March 23, 2005
Forgotten NYC. Discovered via Satan's Laundromat, this site shows you all of the stuff that the City That Never Sleeps has dreamt for itself over the years. A creek, alleys of Coney Island, and more!
Another site by a fellow bent on photographing disappearing wall ads.
And the first site I ever found on the theme--an attempt to document every sign between 14th and 42nd St. in NYC.
Ah, patita, you beat me to it. I was gearing up to do a post on painted wall ads, inspired by my trip to Hot Springs last weekend. Good stuff!
Ooh, add your links here, mct!
I had something else in mind to post, and then it went out of mind... so I posted this. we can make it a repository!
This is probably a good thing, actually. I didn't have enough good links to make a decent post yet, which is why I haven't finished it, but here's what little I did have.
They're called "ghost signs," and I've loved 'em my whole life. It's funny -- advertising normally annoys the ever-loving shit out of me, but I catch myself thinking of these as art. I suppose it's that someone took the time to paint them by hand, as opposed to the rolled-out plastic assembly-line jobs. Hand sign-painting in general is one hell of an underrated art form, you ask me. But then I've got a Burma Shave license plate on my car.
Anybody in the NYC area want to go exploring some of these places this summer?
Excellent post! Wish I was there to explore this stuff.
I live in LIC, and I gotta say this is an excellent post! It's nice to see a lot of the things I've casually noticed before presented so well. There's definitely not a shortage of *new* things to discover however, as this website cleary demonstrates.
*ready to go exploring!*
Hey I live in LIC/Astoria too and I love exploring old stuff in my neighborhood. Speaking of old painted signs, there used to be a very old one advertising a wheelwright painted on the side of a building between the Broadway station and 36th street station. They put up a small office building about 10 years ago and it's entirely obscured. I kick myself for not taking a picture of it.
Thanks Patita and MCT for the links. Seeing this stuff makes me nostalgic for city livin'. Isn't it strange how all that random signage affects your daily experience of a place? I never thought about the ghost signs in Chicago till I moved away, and now I realize that they were some of the first things I learned to read as a kid...
Oh Magikist Lips, where art thou?? *sigh*
This guy features signs around Chicago.
Bookmarked, Argh. Thanks! BTW, there can't be a nickname more evocative of Chicago than "Slats." Awesome.
there can't be a nickname more evocative of Chicago than "Slats."
I wonder who this "Slats" character might be?
*snickers*
excellent finds! we've got picture of a Dr. Pepper ghost ad from Venus, Texas hanging in our kitchen (taken by my husband's mom). I photographed some of the Meatpacking District in NYC before it got gentrified... I should get those scanned and online I guess.
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