Last October I wrote about how I attended the annual autumn sale of decommissioned New York City subway signs, where I took lots of photos but didn’t buy anything. A few months after that, in January, I wrote about zebra boards, the classically inconspicuous black-and-white striped signs that are mounted on every New York subway platform so the conductors can confirm that the train is properly aligned in the station before the train doors are opened.

You can see where this is going.

As I wrote that article about zebra boards last winter, I was kicking myself for not having purchased one a few months earlier at the subway sign sale. The next sign sale wouldn’t be until October of this year, so I patiently waited, bided my time, and hoped there would be some zebra boards available at this year’s sale.

The sale took place on October 8th. The gates were scheduled to open at 9am, but people usually start lining up well in advance, and only a few dozen people are let in at a time, so you can end up stuck in line for hours. Last year, I arrived at about 10am and didn’t get in until close to 1pm — ugh. So this year I got up early and arrived at the appointed spot, a desolate South Brooklyn industrial lot ringed in razor wire, shortly before 7am. There were about 60 people ahead of me, one of whom was a professional line-sitter who’d been hired by someone who planned to show up just before the gates opened.

I was part of the first wave of people who were allowed in at 9am. I figured there would probably be some zebra boards available (I remembered having seen one last year, before I realized that I wanted one), but there were no guarantees. Fortunately, it didn’t take me long to find a bunch of them, standing upright in the middle of the lot:

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The short video embedded above shows a long bank of small drawers, each featuring a different enamel pin. This is the “Pin Wall” at the offices of Goldner Associates, a Nashville-based company that specializes in corporate promotional products. The Pin Wall is a de facto company archive, showing nearly 800 pin designs that Goldner has produced for various clients over the years

That video was shot by Goldner employee Mark Dancer, who happens to be an IC reader and thought — correctly! — that I might be interested in the big pin collection. I’ll hand the microphone to him so he can tell us more of the story.

The Goldner Pin Wall

By Mark Dancer

Goldner’s origins lie in a jewelry store that was operated in downtown Nashville by Fred Goldner. The store expanded its product line in 1951, when Goldner’s son-in-law, Bill Neaderthal, noticed that the shop’s corporate customers were buying and engraving items such as Zippo lighters and Cross pens to use as corporate gifts. So at that point the business transitioned from a jewelry shop to a corporate merchandise company.

According to company lore, Goldner’s was among the first American companies to offer custom enamel pins. Every pin was custom-designed and unique; we refused to reproduce existing designs, and there was no pre-existing inventory. Communication with pin factories in Taiwan was initially done via teletype and then fax.

The drawers that became the Pin Wall were originally used for storing overruns that also served as samples, and then the Wall became an interesting visual representation of the company’s history. We often show it to people who are visiting the office for the first time. The pin categories include sports, municipal and government agencies, awards, the Red Cross, keys to the city, and more. The oldest one I’ve found is from January of 1974 — the key to the city for Smyrna, Tennessee — although the bulk of them were produced in the 1980s and ’90s, when enamel pins were a huge part of Goldner’s business.

Some clients had special terms and conditions. The Red Cross, for example, would not allow their pins to be used in any of Goldner’s advertising, or to be used as samples shown to prospective clients.

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Each drawer is labeled with the item name, item number, size, material, manufacturer, order date, and, in most cases, the original purchase order number. The yellow or pink stickers were used as a bin number for reference. (There’s no significance to one color over the other; it was just based on which stickers were most readily available.) As we started using a computer system, we tied the bin number to the order number.

Almost every time I walk past the Pin Wall, something new catches my eye. Here are some I’ve noticed lately:

Burning Man (2001)

This order came from the owner of a company that did pins for kites. He was attending Burning Man.

Oklahoma City bombing (1995)

This pin was done for the Red Cross. The use of memorial ribbons was a newer thing at that time.

U.S. Powerlifting Federation (1996)

The U.S. Powerlifting Federation held its 1996 high school national championship event in St. Amant, Louisiana — hence the powerlifting gator on the pin.

Howard University Bison (1995)

You might know that Howard University’s teams are called the Bison, but did you know that they used to use a Buffalo Bills-inspired logo? For more than 40 years, in fact!

Track & Field News Sydney Olympics Tours (2000)

We did not do official Olympics pins, but Track & Field News magazine would take people to the Olympics as a tour group, and we did pins for those tours.

American Volkssport Association

We did a lot of pins for the American Volkssport Association, which promotes group walks. One chapter did a train car for each walk, and you could link the cars together.

Wet Ass Award

I have no idea what this was for, but it was too odd not to include.

Duck Dressed as a Nun (1991)

Another mystery design. The label on the drawer says, “Duck in nun’s habit” — true enough!

Paul here. I love this pin collection (as some of you may recall, I once put out a line of enamel pins myself), and I also love the idea of a company maintaining an archive of its production history. Of course, that’s a lot easier to do if you’re producing something small, like enamel pins, instead of, say, automobiles.

As it happens, Goldner is celebrating its 75th anniversary this week. Big congrats to them, and even bigger thanks to Mark for sharing this story with us.

Inconspicuous News Roundup

• I recently encountered a new (to me) stick figure in peril. I like how the danger in this one seems almost existential rather than physical.

• Remember when I wrote about novelty toilet bolt caps? I’ve just learned about the bicycle equivalent: novelty bike tire valve caps.

• I saw this enormous fan at an industrial site the other day and was amused by the vernacular branding:

Paul Lukas has been obsessing over the inconspicuous for most of his life, and has been writing about those obsessions for more than 30 years. He also writes Uni Watch, which is sort of like Inconspicuous Consumption for sports. You can contact him here.

Note: This post includes two videos that are essential to the story, so I strongly recommend that you read the web version, not the emailed version. — Paul

The National Association of Convenience Stores recently held its annual trade show in Las Vegas. I wouldn’t have been aware of this — in fact, I wouldn’t have been aware of the NACS’s existence — except that I noticed several people on the internet getting extremely excited about a product rollout that was announced at the show. The cereal manufacturer General Mills unveiled two new varieties of Cinnamon Toast Crunch — Cinnamon Toast Crunch Big Squares and Cinnamon Toast Crunch S’Mores Big Squares (see above) — both of which should be hitting grocery shelves in January.

I was a bit puzzled by all the commotion, probably because I came of age in the pre-Cinnamon Toast Crunch era. While growing up in the 1970s and watching lots of Saturday-morning cartoons, I was exposed to a massive volume of TV commercials for legacy cereals like Alpha-Bits, Apple Jacks, Boo Berry, Cap’n Crunch, Cocoa Krispies, Cocoa Puffs, Count Chocula, Franken Berry, Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, Fruity Pebbles, Honey Comb, Lucky Charms, Rice Krispies, Super Sugar Crisp, Sugar Smacks, Trix, and a bunch more, which I tend to think of as the “real” breakfast cereals. (I can still sing the jingles for most of them.) By the time Cinnamon Toast Crunch debuted in 1984, I was already in college and no longer had my finger on the pulse of the sugary cereal market. So while I’m aware of Cinnamon Toast Crunch’s existence, I’ve mostly thought of it as one of those “other” cereals — brands that feel largely inconsequential because they came after the Golden Age of Breakfast Marketing (read: my childhood).

Shows what I know. Inspired by the response to the announcement of the two new varieties, I did a bit of digging and was surprised to learn that Cinnamon Toast Crunch is nothing less than a consumer juggernaut. Determining the “top-selling” cereals can be trickier than it sounds (some rankings are based on dollar sales, others on the number of boxes sold, still others on total product volume, etc.), but Cinnamon Toast Crunch consistently places among the top five. I had no idea, and never would have guessed.

Even more surprising, at least to me, is the revelation that Cinnamon Toast Crunch has evolved into an unusually broad-ranging consumer brand. Indeed, the deeper one delves into the Cinnamon Toast Crunch-iverse — or, as I’ve come to think of it, the Cinnamon Toast Crunch industrial complex — the more limitless it seems to be.

