Pittsburgh Signs

Historical Succession

One of the concepts I'd like to showcase in the Pittsburgh Signs Project is something I call historical succession. I'm not sure why I don't just call it "preservation." Maybe because preservation has connotations of keeping the same things the same. In What Are People For? (p. 193, "Feminisim, the Body, and the Machine") Wendell Berry talks about transformation of things and places, but adds this idea of respect for context:

The well-crafted table or cabinet emodies the memory of (because it embodies respect for) the tree it as made of and the forest in which the tree stood. The work of certain potters embodies the memory that the clay was dug from the earth. Certain farms contain hospitably the remnants and reminders of the forest or prairie that preceded them. It is possible even for towns and cities to remember farms and forests or prairies. All good human work remembers its history. The best writing, even when printed is full of intimations that it is the present version of earlier versions of itself, and that its maker inherited the work and the ways of earlier makers. It thus keeps, even in print, a suggestion of the quality of the handwritten page; it is a palimpsest.

Something of this undoubetdly carries over into industrial products. The plastic Clorox jug has a shape and loop for the forefinger that recalls the stoneware jug that went before it. But something vital is missing. It embodies no memory of its source or sources in the earth of any human hand involved in its shaping. Or look at a large factory or a powerplant or an airport, and see if you can imagine -- even if you know -- what was there before. In such things the materials of the world have entered a kind of orphanhood.

Light Hacking

Have started thinking about how to make a cool sign and one of the first things to do is to figure out how to add light to a sign. LEDs would be a cool way to do it.

Not the Duquesne Club, but . . .

Just a note to say that the "Pittsburgh Signs" project was partly inspired by the earnest looniness that is Ground Zero, which has held court for more than three years on Thursday nights at the Chart Room.

I found out this morning that the Chart Room has shuttered its doors (let's hope only temporarily), and this article by Brian O'Neill makes it clear that more than beer is at stake. But implied in O'Neill's article is the case that beer, alone, is stake enough. Just possessing a public place to drink a not-too-expensive beer -- or cup of coffee -- and talk about the issues of the day is a rare asset getting more rare every day.

I've visited the Chart Room a couple of times on Thursday nights, drank a few Irons, shared a few of my own pipedreams, and now I have one more: Maybe the Chart Room could retool with free wireless, video-conferencing, and an endless supply of free pretzels, become a premier meatspace for the New Economy, the latter day equivalent of a 17th century coffee house, giving rise to new possibilities in finance, technology, commerce, and publications. But beer is enough, isn't it?

Why does the movie Brassed Off come to mind?

Help Me

I need help in putting together a photoblog template for Pittsburgh Signs. I'm looking to have something where I can load about ten photos a day and accompanying copy. Any advice or assistance would be much appreciated.

I would do a traditional photoblog, but I haven't seen a traditional photolog that does what I want, which is to present a front page gallery and reserve enough space on the side for some background info. Beggars, however, can not be choosers, so send on whatever suggestions you can.

Visual Pollution?

The following quote from Learning from Las Vegas gives a little perspective to what George Nelson has to say in How to See.

. . ."visual pollution" (usually someone else's house or business) is not the same order of phenomenon as air and water pollution. You can like billboards without approving of strip mining in Appalachia. There is no "good" way to pollute land, air, or water. Sprawl and strip we can learn to do well.

Although I'm not sure if I would actually agree that strip and sprawl could be done well, I do think that issues of landscape design -- although inextricably entwined with everything else -- are not issues of public safety or public health, as Nelson might have one believe.

Do You See What I See?

For anyone who wants to read a good book on the construction and interpretation of the "man made environment," I would suggest a book I received as a Christmas present, George Nelson's How to See.

Reading "How to See" it's hard to tell sometime whether I'm reading a monograph or wandering through a smorgasbord, whether I'm following a critique of our treatment of nature, or Nelson's musings on what he thinks looks good or is designed well.

