Lindsay, marketing director at Eventz Extraordinaire, which started out as a catering firm until it cashed in on the arrow gold mine. “We also pay bonuses for looking sharp. That motivates them.”

There are amateurs out there. Eric Griffiths, 16, a grocery clerk at Hughes Market in Coto de Caza, was shipped off to man a corner near the store one day with a particularly awkward arrow-shaped sign promoting the market.

“With our signs, they’re pretty hard to handle. Also we don’t have special training,” Griffiths said, glancing enviously at a competing human arrow on a nearby corner doing a graceful jig.

“My bosses, they gave me no tips. They just said, ‘Point the arrow.’ ”

For a pro, the pay is surprisingly good. Try $10 to $15 an hour, plus the extra dough if you make the sign dance.

“I’ve got 12 grand in credit card debt. No wonder I’m out here,” said Chris Mendoza, 37, working a corner on his day off from his job as a landscape foreman.

Still, despite such advantages, the trade does have its hazards. Like jammed thumbs from inexpert arrow-flipping. Banged heels. Odd scratches.

And the occasional rainbow trout.

Rainbow trout?

“Yeah. I was out near the Tustin Marketplace one day, just doing my thing,” said Jared Carns, 20. “I looked up, and this rainbow trout came flying right at me.”

Carns, a student at Orange Coast College, was hard at work one Saturday outside Fashion Island, showing an observer his moves. The spin. The spin with a twist. The behind-the-back spin flip.

His parents, Carns said, don’t exactly appreciate his job.

“My parents drove by and took pictures one day. My dad is threatening to make a full-size poster, with the words ‘Why my son went to college,’ ” Carns said.

“I told him don’t worry. It’s probably not a career.”