Let’s start with the current roster of Cinnamon Toast Crunch varieties, which stacks up like so:

• Cinnamon Toast Crunch

• Cinnamon Toast Crunch Waffle

• Cinnamon Toast Crunch Peanut Butter

• Cinnamon Toast Crunch Strawberry

• Cinnamon Toast Crunch Loaded

• Cinnamon Toast Crunch Minis

• Cinnamon Toast Crunch Churros

• Cinnamon Toast Crunch Rolls

• CinnaGraham Toast Crunch

• French Toast Crunch

• Tres Leches Toast Crunch

• Chocolate Toast Crunch

• Reduced Sugar Cinnamon Toast Crunch

And those are just the current options. Remember, the two “Big Squares” varieties will be added to the mix this winter, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch has also had lots of limited-edition flavors, seasonal variants, and promotional tie-ins. All of that is fairly common in the cereal world, but Cinnamon Toast Crunch seems to have been more gung-ho about it than most other cereals. Here are some of the one-off, seasonal, or just defunct varieties that have been rolled out over the years (and I’m sure there are lots more that I missed):

• Cinnamoji Toast Crunch

• Cinnafeugo Toast Crunch

• Frosted Toast Crunch

• Cinnamon Toast Crunch Squared

• Cinnamon Toast Crunch Blasted Shreds

• Cinnamon Toast Crunch/Lucky Charms Mix

• Cinnamon Toast Crunch Chocolate Churros

• Cinnamon Toast Crunch Apple

• Apple Pie Toast Crunch

• Blueberry Toast Crunch

• Gingerbread Toast Crunch

• Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch

• Caramel Toast Crunch

• Dulce de Leche Toast Crunch

• Cinnamon Toast Crunch Mexican-Style Hot Chocolate

• CinnaFuego Toast Crunch

• Cinnamon Toast Crunch Root Beer Float

• Cinnamon Toast Crunch K-Pop Demon Hunters

• Cinnamon Toast Crunch Totino’s Pizza Flavor

• Ghost Protein Cereal x Cinnamon Toast Crunch

Aside from the impressive range of flavors, there’s something mesmerizing about the endless invocation of the term “Cinnamon Toast Crunch.” It’s such an unlikely-seeming product name — much more awkward than, say, Cheerios or Frosted Flakes — but it gains power with repetition, until it almost starts to seem like a religious mantra.

But wait — we’re just getting started.

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Lately I’ve had a bunch of small-ish items that I’ve wanted to write about — things that don’t merit a full article but deserve more than the one-sentence treatment they’d get in the Inconspicuous News Roundup. So today I’m going to address a bunch of those items, along with a couple of follow-ups to recent posts.

Let’s start with the the amazing advertising sign shown above. How much do I love it? Let us count the ways;

1. I love the term “salt brick.”

2. I love the slogan “Every Animal Its Own Doctor.”

3. I love the phrases “Stock lick it, stock like it” and “No dosing, no drenching.”

4. I love how the center oval is anchored by four little brick icons.

5. I lovelovelove the illustration of the horse gently licking the salt brick.

If you’re as fond of this sign as I am, it’s available on eBay, but it’ll cost ya.

Fun with Demonyms

A demonym is the term applied to people from a particular place. A person from New York, for example, is a New Yorker. A person from the UK is a Briton. And so on.

But what is the proper demonym for somebody from Las Vegas? I’d never thought about this until last weekend, when I attended a vintage ephemera show in Pennsylvania and saw this 1953 publication:

I double-checked and, sure enough, “Las Vegan” is indeed the official demonym for Las Vegas. Obviously, it resonates differently today, when “vegan” has achieved its own cultural currency. In fact, the city of Las Vegas, which was founded in 1905, is signicantly older than the term “vegan,” which was coined in 1944.

More Vintage Ephemera

Prohibition, which was in effect from 1919 through 1933, was a disaster for America’s breweries and distilleries. Many of them went out of business, but the bigger ones tried to hang on by diversifying. The old print ad shown above, which I saw at that same ephemera event, is a great example of this, showing one of the survival strategies taken by Anheuser-Busch.

I also saw this very evocative police mug shot:

I didn’t purchase any of those items, but I did get this excellent 1962 mini-poster (11″ by 14″) put out by the International Apple Association (only $5!):

Since it’s about eating and also dental health, it would be suitable for either my kitchen or my bathroom. But the bathroom walls are pretty near capacity, so this item will be displayed in my kitchen once I get a frame for it.

I also got these fun Dixie-style paper cups promoting various soft drinks ($1 apiece):

I’m thinking these might make a good stocking stuffer for someone, or maybe I’ll keep them. We’ll see!

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An Odd Way to Chart a Brand’s History

I recently met someone who was wearing a pin showing a box of Kleenex and the year 1968. I asked her about it and she said it was part of an old series of “Kleenex timeline” pins.

That was new to me, so I poked around a bit and learned that Kleenex put out a set of eight pins in 1968, each one featuring a box design from a specific year in the brand’s history. Here’s the full set:

Pins seem like an odd way to showcase a brand’s progression (imagine trying to wear all eight of them), but I’m a big fan of package design, design history, and “collect ’em all” promotions, so these pins get a big thumbs-up from me.

The Price Is Weird

I was at my local supermarket the other day and was surprised to see two-liter bottles of Coca-Cola products priced at $4.06. Aside from being outrageously expensive, it’s such a strange price point. Like, aside from things that are priced by weight (meat, produce, etc.), how often do you see any supermarket price that ends in a 6, much less 06? So strange that they didn’t just round down to $3.99.

Fun with Menus

Speaking of price points, while attending that ephemera fair in Pennsylvania, I stopped at a local Waffle House — my first time at one of their outlets since before the pandemic. It’s a little hard to see in the photo shown above, but I noticed that every single menu item had a price ending in .25, .50, .75, or .00. Even more surprising (at least to me) was the note at the top-right edge: “Prices include sales tax.”

This means that the total price of every check at this Waffle House will end in a multiple of 25 cents, so the only coins they have to keep in the cash register drawers are quarters. That presumably speeds transactions at the register and also makes it easy for the cashier to calculate the combination of coins needed for the proper change.

I rarely go to chain eateries (pretty much the only ones I’ll patronize are Waffle House and White Castle), so maybe this quarter-centric, tax-inclusive pricing format is common and I’ve just been out of the loop. Anyone know more?

A very different approach to pricing can be found on the menu of Pablo’s Restaurant, a diner in my neighborhood. Like a lot of eateries, they like to use price points that end in .95 — except when they don’t:

So strange that they keep bouncing back and forth between prices that end in .95 and others that end in round dollar amounts!

One other menu note, not related to pricing: During that same Pennsylvania trip, I stopped at a place called the Crossroads Hotel, whose menu featured something I’d never seen before. Look at the last pizza topping listed here:

“Steak Meat”! Definitely the first time I’ve encountered that phrase on a pizza menu. This place also serves Philly-style cheesesteaks, so I’m pretty that’s what they were referring to, but it’s still an awkward-seeming term for a listing of pizza toppings.

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Insulator/Crossarm Follow-Up

Remember how I recently acquired a bunch of vintage glass insulators mounted on their original utility pole crossarm? I had initially planned to display the whole assemblage on the back of my sofa, which looked pretty cool, but then I noticed that the wooden beam was giving off a gasoline-like smell, apparently because it had been treated with creosote as a preservative, which was standard practice for old utility poles. So I put the beam outside while I tried to decide what to do with it.

Shortly after that piece ran, I received an email from IC reader Mike Wilson, as follows:

Both my parents were linemen for Bell of Pennsylvania. (In fact, my mom was the first female lineman ever in Pennsylvania.) So I sent them your post because they have insulators and other phone company items that they’ve saved.

The first thing both of them said was, “That’s not a real crossarm.” I asked them why, and here’s what they said:

1. A real crossarm wouldn’t have a hole in the top middle.

2. The wooden pins that the insulators screw onto are too close together. Thus, the insulators are too close. “You’d never be able to get the wire through,” said Mom.

3. There’s no hole in the side to attach it to a pole. This hole would be ⅝″.

4. It should have two holes on the sides to attach metal straps. These straps would attach on each side of the crossarm with a ⅜″ carriage bolt and then run down at an angle and attach to the pole with a lag bolt, forming a triangle. Also, the straps would leave marks and “dents” in the crossarm.

5. My mom said it just doesn’t look old enough.

Hmmmm. But if it wasn’t a real crossarm, why was it giving off industrial fumes? “My parents think someone could have coated or soaked a random piece of wood with creosote because they planned to display it outside,” said Mike.

So my vintage “crossarm” isn’t safe to keep indoors and isn’t even the real deal — a lose-lose. There’s no point in keeping it, so I’m gonna toss it.

As for the insulators, they’re still nice, and I suppose I could buy a new piece of lumber and rig up a display similar to the other one, minus the toxic fumes. But the only reason I wanted the insulators in the first place was that I thought they were mounted on a genuine utility beam. Now that Mike and his parents have crushed that dream (kidding) (mostly), I don’t really feel like keeping the insulators, so I’m giving a few to friends and selling the rest.

