I was driving in my neighborhood and just happened to notice that an odd business sign is still there. It’s for a TV repair shop, and proudly proclaims their ability to service your:
TV * VCR * CB.
CB? In case you’re younger than about 32, there was a short lived craze for citizen’s band radio in private cars about 25 years ago. CB is the radio system used by truckers to warn each other of road hazards, speed traps, and the like. There was a whole glossary of colorful expressions that went with it, and you could buy the glossary when you got your CB setup. Thus fully equipped, you could then say “Breaker breaker!” and “10-four, good buddy” just like a real trucker. There was even a movie about it!
I sincerely hope, for his sake, that whoever owns this shop isn’t waiting hopefully for the lull in CB sales to end.
I moved into this neighborhood 14 years ago and remember thinking that the CB craze was already about 10 years obsolete then. Now it looks like VCRs are on their way out as well. Seeing a sign like that in 2004 seems about the same as if you saw an advertisement for a livery stable in midtown Manhattan, in about 1925.
Heck, you can still see bygone faded signs for livery stables and the like in Manhattan today. They never got painted over or erased. Sometimes a painted billboard on a building wall that was covered by the erection of a new building will become exposed when the newer building comes down, a century or so later. They always have alphabet phone exchanges and sometimes 5-digit phone numbers. They’ll use Olde Timey terms, like “Flats to let.”
A woman named Diana Stuart went around the five boroughs photographing them and put them in a book. (She also authored a book with photos of the dizzying number of manhole cover designs that exist on NYC streets – hundreds!. Both books I’m sure are available on Amazon. (She calls herself the Manhole Cover Lady, an ill-advised name if you ask me, but there’s no denying that people remember her for it.)
There’s a convenience store on Lakeshore west of Thirtieth Street in the Long Branch part of Toronto that had as of last summer an illuminated sign advertising the Toronto Telegram, a newspaper that hasn’t been published since 1970.
And not far from there next to the trachs was a pained sign for “Hippo Oil”. Sadly, that one’s faded to illegibility in the last few years.
Well it turns out Sinclair is still in business but around here on the old main thouroughfares (Woodward and the like) you can still see Motels advertising Color tv and Air Conditioning. Interestingly I don’t remember so many of your OP signs as I do remember the quantity of Neon-Styled signs still around without the quaintness.
There was a store a few blocks from here that sold live chickens for human consumption. Went out of business decades ago. A lighted sign used to hang outside the store advertising Jewish and Gentile killing.
Slight quibble with the OP…I’m sure there’s still a small but significant market for CBs, given the number I’ve spotted in the cabs of fairly new lorries.
Another good site for obsolete ads in NYC (a lot of which probably parallels, or maybe even comes from, the book stuyguy mentioned) is www.forgotten-ny.com.
They’re all over Chicago as well.
Right out my office window I can see 2.
A recent one advertising the Midland Hotel, which was remodeled and renamed “W” over the past 5 years or so, and a much faded one for Chicago National Bank.
I like the political ones. I remember for years there was one right on State Street. For Hoellen, I believe. What a wierd kind of legacy.
In dropzone’s home town is one of my favorites. A shuttered theater/apt block right across from the train station has a big, blue neon vertical E A T hanging from the corner.
Across the top of an old building* in Sydney is an advertisement for General Electric appliances which I remember as being already old and peeling in the 70s. It says: “GE ELECTRIC SERVANTS”
I’m not sure if it’s still there, but it was several years ago: a 1920s sign as you walk from the country and interstate trains over to the suburban ones at Sydney Central - “ELECTRIC TRAINS”. The Railways are good value for old signage. There are a few saying “NO WAY Penalty five pounds” (we went to dollars and cents in 1966).
This is veering slightly off topic, but many of the buses and tourist coaches in my state have numberplates starting “MO”, which stands for motorised omnibus!
*Sydneysiders, you can see the sign on the building right behind Redfern Station on the left side as you head towards Central.
TheLoadedDog, Australia dollarised as late as 1966? I’m surprised. Did you use British pounds or Australian pounds before then? Were there twenty shillings to a pound and 12 pence to a shilling?
(It’s difficult to pin down exactly when, but Canada dollarised sometime in the 1850s. And large parts of Canada, those parts originally colonised by the British, not the French, drove on the left until the early 1920s.)
You’re correct…I should have pointed out that I don’t think truckers ever did stop using them. but it’s been a long time since I heard of anyone having one in their car. They do have some practical value in that you can address yourself to a number of people simultaneously. A good example is when the road you want to take is washed out and you need an alternate route.
I saw this near Vienna, in a suburban train station (Huttelsdorf, for anyone keeping score).
In faded and old fashioned Fraktur black-letter print was a small sign with an arrow pointing the way to the
“Wiener Electrische Stadtbahn” , or the “Viennese Electric City Train”. I imagine it was put there in the days of the Empire. It’s not strictly obsolete, since the Vienna train system still exists, but I thought the wording was overly grand, or at least a little quaint.
I’ve been in a few southern ones that don’t even have phones. Amana RadarRange Microwaves though. Still these motels have the origional 50’s “color tv” signs, not new advertising.