The book's about 15 to 20 thousand words long, much of it in the introduction.

Seeing things is an intellectual-aesthetic exercise which increases one's inalienable capital: riches that can be accumulated without cost and once acquired, cannot be lost or stolen. — p. ix

Essays come under a number of different, sometimes enlightening, headings:

Numbers
Arrows
Focus
Nonverbal Messages
Important Messages
Public Sitting
Important Documents
Hydrants

Here's a sample of the essay on directional arrows:

Arrows are part of the public baggage that goes with an addiction to mobility . They are a powerful, pervasive element in the modern scene. They prick, cajole, exhort, sell, direct; and there is no way of measuring the amount of brain damagge they do. — p. 12.

The "Important Documents" essay contains a picture by Saul Steinberg (one of my favorites).


Nelson's earnest tone and his unbridled criticism of industrial society sometimes hits and sometimes misses the mark, but he always makes you think about and rethink a subject.

...it was disturbing to discover that Detroit's bland and shiny products are more"alive" visually in death than when they come off the assembly lines.

In the "Skylines" essay, Nelson made me reexamine the iconic city skyline photo, and that these towers of commerce might not be everybody's ideal of progress, not that that's what I thought. It's just that I never gave it much thought at all.

What you see may be what you get, but what you see is also what you think. In trying to "read" what the photos show, it helps a lot to note the functions of towers before and after, say, 1900.
Here we find, in the near total shift from churches, university, and government towers to office blocks. — p. 93.

I Don't Get It

I remember watching a film on artist/sculptor/theater director Frank Garvey, and his robotic wheelchair-bound puppet called Goboy. Goboy would cajole people by saying "Gimme 50 cent. Gimme 50 cent. The Lord says to gimme 50 cent." Garvey gave a funny and enlightening talk afterward, and one of the things he said that the robot acts as a kind of litmus test on class. Certain classes of people, let's say bourgeois people, react uncomfortably to Goboy.

I'm kind of that way about graffiti. Nothing brought out the bourgeois person in me like what I saw today. Last week as I took a picture of the old Kroger building it looked like this.



When I took a picture today it looked like this.



Personally, I feel the graffitists have trashed an admirable ruin. I think "Sag(y?)ek" and "Yette" have a lot to answer for. Graffiti is very powerful and sometimes aesthetically pleasing, but today my sentiments went from "I can see why they would do that" to "why would they do something so foul?".

More Signs

Just saw on blogdex a site that has a collection of New York City signs from 14th to 42nd Street. Impressive.

Everywhere a Sign

Cory Doctorow posted a photo gallery of the signs of Denver and I thought, "We could do that in Pittsburgh." I know it's a bit of me-too-ism (that's when one city sees what another city has and says we've got to have that, too. Not that the need arises out of any bent or genius, only because of avarice. A particular case in point is the nation's burgeoning need for new sports stadiums), but I think we as Pittsburghers could put together a great collection of the signs around Pittsburgh.

I know the Lobster from Klein's Restaurant is now at the Heinz History Center, but many other signs just as worthy are at their original sites.

I'd like to have people send me photos of signs in Pittsburgh -- in digital form. Details forthcoming, but if you've got a not too big .jpg file (<640x480) you can send, please do so, add about fifty words explaining where the sign is located and why you took a photo of it. Most likely it would be a sign advertising a business, and most likely it would have text, but not necessarily. Quirky is good, but also not necessary. The general rule is "if you've got a photo, I'll post it." Then you can look at your your photos here.

Photographer: Mark Stroup
Date: October 24, 2003
Place: Tamello Way, East Liberty, Pittsburgh
Why this photo?: Charles Ung's was a Pittsburgh landmark. Before Pittsburghers got Pan-Asian and fusion and hints of lemon grass, they could go to Baum Blvd. for tea, and as the sign says, "Chop Suey." I also like the picture because it was taken on Tamello Way. Pittsburgh alleys have the best names.