All in all: a fun adventure, even if it didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped.

Brannock/Scholl Follow-Up

Remember my recent look at Dr. Scholl’s version of the Brannock Device? On the day that article was published, IC reader Nick Kissoff and his wife, who live in Ohio, were driving through upstate New York to visit their son. Nick was reading the Brannock/Scholl article on his phone while his wife drove, and he suddenly realized that they were fairly close to the Brannock Device Company’s headquarters, which is just outside of Syracuse. It all seemed like kismet, so they made a quick pilgrimage, resulting in the photo shown above.

Even better, as Nick and his wife were taking the photo, they encountered Brannock CEO Tim Follett, who was just closing up shop for the day. “He seemed a bit puzzled and bemused that someone from Toledo was getting photographed in front of his business,” says Nick. “But after we explained why we were there, he was genuinely happy we were interested and said that he knew you. He also said he wished we had stopped by earlier so he could have given us a quick look-see at things. He says hi!”

How great is that? What a story!

That seems like a good one to go out on. Hope you enjoyed this assortment of short items!

Paul Lukas has been obsessing over the inconspicuous for most of his life, and has been writing about those obsessions for more than 30 years. He also writes Uni Watch, which is sort of like Inconspicuous Consumption for sports. You can contact him here.

Note: This article includes several short video clips that are essential to the story, so I strongly recommend that you read the web version, not the emailed version. — Paul

I’ve been professionally obsessed with the Brannock Device for more than 30 years, and personally obsessed with it for a lot longer than that. In addition to having written many articles about the device, I also have a Brannock Device tattoo, I got to throw out the first pitch at the Syracuse Chiefs’ Brannock Device Night game in 2018, and I was recently interviewed at length for a podcast episode about the Brannock Device’s importance in American history. Inconspicuous Consumption even has an endorsement deal with the Brannock Device Company! So you’d think I’d be well versed in pretty much anything Brannock-related.

But despite all my Brannock acumen and credentials, I was caught off-guard when my friend Matt recently sent me a photo (shown above) of an object he saw displayed at the Milwaukee Art Museum. As you can see, it’s a shoe-sizing gizmo that looks like a primitive Brannock Device, produced by the popular footcare brand Dr. Scholl’s! I had never seen such an item before, or even known of its existence.

As it happens, this same museum exhibit was recently spotted by IC reader Austin Gillis. He got this shot of the information placard:

Relegating the Brannock Device to the realm of “other foot-measuring tools” is a bit of an eyebrow-raiser, but whatever. The real story here is that Dr. Scholl’s had its own Brannock-esque shoe sizer! Was it a Brannock knock-off? Or — perish the thought — did my heroic Charles Brannock build his empire of inconspicuous perfection on a foundation of lies by copying the Scholl design?

Apparently not (phew!). Brannock filed a patent application for his initial prototype in 1925, while the Scholl patent application wasn’t filed until December of 1927. So Brannock was first out of the gate and Scholl was clearly playing catch-up.

Moreover, the Brannock Device is the more versatile tool. For starters, it’s reversible, allowing it to measure both the right and left foot, while the Scholl gadget appears to be designed to measure just one foot. In addition, the Brannock Device measures foot length, foot width, and, most crucially, arch length (i.e., the distance from the heel to the ball of the foot), which has always been the Brannock’s key advantage over other shoe sizers. The Scholl device measured only foot length and width, dooming it to second-tier status.

That said, the Scholl tool appears to have been the more mechanically sophisticated of the two. While the Brannock Device has two sliding parts, the Scholl instrument’s patent drawings indicate that it had all manner of gears, levers, and so on — a veritable Erector Set project!

How had I never come across this item before? How long had it been in production? How serious a competitor to the Brannock Device had it been? How did it end up as a mere foot-measuring footnote?

The first step, obviously, was to procure one of these gadgets for myself. Surviving Scholl sizers (say that three times fast) appear to be pretty rare — perhaps that’s why I’d never encountered one before — but I was able to find one in pretty good shape on Etsy for $49.

I was excited when the package arrived, as I always am when a vintage item enters my life. This time the tingle carried a slight undercurrent of shame — as a longtime Brannock evangelist, it felt a bit like I was consorting with the enemy — but that vague sense of unease evaporated when I placed the Scholl sizer next to a Brannock Device and suddenly felt like a genealogist who was introducing a pair of long-lost cousins at a family reunion:

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Note: This article is the second installment in a two-part series. If you missed the first part, you can (and should!) read it here. — Paul

Back in mid-June, I had breakfast with my friend Liz. We caught up on various topics, and then she smiled and said, “I have a present for you.”

She handed me a shopping bag. I reached in and pulled out a small stack of magazines. But not just any magazines — they were trade magazines! Sugar Journal, Plastics Business, and a bunch more (as shown in the photo above). Liz said she’d gotten them from a friend who was moving to Europe and clearing out most of his possessions, including a bunch of trade mags. She knew I’d be interested in them (because, as I explained yesterday, I love trade magazines), and snagged them for me. Now that’s a thoughtful gift!

As I looked through the publications, I noticed that each one had an accompanying promotional one-sheet, almost like a press release, from something called the Trade Journal Cooperative. Here’s a typical example, which accompanied a copy of Ratchet and Wrench magazine:

Whoa! It appeared that the Trade Journal Cooperative was a quarterly subscription service that provided enrollees with a curated sampling of trade publications, sort of like a Book of the Month Club for inconspicuists. What a brilliant way to spread the gospel of niche-specific content! And although I mentioned in yesterday’s post that many trade mags had shifted from print to digital, the Cooperative seemed to have identified a bunch of interesting titles that were still publishing print editions.

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Note: This article is the first installment of a two-part series. — Paul

At some point around 1993 or ’94, through means I no longer recall, I acquired a list of trade magazines — publications devoted to the specifics of a particular business category or industry. This was before you could just punch up such a list of such publications on the internet, so I had fun poring over the magazine names, many of which seemed like deadpan jokes: American Funeral Director, National Hog Farmer, Parking Today, Hay & Forage Grower, Rock Products, Elevator World, Mushroom News, and the admirably simple Demolition.

As a fan of micro-niche categories, I was fascinated by the specificity of these publications’ coverage. Who knew that there’d be a magazine called Bulk Transporter, or that it would be distinct from another journal called Refrigerated Transporter? And while it wasn’t so surprising to learn that there was a trade journal for conference managers, I didn’t expect that there’d also be one expressly for religious conference managers (called, of course, Religious Conference Manager).

That list of trade mags included contact info for all of them, so I called a few dozen of the most interesting-sounding ones and requested sample copies, which most of them were happy to provide. Sometime within the next year or two I used those sample copies as the basis for an article (I think it was for Utne Reader) about the endearingly weird world of trade magazines. Later on, in 2008, I created a presentation about trade mags for the short-lived PowerPoint “band” that I was in, called the Forewords. (Our claim to fame is that we opened a few shows for the Magnetic Fields, whose fans didn’t seem to understand why the opening act was enthusiastically extolling the virtues of Frozen Food Digest, Industrial Hygiene News, and Cremationist of North America.)

All of which is to say that I’ve had a thing for trade magazines for a long time. I used to have a big collection of them — well over 100 different titles — but I’ve downsized a lot over the years and now have only about two dozen, most of which are shown in the photo at the top of this page.

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Note: This post is not paywalled. Enjoy! — Paul

Yesterday I wrote about some of the items I’ve recently acquired to display in my home. While I was working on that piece, I happened to glance at the Facebook feed of my neighborhood Buy Nothing group and saw that someone was giving away a pretty remarkable item. I want to talk about that today.

The Buy Nothing listing was for a bunch of old glass insulators mounted on a bone fide utility pole crossarm (see above), which one of my neighbors was giving away. You’re probably familiar with glass insulators, which are pretty common at flea markets, junk shops, and so on. They’re very nice items, but I’ve never felt the need to collect them myself. But hey, a bunch of vintage insulators on a vintage utility crossarm? Now that interests me. I was the first person to respond, so I ended up with this treasure — for free. Unfuckingbelievable!

