05/22/2026
Flashback Friday. So, do people actually look up, to the ceiling, while waiting to place an order at the Wake Forest Coffee Co.? In our Summer 2017 edition, we told the story behind "Marty," the character stapled to the ceiling there to this day. Real people. Real stories. Only in 27587 Magazine --"A North Carolina Original." (To advertise, contact [email protected] today!)
The tale of a forgotten “Marty”
This being a coffee shop, you’ll spot the decorative signs reading “Behind Every Successful Person is a Substantial Amount of Coffee” and the more familiar and more snarky “UNATTENDED CHILDREN WILL BE GIVEN EXPRESSO AND A FREE KITTEN.” But there’s something even more special here. His name: Marty. He’s a cross between a moose and a goose and as such is known as a “meese.” But alas, Marty – plastered to the ceiling overhead where java devotees regularly relay their orders to an eager staff -- is a forgotten soul. “Nobody ever asks,” Albert Barneto, owner of the Wake Forest Coffee Company in the historic downtown, said of Marty’s origins. Turns out he’s the creation – nearly a decade ago -- of Apex schoolchildren under the tutelage of Ian Sands and his public art project, Zonkey Street. He was once on the floor. Then, after a late-night coffeehouse teen-band event, Barneto said, he arrived to find Marty “exploded” and displayed in the front window. Next up came his relocation to the ceiling. “They found my staple gun,” he said of securing the by now beleaguered beast. So what of the young artists behind Marty? “They’re all in college now,” he said.
