I don’t like flags with white backgrounds. I can hear my moms voice reveberating through my head “Do you have any idea how fast that will get dirty, then I will have to clean it I suppose”.
Colorado Springs looks like someone did steps 1-10 of a 25 step ‘learn computer graphics’ tutorial. Please finish the project before you hang it up, Mmmkay?
Denver’s pretty good, Much better than the state flag, but why the hell are the mountains red?
Words on a flag === bad bad bad.
Maui, Dance of the technicolor Amoeba.
I like corpus Christi best. Simple, distinctive, classy.
The picture of the Chicago flag is all wrong. Well, it has the idea right, but the perspective is completely off. The link Dorjän gives is much better. Makes me wonder how many of these other flags are off-kilter. From comments in this thread, may I assume Chicago is one of the few cities where the flag is a common sight? You’re far, far, far more likely to see the Chicago flag than the Illinois flag in the city.
I like the Phoenix and Madison flags. Some of the designs are nice but the colors are awful. Were they all designed in the 1970s?
Call me biased, but I really like St. Louis. I never would have picked D.C. or Chicago. They seem to have little thought put into them, at least aesthetically.
So many of those flags seem to be just stuff slapped on the page, especially with all the city seals, and the ones that look like they were designed in high school graphics class.
Whee, a flag thread! Every wall in my apartment is covered in flags and I have plenty left over. A real vexillophile, here.
As a Maryland native from the DC area, I like both the DC and Baltimore flags. Based on good solid history but not too rigidly. Pocatello’s flag would be bad as a bumper sticker, much less the symbol of a city.
That’s the key word: symbol. Places that just put their seal on the flag just weren’t trying. A flag should be quickly identifiable and trying to figure out which state seal one is viewing is a real pain. Phoenix, Oakland and New Orleans get it right.
I like the way that Montgomery is being a little naughty and slipping a bit of the “Stars and Bars” motif into their flag. I agree that Birmingham is a little Soviet-looking, but it makes a good flag.
Salem looks like they recycled bunting from a Macy’s sale.
Arlington, Plano and Fort Worth must have picked up their designs from defunct local hockey teams. Flag designs that become instantly dated are not too hot, either.
My thoughts exactly – is the whole city one Denny’s/Applebee’s wanna-be?
I like the St. Petersburg flag (though it does seem more appropriate for Key West, if that city didn’t already have its “Conch Republic” banner) and the Corpus Christi bird. The Concord coach in the New Hampshire capital’s flag (#64) is a neat touch, although the design looks more like a sign for a Colonial inn than it does a city flag.
William V.: You obviously missed Cleveland – it’s #59 on the list.
They have a bunch of bridges over the Des Moines River. I always thought it was kind of a cool device.
As to all the '70s designs, I guess some smart guy in the flag business was looking to develop a new market post-Bicentennial, when sales of Old Glory were probably pretty slack.
Best design, because simplest: Oakland. Lincoln, with the carillon tower in a round seal, is also impressive.
Worst: Fort Worth and Rapid City. Whoever did FW was probably working with leftover construction paper and one black Marks-A-Lot®. RC not only has a disappearing yellow-on-white city crest, but they call themselves Star of the West…and then there is no star. They must have been afraid of Texas.
Most Colorful: Burlington, VT.
Most Like Television Test Patterns: St. Petersburg and Omaha.
Designs like Cedar Rapids and Milwaukee try too hard. You don’t have to have the whole city on there.
Lubbock? Hello? Gradients? On a flag?!
Finally, Portland, OR. Were you SO sick of being the Rose City that you had to adopt a flag better suited to the kind of Central African hellhole where the bossman has 25 Rolls-Royces and 50 wives and everybody else is so poor they have to eat jute?
There needs to be a prize for the flag with the most colours on it. I think I can see 9 colours on the flag of Burlington, VT, including two shades of blue and two shades of green. Is there one with ten or more? (Sometimes the detail is so small it’s hard to tell).
You know, the official city flag of Easton, Pa. is the Easton Flag, an early variant on the Stars and Stripes. It was one of the historic flags shown in a U.S. Postal Service set of stamps a few years ago - I’ve always liked it, but it didn’t make it into the FAVA poll, alas. Could a more computer-savvy Doper than I provide a link to a picture of it, please?
And may I add that the flag of Tampa, #79 from the OP, is an abomination in the eyes of God and humanity. Ugh.
Salem, Oregon’s flag looks like some sort of 1970s television production company logo. Just stick an “in association with” under there.
That’s a weird looking bird on Albuquerque’s flag. Unusual placement, too. From a distance, looks like it could be the flag of the New Mexican Soviet Socialist Republic.
Very corporate flag Pocatello has. Even has a ™ on it.
Amarillo and Plano look like logos from some 1970s sports team.
Oakland is the classiest, I think. Reminds me of one of the early Revolutionary War era flags. “Don’t Tread On Me”, maybe?
Look at Fort Wayne’s flag at #52— Let’s see… The Lion, The Witch and— is that a Wardrobe? A Sea-Turtle?? Oh. No. I guess it’s a fleur de lis or something.