Insulators have have screw threads on the inside, so I’ve always known that they screw onto something. But I never knew what they screw onto, and I kind of intuitively assumed that it must be some kind of metal fitting. But when I got home and began inspecting my new treasure, I saw that each insulator was screwed onto a wooden peg, and each peg was set into a hole in the crossarm, like so:

So cool! One of the insulators still has a loop of heavy-duty wire wound around it, which feels extra-special:

The crossarm is five feet long and weighs about 30 pounds, so it presented a display challenge, especially in a small New York rental apartment. Then I got the idea to put it on the back of my sofa. The sofa has a wooden frame, which I thought would be a good fit for the wooden beam, and the insulator colors fit in with the earth tones of my living room.

Not bad, right? I was pretty happy with this solution and excited about this new addition to my home. And it was good timing, since I was already working on the article about my latest home décor.

But after a day, I noticed a faint but persistent gasoline-ish smell in the room. At first I thought it might have something to do with our house’s furnace, which is located in the basement right below my apartment. But then I realized it was coming from the wooden beam. A bit of research revealed that utility poles are typically treated with creosote or other petroleum-based preservatives — ugh.

Sadly, that means this item is not suitable for indoor display. It would be perfect for the backyard … if only I had a backyard. For now, it’s sitting on my front porch until I figure out what to do with it. (The porch itself is not a good display option — it’s just not a good fit there.) Of course, I could unscrew the insulators and display them by themselves, like lots of other people do. But the crossarm and pegs seem pretty integral to this story — I never would’ve wanted the insulators in the first place if they hadn’t been part of a larger package. Hmmmm.

I know what you’re probably thinking: Why not get a piece of lumber that matches the crossarm’s dimensions, stain it so it looks old, drill some holes in it for the pegs, and then transfer the pegs and insulators to it? Then I could put the new display back in the apartment. No creosote, no toxic fumes — problem solved!

I’ve considered doing that. But deep inside, a part of me thinks that using a substitute beam would cheapen the story and make the display less special. In fact, before I detected the creosote smell, I had wondered if the beam was actually a home-woodworking project instead of a genuine utility pole artifact. Once it began off-gassing, I was like, “Hey, cool, it’s the real deal after all! Oh, but it’s toxic — dang.”

These questions ultimately boil down to a very loaded term: authenticity. It’s an important word in the collecting community, of course (you want the genuine article, not a replica or a counterfeit), but it’s also an increasingly important concept throughout society. As our world becomes more mediated, more digital, more advertising-saturated, more social media-driven, more mendacious, and so on, and as we all become more cynical and jaded as a result, authenticity seems like an increasingly precious commodity, and I expect AI will make it even more so.

So yeah, I like the idea of using the authentic crossbeam, not just a random piece of wood from Home Depot. Granted, I’m probably more of a literalist than most other folks, and maybe you think I’m being too much of a stickler here. But am I? Look around your home and pick out a few old, special items with interesting backstories. How would you feel if you had to replace any of them with exact replicas? The reproductions might look exactly the same, but they wouldn’t be exactly the same. Maybe nobody else would know, but you would know, and I suspect you would find that unsatisfying. That’s how I feel about the prospect of a replacement beam. (A New York City museum recently dealt with a controversy involving this very issue.)

There’s also a middle option, which would be to source a piece of old, reclaimed wood. That still wouldn’t be as good as the original crossarm, but at least the substitute beam would have its own interesting story. (Yes, I realize that even a piece of wood from Home Depot has a story, but it’s a much less interesting one.)

Or I could just stick the whole display in storage until I move to a place with a backyard. Or I could sell it. If you have other suggestions, feel free to post them in the comments.

We all tend to be more adaptable than we think we are, so I know I’ll eventually come to a decision I can live with. But for now I’m still working through the various stages of grief, because I was super-excited about this item and then got whiplashed by the creosote situation. Sigh.

Update: Several people have suggested that I look into treating the beam with a product called EnviroShield CreoShield, which apparently seals any harmful fumes. I’m looking into it.

Inconspicuous News Roundup

• I can’t stop thinking about this recent Facebook post from my friend Ronnie (see above).

• The new Coyote vs. Acme movie has raised an existential question: Does the Road Runner say “beep, beep” or “meep, meep”?

• Last week’s post about the guy who collects tokens prompted IC reader David Brown to teach me a new word: exonumia, which refers to tokens, medals, badges, and other numismatic items that are not legal tender.

Paul Lukas has been obsessing over the inconspicuous for most of his life, and has been writing about those obsessions for more than 30 years. He also writes Uni Watch, which is sort of like Inconspicuous Consumption for sports. You can contact him here.

It’s been a while since my last roundup of interesting items I’ve procured to display in my home, so today I’m going to take you on a guided tour of the latest acquisitions, beginning with the item shown above…

Vintage Educational Bird Chart

I’ve written before about my fondness for old educational charts, and this one — produced in Germany, probably around the 1940s or ’50s — is a real beauty that I’m very happy to have added to my collection ($295, including shipping). I especially love the long-billed birds near the center and the little guy who’s squawking in the lower-right corner.

I’ve played around with a few different spots for this one, but it’s currently displayed in my dining room:

Vintage Typewriter Ribbon Canister

As I’ve probably mentioned before, I’m fascinated by the package designs for old typewriter ribbons. The ribbons were just simple office supplies, but the manufacturers tended to give the canisters very ornate Art Deco design treatments.

I have a small collection of these items displayed in my living room and wasn’t really looking to acquire any more. But when I saw this Harlee design, I couldn’t resist, so I snapped it up ($29) and swapped out one of the other canisters, which I sold on eBay. So the display now looks like this:

Vintage Lip Balm Display

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I woke up on Saturday to discover that an interesting vehicle had been parked outside the house. It’s for a repaving job that’s due to happen today (Monday).

Like lots of little boys, I was fascinated by steamrollers, bulldozers, and other heavy equipment when I was growing up. So with this magnificent apparatus sitting mere steps from my front porch, I couldn’t resist the urge to climb up into the cab and live out my childhood fantasies:

Sitting up there was just as much fun as I expected. And then it got even better, because I saw that the cab had some very specific stick figures in peril that I hadn’t seen before:

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Note: This post is not paywalled. Enjoy! — Paul

I was recently researching an obscure topic and stumbled across something interesting in my Google search results: a website called TokenCatalog.com, which attempts to document the seemingly limitless world of tokens.

Nowadays, of course, the term “token” often refers to the digital world — crypto tokens, AI tokens, security tokens, that sort of thing. But TokenCatalog.com is about physical tokens — coin-like items that can be used in lieu of cash. Some are issued by private businesses (a “Good for One Drink” chit at a local bar, or scrip to be used at the company store), others by governmental agencies (subway tokens). TokenCatalog.com claims to have photos of over 600,000 of them.

I’d never much thought about tokens as collectibles until I came across the TokenCatalog.com site, but a quick check of eBay revealed that token collecting is definitely a thing. I wanted to know more, so I contacted the site’s founder, Richard Greever, and asked if I could interview him. Here’s the transcript of a Zoom call we recently had, edited for length and clarity.

Inconspicuous Consumption: Please tell me a little bit about yourself. How old are you, where do you live, and what do you do for a living?

Richard Greever: I’m 68 years old. I’m currently back in California, although I lived in Hawaii for the past 15 years or so. And I’m retired from a career as a software engineer — embedded systems, telecommunication systems for corporate systems, working on their software.

IC: Do you collect anything besides tokens?

Greever: Not really. I collected coins as a kid, sort of lost interest in that over the years, and then started picking that up again. But then prices of everything went crazy and around 2000 or so, so my wife said, “You should try tokens. They’re cheap.”

IC: So that’s when you got bitten by the token bug, so to speak?

Greever: Yeah. I bought a bunch of them from Fred Holabird, this well-known Western Americana dealer in Nevada. He had an auction and I said to him, “Can I buy all the unsold lots?” So I got about 150 tokens from Oregon. I knew nothing about them and they were all different. It was cool.

IC: So you started out with 150 tokens. How many do you have now?

Greever: Probably 10,000.

IC: Whoa! So your wife really didn’t know what she was getting into there, right?

Greever: Yeah, she’s scratching her head like, “That wasn’t what was supposed to happen.”

IC: Well, at least it’s 10,000 of something that’s fairly small. Speaking of which, how do you have them arranged or displayed or stored?

Greever: They’re not really displayed except for on the website. The bulk of them are Oregon state tokens, because of that first group of them I got. That’s how I collected coins as a kid — you fill up the penny book until you’ve filled in every hole. It took a long time for me to figure out that with tokens, you can’t fill in every hole. You’re never finished. There are always new ones turning up, being found.

I still focus on specific areas. I do Oregon, I do Hawaii trade tokens, and I did Santa Clara County in California. And I used to have a collection of California saloon tokens, but I sold that a bunch of years ago. Anyway, that’s how I sort of organize things — by where they’re from, by town and by state.

IC: Do you have them in drawers?

Greever: Mostly in boxes, in 2x2 flips organized in boxes at home, a couple hundred pieces stacked on top of each other. And some are in binders.

IC: Obviously, I realized there are people who collect things like coins and stamps, but I was not really familiar with the idea of collecting tokens until I stumbled across your website. And I was like, “Oooh, this is a whole niche I hadn’t been aware of!” Is there a particularly large or robust community of token collectors out there?

Greever: It’s a struggling hobby, I guess is what I would say. There’s a National Token Collectors Association. Around 2000, they had 500 members; I think they’re down to 300 now. And there’s the Token and Medal Society, which spans tokens and larger commemorative pieces. There’s also Numista — they do something similar to our website, but it’s not organized the same way. I think the population is just aging. I’m frustrated by how many notices I get about people who’ve passed away every year.

IC: In the same way that you specialize in certain areas of origin, like Oregon or Hawaii or whatever it might be, I assume there are lots of other subcategories that a collector might specialize in, like tokens from a particular business or industry, or tokens made of a certain material, or whatever, yes? Looking at your website, the number of potential sub-niches seems almost limitless.

Greever: Yeah, there are definitely people who collect only transportation tokens, only car wash tokens, only saloon tokens. As far as materials, a lot of people won’t have anything to do with plastic tokens.

IC: But that opens up a possibility for the people who like plastic tokens!

Greever: Yeah, there are people who specialize in them. Yeah. And there are people who collect wooden nickels.

IC: When did you launch the website?

Greever: I think it was 2006. I’d been collecting for a number of years, and I was frustrated because I couldn’t find any information about the tokens I had. Like, what is this design? How many were made? Here’s one that has a big hole in the center — were they all that way, or was that a mistake?

So I created the website and started cataloging my collection as I acquired more tokens and adding whatever information I could about them.

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IC: I like that you call it TokenCatalog. I actually collect catalogs, among other things, so that appeals to me. But we could also say it’s a database or a digital archive, right?

Greever: Yeah. I bristle a little bit about calling it a database. I mean, that’s what it is, it’s true, but lot of the old-time token collectors just sort of dismissed it when they heard that term. Like, “It’s just a spreadsheet, it’s not of interest.” So I try to avoid that term, even though it is truly a database.

IC: So your goal was to create the most comprehensive token library, database, catalog, whatever you want to call it, as possible?

Greever: My goal was to create a tool that would enable that to happen. When I started working on the website, I had several thousand Oregon tokens — I was just buying everything Oregon. And then I thought, oh, wouldn’t it be cool if I entered all mine and you entered all yours and everybody entered all of theirs, then there would be this massive database. You’d see all different wear, different varieties.

Greever [continued]: And then, after spending a year of entering tokens onto the database as pretty much a full-time job, I realized nobody else in their right mind will ever do this. So it was never my intent to be the one to catalog everything. It was more to make a tool so others could do the same thing I was trying to do. And then what gets displayed to the public is a union of everything that’s been put in.

IC: You just said no one else in their right mind would do this, but lots of people actually have done it. It has become a crowdsourced project, so to speak, right?

Greever: Yeah. There are definitely people who help research stuff on the site. There are certain personalities that I think are addicted to what I created — and I’m one of them! I mean, I’m on the site every day, playing around. What I’m trying to do is just find more information about what’s already there. Ideally, I’d like to know who made every token, who the vendor was and when.

IC: You said you founded the site in 2006, so this is your 20th-anniversary year. Are you happy with how it’s evolved?

Greever: Yes. There are some things I wish were better — better documentation, for one thing — but I’m mostly happy with it. One thing I’ve had in the back of my mind is, who can take this over?

IC: I was going to ask if you about that. I mean, you’re 68, you’ve got plenty of years ahead of you, but I was wondering if you had a succession plan or a protégé or something like that.

Greever: Not specifically. I’ve reached out to several people who could do it. They just don’t have the time, the bandwidth, that kind of thing. I’ve approached the Token and Medal Society, and there’s some interest there, but it’s unclear whether they have the right skill set.

IC: Your homepage says the site currently has over 600,000 images of tokens. I assume many of those were taken by site contributors, not by you..?

Greever: Yes.

IC: Let’s say you see a token on eBay that you’ve never encountered before, so you want to add it to the website. But for whatever reason — whether because of the price or the condition or whatever — you don’t want to buy it; you just want to document it. Would you take the photo from the eBay listing and add it to your website?

Greever: Yes, but I request permission from the eBay seller. When I first started out, we were freely taking images off of eBay — like, it’s out there, it’s public, we figured there’d be no problem. But it just takes one person to complain. And so we had to remove about 2,000 images.

IC: So now you ask the seller. Has anyone ever said no?

Greever: Out of about 2,000 people, maybe 10 have said no.

IC: Let’s talk a bit about tokens in general. Is there an accepted definition in the hobby of what does or doesn’t qualify as a token?

Greever: I don’t really have a strict definition. There are too many weird edges and exceptions. There’s some things I can tell you aren’t tokens — a medal commemorating George Washington’s presidency is not a token, that’s a medal.

IC: Is there any category that’s controversial, where some people would say, “Oh, yeah, that’s a token,” and other people would say, “That’s not a token.”

Greever: I’m sure there are. I don’t look at it that way.

IC: Are there some designers or manufacturers that are known for producing particularly attractive or sought-after tokens?

Greever: Not specifically. There are Civil War tokens, but that gets back further [in time] than I’m usually interested in. They’re considered tokens. Some of them are pretty.

IC: And what were those used for? A Civil War token for what?

Greever: They were replacing currency. Small change was short during the Civil War, so they minted copper. Businesses had copper tokens made with their name on it and would accept them as a penny. The whole town would accept them as a penny. A lot of tokens arise that way.

IC: What about casino chips? Are they considered tokens?

Greever: They are not.

IC: Even though you can cash them in?

Greever: They’re their own category. Most people who collect trade tokens and stuff won’t have anything to do with casino chips.

IC: A lot of the token categories on your site had me scratching my head a bit. What, for example, is a coal token?

Greever: So coal companies, lumber companies, they had workers that shopped at the company store, ate at the company canteen, got paid in company scrip. And you couldn’t really use them when you went to town, so you didn’t go to town.

IC: What about exploder tokens?

Greever: Those are tokens that were used during mining to control access to explosives. So they’re good for a four sticks of dynamite, or a plastic cap, that kind of thing. Only authorized people would be carrying those. Like, you’re going to go set off some explosives in a mine to make it deeper. And then you get the specific tokens you need for the necessary amount of dynamite. That way, nobody had access to, say, 16 sticks of dynamite when they only needed four.

IC: Obviously, we currently live in an increasingly digital age, which I gather is bad for tokens. As a New Yorker, I’m of course familiar with subway tokens [which were phased out in the 1990s], and I know bars use drink tokens, and I suppose I’ve seen laundromats where the washing machines take tokens. What else are tokens currently used for in modern contemporary life?

Greever: Amusement tokens, like at an arcade. Not a whole lot else.

IC: Getting back to your collection, do you have any personal white whales, so to speak? Tokens you’ve been trying to track down for many years?

Greever: Not specifically, just partly because I’ve evolved from the wanting to fill every hole.

IC: What’s the most you ever spent on a token?

Greever: Probably $800. Maybe once I spent a thousand dollars. But 10 to 20 bucks is more typical.

IC: What do your friends and family think of this passion of yours?

Greever: My wife thinks it keeps me mostly out of trouble. My family thinks it’s this weird thing that I do — they don’t quite get it. Most people don’t. I’ve taken a pocket full of tokens to parties and been like, “This is what I collect and do.” And people will look and say, “Oh, that’s interesting.” But they don’t really get it.

And there you have it. Big thanks to Richard for introducing me to this collecting niche, and for sharing his story with us.

Paul Lukas has been obsessing over the inconspicuous for most of his life, and has been writing about those obsessions for more than 30 years. He also writes Uni Watch, which is sort of like Inconspicuous Consumption for sports. You can contact him here.

Note: This post includes some video clips that are essential to the story, so I strongly recommend that you read the web version, not the emailed version. Enjoy! — Paul

It all started when my friend Liz sent me a text, asking, “Is there a special name for that one-handle-drive USPS cart? I picture it having one — you know, like the ‘Robinson Cart’ or something like that.”

I knew what she was referring to, of course — the familiar pushcart that U.S. Postal Service letter carriers use to tote the mail when making their daily rounds. But I didn’t know its name, so I figured I’d look it up. And that’s when I made a key error: The pushcart has four wheels, but I mistakenly thought it had only three (my mind’s eye had collapsed the two small front wheels into a single wheel), so I Googled “three-wheeled letter carrier’s cart.” And that’s when a wondrous chapter in postal history opened up to me.

Instead of telling me about the pushcart, Google gave me a series of links about a three-wheeled fiberglass buggy that letter carriers drove on their routes during the 1950s and ’60s. As you can see in the photo above, it had a great-looking design. It also had an irresistible name: the Mailster.1

I love mail and I love midcentury design, but the Mailster was new to me. According to this article on the National Postal Museum’s website (entitled “Mail on Three Wheels,” so it was at the top of my search results), Mailsters were first road-tested by the Postal Service in 1950, with about 5,000 of them in service by that decade’s end. They were made by seven different manufacturers, which resulted in some design variations. The one shown at the top of this page, for example, has a sort of minivan-ish silhouette, but there was an earlier version with more of a cab-and-trailer profile:

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As many of you know, I have a longstanding fascination with bread clips (or, as they’re officially known, Kwik Loks). So you can imagine how I felt when IC reader David Chelsea, who grew up in Portland, Oregon, recently contacted me with the following message:

I have this vague childhood memory — this would have been around 1968 — of a local brand of sliced bread with a name like Animal Farm, which was advertised with animated commercials featuring a cast of barnyard animals — chickens, pigs, cows, and the like. But as I recall it, there was also one non-animal character: “Kwikky Kwik Lok,” who was a cartoon bread clip.

I realized that this could make me sound delusional, so I appealed for help on a Portland-centric Facebook group, and someone came back with this:

It seems Kwikky is the farmer, and the brand was called Funny Farm (not Animal Farm, as I had recalled). This brand was sold at Fred Meyer, a local grocery chain in Portland. The Kwik Lok connection is an unusual bit of corporate synergy, but Kwik Lok is based in Yakima, Washington, not far from Portland, so it makes a kind of sense.

Whoa — a bread wrapper design featuring an anthropomorphized bread tag! How great is that? And how had I never been aware of it until now? (Obviously, the “Funny Farm” brand name is unfortunate, but we already knew that the late 1960s weren’t exactly the most enlightened era regarding mental illness.)

The image that David shared with me looked like it had been taken from a newspaper ad, so I went to newspapers.com and was able to find the full, uncropped version of the Fred Meyer ad, which ran in an Oregon newspaper called The Statesman Journal on April 30th, 1969:

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Most of you are probably at least somewhat familiar with Minuteman Press, the franchised chain of business-to-business print shops. Founded on Long Island in 1973, they now have over 1,000 outlets scattered across the United States and in several other countries. Although Minuteman’s business has evolved over the years — in addition to printing, they currently offer a wide range of design, promotion, sign-making, and merchandising services — there’s been one constant: the company’s clock-headed mascot character, a visual play on the “Minuteman” brand name.

I’ve seen that clock-headed guy countless times over the years. But when I recently walked by a Minuteman Press shop in New Jersey and saw the mascot standing watch on the front door (as seen in the photo above), it felt like the first time I’d really seen him, and he suddenly struck me as an underappreciated mini-masterpiece. Sure, there are plenty of other characters and performers who have large, round objects for heads — think Mr. Met, the Nedicks logo guy, Mayor McCheese, pumpkin-head scarecrows, and even the Residents — but those other examples all have human-seeming faces (or, in the case of the Residents, at least an eyeball), whereas the Minuteman guy can’t make eye contact, wink, smile, smirk, raise his eyebrows, or execute any of the other facial maneuvers that usually define a character’s personality. Yet something about him has always felt friendly and professional, which is a testament to the character’s physical charisma.

As I looked at the character on the New Jersey shop’s door, I was also intrigued by the time shown on his face. Most clocks and watches shown in advertising and in retail display cases are set to 10:10, in part because the minute and hour hands create an aesthetically pleasing “smiley face” effect. But the Minuteman mascot’s face was set to 11:22. I figured the company founder’s birthday must have been November 22nd, or something like that.

When I got home, I did a bit of poking around on the internet and learned that the clock-headed character is literally called Clock Head — that’s his official moniker. (I assumed he was called the Minute Man or something along those lines.) I also found that he has a whole portfolio of poses:

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Before MP3 files, before CDs, before LPs, 45s, and 78s, there were Edison cylinders, the original commercial medium for recorded music. I used to have a couple of them, just because I thought they were interesting novelties (I don’t recall what happened to them), but I’ve never collected them or been particularly well-versed in the nuances of their history.

That probably explains why I was so wowed by the Edison cylinder I recently encountered at a yard sale (see above). All the previous Edisons I’d seen were black, but this one was blue. I had no idea they came in any color other than black! The saturated blue hue made the cylinder seem simultaneously old-timey and modern. I found it so captivating that I went ahead and bought the cylinder ($10), even though I have nothing to play it on.

Here’s a video clip that provides a full view of the cylinder’s container, complete with Thomas Edison’s portrait on the far side:

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Unless you live in New Jersey — the only state where self-serve gasoline remains illegal — you’re probably used to pumping your own gas. But in the 1970s, when I was growing up, the self-serve format was just starting to gain widespread traction around the country. It was mainly a way for the petroleum industry to save on labor costs, of course, but 10-year-old me didn’t know or care about that. As a kid who was obsessed with industrial gadgetry and anything that seemed “official,” I thought getting to pump your own gas seemed like the coolest thing ever, and I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to do it myself. (Tom Sawyer probably would have had a field day with me.)

But there’s one aspect of the 1970s self-serve experience that I have no memory of — something I’d never even heard of until last week. Ladies and gents, I give you the Gas-n-Toss (see above).

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If you’ve ever received an email from me, you may have noticed something a bit unusual: I routinely style the text in the subject line as all-lowercase (as shown above).

I’ve been doing this for over 30 years now, and I honestly can’t say why. I mean, it’s not like I have any deep-seated antipathy toward capital letters or anything like that. (On the contrary, I find it annoying when other people use all-lowercase for the body of an email, or even for texting.) But when I got my first email account in 1995, that’s just how I chose to style the subject line, and the habit stuck.

Some of you may be thinking, “Oh, that Lukas — always has to be different, always has to turn everything into some sort of statement or performance.” And while I suppose that could be accurately said about some of my peculiarities (I always make a point of tooting my car horn while crossing a state border, for instance), believe me when I say that’s definitely not the case here. I don’t think there’s anything better about an all-lowercase subject line; it’s just a random stylistic tic that I fell into when I started using email.

Three decades later, I’ve found it a surprisingly difficult habit to break, even as an exercise. If I capitalize the first word of the subject line, it suddenly looks and feels like, well, like someone else’s email. I realize that must sound ridiculous (probably because it is ridiculous), and yet it still feels palpably real to me. This occasionally leads to an internal conflict if I’m typing a subject line that includes a proper noun, like a person’s name or a movie title. If the email is “high-stakes” — a story pitch to an editor, say, or a note to someone whose approval is important to me — I’ll usually grit my teeth and use the capital letters, just so the person receiving the email doesn’t think I’m hopelessly pretentious. But for normal, low-stakes emails with friends and acquaintances, I’ll go with my usual all-lowercase.

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Note: This post is not paywalled. It includes some video footage that’s important to the story, so I recommend that you read the web version, not the emailed version. Enjoy! — Paul

A few months ago I wrote about how I went to Manhattan’s Garment District to take a tour of America’s last remaining fabric flower manufacturer. I recently returned to that neighborhood to tour another super-specialized fabric operation: Tom’s Sons International Pleating, which creates pleated fabric for some of the world’s top apparel brands, including Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Oscar de la Renta, and many more.

I first heard of Tom’s Sons a few months ago, when I checked out a sensational exhibit of photos shot in factories, called “Made in America” (still up through late September at the Cooper Hewitt national design museum in Manhattan — highly recommended). It included a photo of Tom’s Sons founder Leon Kalajian holding a huge cardboard pleating mold (see above). Obviously, it’s a gorgeous photo, but it also got me thinking. Pleating — that is, the systematic folding of fabric — barely exists in menswear, so I’d never given much thought to how it’s created. Maybe with an iron..? In any case, I definitely didn’t realize it was done with cardboard molds! And the mold looked like a piece of art in its own right, like Ruth Asawa’s folded paper sculptures.

I was intrigued, so I made a note and later looked up the Tom’s Sons website, whose home page features another impressive photo of Leon, this time apparently removing pleated fabric from that same mold:

Now I was really intrigued. So when I saw that Tom’s Sons (the name refers to Leon’s father, Thomas) was offering a June tour of their Manhattan facility, I tried to sign up for it. Unfortunately, it was already sold out, so I contacted Tom’s Sons and asked if they could squeeze in one more person. They said no, but after some haggling and cajoling (read: I showed them my article about the fabric flower tour), they agreed to let me come on a different day for a separate visit by myself, which I figured was even better than being part of a big group.

So with a photographer friend in tow, I recently paid a visit to Tom’s Sons, where I learned that Leon Kalajian died in 2023 (there’s a nice obituary here). The business is run these days by his son George Kalajian, who greeted us while wearing a vest with, appropriately, an elaborately pleated back.

It soon became apparent that George is a very special character. At heart, he’s a master artisan who works with his hands, but he’s also an engineer, a designer, a historian, a writer, a savvy businessman, a philanthropic do-gooder, and, as we quickly learned, an extremely gracious host. He explained that his family specialized in pleating for several generations in their native Lebanon. But after the Lebanese Civil War broke out in 1975, Leon took his wife and sons — including a very young George — to New York, where he established a pleating-centric apparel brand called Pierre Labiche. (The brand’s namesake, like many fashion brand identities, was fictitious. The product line’s actual designer was Leon.)

By now you may be wondering, “What’s the big deal about pleating?” That’s understandable if you’re a guy, because there’s a good chance that the only pleats you routinely encounter are on the front of your pants, the back of your shirt, and your sleeve cuffs. Those pleats are fairly minor and extremely localized, and as such are all created as part of the garment’s sewing process. Or to put it another way, they are pleats, but they are not pleating.

Womenswear, by contrast, often involves fully pleated garments that shimmer, undulate, and sway as they move. A good example is the “Angel Dress” conceived by the child prodigy couture designer Max Alexander, who worked with George to create that dress, as seen in this video (which originally appeared on Instagram, but I shot a video of the video so I could embed it here):

Pleats like those are not created as the garment is being sewn together. Instead, the fabric is pleated before the garment is sewn. Apparel companies don’t do that themselves; they outsource the work to specialists. That’s pleating — and that’s where Tom’s Sons comes in.

“My father was a pioneer, really a genius,” George told us, describing the company’s work. “He created pleating techniques and innovations that no other company does — things I can’t let you photograph, things we don’t even let some of our employees see.”

I was curious about the cardboard molds, which George was willing to let me photograph. Here’s a video clip of him explaining how the fabric is put in a mold to create a pleated pattern (you may have to turn up the volume a bit to hear him clearly), followed by two photos that provide a closer look at the mold he’s handling in the video:

Isn’t that amazing? So geometric! I asked George who produces the molds and he said, “We make them ourselves.” When I asked how, he smiled, shook his head, and said that was a trade secret.

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In a different part of the factory, we saw another mold, called a sunburst mold. It was large and semicircular, like a giant version of an old-fashioned handheld fan. The bottom part had been spread out on a work table, where a semicircle of white fabric had been laid over it.

We watched as two employees put the top piece of the mold over the fabric. Then they carefully folded up the mold, with the fabric still inside — closing the giant fan, so to speak.

The compressed mold — with the fabric still sandwiched between the top and bottom layers — would then be, as George likes to say, “cooked in the Instant Pot,” which is an industrial-grade steam cabinet that makes the pleats permanent. George would not discuss any details of that process, nor would he let me photograph the steamer.

The sheer number and variety of cardboard molds on hand was mind-blowing. They seemed to be everywhere — on shelves, peeking out of cabinets, and so on. Here are some photos I took:

George explained that the pleats made by the mold in that last photo are the smallest ones that can be mold-made. For even smaller pleats, the factory has a special machine, which George demonstrated for us by running a dollar bill through it. I got the impression that this is one of his favorite party tricks for visitors.

George’s knowledge of all this stuff is so encyclopedic, you might say he wrote the book on pleating. And he did — literally: He and Leon co-authored Pleating: Fundamentals for Fashion Design, a 2017 book that took about four years to put together. It’s considered the definitive reference for commercial pleating.

But George’s authoritative knowledge is leavened by endearing bits of playfulness. Photos on the internet show him wearing a T-shirt that reads “For Pleat’s Sake” (a phrase I stole for the headline of this article); one of his websites prominently states, “MUST LOVE PLEATS”; and his email signature features a simple but clever combination of forward slashes and backslashes to create a pleating symbol.

George is in his mid-50s — young enough to keep Tom’s Sons going for a while longer, but old enough to be thinking about a succession plan. He takes his family’s textile legacy very seriously, but he doesn’t have kids of his own and his only sibling opted to pursue a different career path, so he’s accepted the reality that the business will probably not remain in the family. He’s considered mentoring an employee to become his protégé but has found it difficult to find the time.

One possible solution is Project Golden Bear, a nonprofit initiative that George launched in 2024. The program allows young people to develop into artisans by apprenticing at Tom’s Sons and using scrap pleated fabric to create teddy bears that will be given to terminally ill children. Ideally, one of the apprentices will fall in love with pleating, stay on as a full-time employee, and, in a best-case scenario, one day take over the company.

But that outcome, if it happens, is still a long way down the road. For now, George is still busy doing contract pleating work for various fashion houses and running Project Golden Bear. He’s also revived his father’s old Pierre Labiche label and is designing all the apparel for that line.

We ended up spending about two and a half hours at Tom’s Sons. Along the way, we met George’s mother (she stops by the factory almost every day) and were invited to join a little going-away party that had been convened to mark an employee’s final day on the job. By the time we left, we felt like honorary members of the family. “Come back anytime,” said George. “Don’t be strangers.”

You can learn more about Tom’s Sons on their website, and there’s also lots of fun stuff on their Instagram page. (George’s handsome greyhound, Rags, who is sometimes at the factory but wasn’t there on the day I visited, is on Instagram too.)

Between the fabric flowers tour in March and now the commercial pleating tour, I feel like I’ve gotten to experience two very specialized and super-inconspicuous manufacturing operations. They say good things come in threes, so here’s hoping that means there’s another esoteric factory tour in my near future.

(Special thanks to Patricia Clark for the teddy bear photo and invaluable editorial feedback.)

Inconspicuous News Roundup

• U.S. 20, the longest highway in America, stretches 3,365 miles from Newport, Oregon, to Boston. There are signs at the eastern and western termini, indicating the full distance to the other end of the road. And yes, I enjoy having an excuse to say “termini.” (From Erik Bredberg)

• Wegmans appears to have a font-chaos problem. (From Patricia Clark)

• Can’t believe I didn’t know until now that there’s an online museum devoted to moist towelettes. (From The Art of Noticing’s Rob Walker)

• Number progressions usually run from the smallest number to the largest, so it’s a bit odd that this sign at New York City’s Grand Central Terminal directs travelers to “tracks 21 to 11” (from Ben Wright):

Paul Lukas has been obsessing over the inconspicuous for most of his life, and has been writing about those obsessions for more than 30 years. He also writes Uni Watch, which is sort of like Inconspicuous Consumption for sports. You can contact him here.

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Hello! Last month I announced an Inconspicuous Consumption T-shirt challenge. Just to refresh your memory, here’s how I laid it out:

Lately I’ve been thinking a bit about Inconspicuous Consumption’s shorthand abbreviation — IC. If you say it out loud, it sounds like “I see.” That feels right, because Inconspicuous Consumption is often about seeing small details, seeing things that other people miss, the surprise of discovery, and so on. You see? IC!

I’ve been thinking that the resonance between “IC” and “I see” might make the basis for a good logo or T-shirt. For a while I tinkered with a lowercase “i” dotted with an eyeball, like this:

But I couldn’t find a way to integrate that into a larger concept that really communicated the “IC”/“I see” connection. So today I’m issuing a call for entries: Let’s come up with an Inconspicuous Consumption graphic that riffs on the connection between “IC” and “I see.”

I received lots of submissions (thank you!), but one of them immediately stood out as the best. Behold:

Isn’t that great? It’s from IC reader Jonathan Lawrence, a professional graphic designer based in Atlanta, and I love it — so simple, so playful, and it really gets at the connection between “IC” and “I see.” Plus it feels rooted in classic graphic design history, because reminds me of Paul Rand’s famous IBM rebus and also echoes all the great eyeball-themed Bauhaus posters.

I told Jonathan that I thought it would be fun to have other eye colors available, so he added brown and green to the mix:

These light-colored shirts, with the black “IC” lettering, are available in a bunch of colors and styles, depending on the eye color. Here’s a sampling:

For darker shirt colors, we have the “IC” lettering in white — again, with all three eye colors available. Here’s a sampling of those designs:

I realize that it can look a bit odd for the “whites” of the eyes to be black, navy, brown, or whatever the shirt color happens to be. Jonathan and I played around with various ways of making that part of the eyeball white, regardless of the shirt color, but we agreed that those solutions all made the eye feel less naturalistic within the “C,” so we ultimately decided to let the shirt color serve as the “whites” of the eyes. (Of course, you can solve this issue by getting white or off-white as your shirt color.)

We also considered putting “Inconspicuous Consumption” on the back of the shirt — sort of an answer key to the inevitable “What does ‘IC’ stand for?” query — but that would have raised the shirt price by at least $4, plus we kinda like the idea of letting the logo speak for itself. If you know, you know; if you don’t know, maybe you’ll ask and find out!

So there are six separate versions of the shirt (each with multiple color and style options). Here are the ordering pages for each of them:

• Black lettering, blue eye

• Black lettering, brown eye

• Black lettering, green eye

• White lettering, blue eye

• White lettering, brown eye

• White lettering, green eye

If you’re interested in a combination of lettering color, shirt color, and eye color that you don’t see listed, let me know and I’ll try to set it up for you.

I’ve also used put the new logo on coffee mugs — again, in all three eye colors:

And since coffee mugs are white, the whites of the eyes are also white! Here are the ordering pages for the coffee mugs, broken down by eye color: blue, brown, and green.

I may end up using the “IC” mark in additional contexts — we’ll see.

I’m super-thankful to Jonathan Lawrence for coming up with this great design, and for working with me to refine it. As he explained to me, “I’ve always been a graphic designer but didn’t always know that’s what it was called. Looking back, my fascinations with color, packaging, and letterforms all make so much sense.” You can learn more about him on his website, and fans of vintage typography should definitely check out his fantastic Typehunting site.

Jonathan also tells me he spent a lot of time during his childhood drawing logos for imaginary sports teams, so we may be seeing more of him over on Uni Watch. Stay tuned.

Big Brannock News

The great design podcast 99% Invisible recently launched a project called “A History of the United States in 100 Objects.” Happily, they had the wisdom to include the eternal Brannock Device as one of the 100 objects profiled in the series. As a longtime Brannock evangelist, I was excited and honored to be interviewed at length for this episode, much of which is basically a conversation between myself and 99PI host/founder Roman Mars. The whole process was a blast.

The episode is now available to SiriusXM subscribers, and it will go public for everyone else on Friday. I hope you’ll check it out!

A Special Interaction

I recently posted a link to a bunch of stuff I’m selling on eBay. One of those items —a vintage price sign for horse meat from a French butcher shop — sold a few days after I posted the link, and the buyer sent me a very sweet note after making the purchase:

Hi Paul,

I bought the horse meat sign because I shoplifted your book in 1997 when I was a teenage clerk at Waldenbooks. I’m sorry.

Unfortunately, I went on to study the liberal arts and am thus unable to calculate the appropriate compound interest to make you whole in this case. I hope this purchase provides some small compensation and closure for us both and that we are able to move forward in a spirit of reconciliation.

In all seriousness, thank you for the many inconspicuous marvels you’ve helped me notice these past 30 years. My wife plans to use the sign at dinner parties.

Best,
[name redacted]

Isn’t that great? It’s worth noting that the real victim of the book theft was not me but the bookstore — in this case, Waldenbooks. They went bankrupt in 2011, and now we know why.

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Paul Lukas has been obsessing over the inconspicuous for most of his life, and has been writing about those obsessions for more than 30 years. He also writes Uni Watch, which is sort of like Inconspicuous Consumption for sports. You can contact him here.

Note: Inconspicuous Consumption reader Norb Rozek recently posted on social media about the street signs in his hometown of Green Bay, Wisconsin. His manifesto was so squarely in the IC wheelhouse that I asked him if we could adapt it into a guest-written IC post, and he graciously agreed.

This post is not paywalled. Enjoy! — Paul

By Norb Rozek

Slipshod street signs have long been a source of annoyance for me. I think this might stem from when I was four and we moved to a suburb where a street not far from ours had signs that variously read “Kalb Street,” “Kolb Street,” and “Colb Street.” This street was maybe a mile long. How exactly can one wind up with three different spellings of the same street name? How do the signs get left like that? Does nobody notice? Does nobody care? Seemed weird to me, even as a little kid.

I now live in Green Bay, Wisconsin, which has the most pathetic excuses for street signs of any city I’ve ever been to, and I’ve been to quite a few. There’s no standardization, no quality control, no attempt whatsoever to pretend that anyone really cares — just a bizarre mish-mosh of whatever letters were lying around that day, I guess.

In an attempt to document this sorry phenomenon, I recently walked down a roughly half-mile stretch of Washington St., a major artery that runs through downtown. Here’s a map of the span I traversed:

I began at the north end of that route and walked south. As you can see on the map, my path included nine intersections. Here are the street signs I encountered along the way, beginning with…

North Washington St. and Main St.

All the text appears to be set in something fairly equivalent to Franklin Gothic Heavy (“Washington” is more like Franklin Gothic Heavy Condensed, because it’s longer, but that’s fine). Well, heck, that doesn’t look too bad. Nice and bold, right?

Now let’s go one block south to…

North Washington St. and City Deck Ct.

Wait, now the text is in something more akin to Franklin Gothic Demi or Book -- certainly not the same big, chunky letters from the first sign, except for the block number of City Deck Ct., which is still Franklin Gothic Heavy Condensed. Also, there is now a period after the “N” for “North.” Hmm.

Let’s continue down Washington to the next intersection, which is…

North Washington St. and Northland Ave.

This sign uses a completely different font. I don’t know what it’s called but I think it’s used only on street signs, so I’ll call it “Street Sign font.” In any event, this is a complete departure from the first two signs.

Let’s go down another block to…

North Washington St. and Pine St.

Here we have a sign that almost matches the sign at City Deck Ct., except that the “St” for “Street” looks like it’s in Street Sign font, while most of the rest of the sign is set in Franklin Gothic book/demi/regular (except for the Pine Street block number, which is set in Franklin Gothic Heavy Condensed).

Moving one block down, we come to…

North Washington St. and Cherry St.

They’ve used such an absurdly oversized “W” that there’s no room for the usual “N” to designate “North.” Also, the Washington Street block number is now Franklin Gothic Heavy Condensed to match the Cherry Street block number, despite the fact that the Washington block number had been Franklin Gothic regular for the previous few signs.

Moving on, in another block we come to…

North Washington St. and Walnut St.

Here the street signs are suspended over the intersection instead of being mounted on poles. In light of the different signage format, I’d be inclined to give them a pass for using Street Sign font, except that the nearby intersection of Broadway and Walnut, which also has the signs suspended over the intersection, use Franklin Gothic Heavy. I didn’t get a photo of that, but you can see it in this Google Street View shot:

As we cross Walnut St., North Washington becomes South Washington, leading us to…

South Washington St. and Doty St.

Here we have one sign in Franklin Gothic regular and the other in Street Sign font, which is not a good look for anyone.

Moving on, we arrive at…

South Washington St. and Stuart St.

This is almost a match with our first sign at Washington and Main — except that first sign had “Washington” in Franklin Gothic Heavy Condensed, and here it’s just regular Franklin Gothic Heavy. As Maxwell Smart used to say, “Missed it by that much!”

A block down from that, we come to…

South Washington St. and Admiral Flatley Ct.

“Washington” has reverted to Franklin Gothic regular, while “Adm. Flatley” is in Franklin Gothic Heavy. I stopped after that because I got bored documenting the carnage.

Just to be clear, I wasn’t combing through all of downtown to find boo-boos or inconsistencies in the street signs. THESE ARE NINE INTERSECTIONS IN A ROW, ON A MAIN THOROUGHFARE, THAT I HAPPENED TO WALK PAST, AND NONE OF THEIR SIGNS MATCH. If I live to be a million, I will never understand how grown adults sign off on such slop. Who okayed this?

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Paul here. Big thanks to Norb for his eagle eye and uncompromising typographic rigor. Here’s a gallery of all nine of his sign pics, just so you can see them all at once (you can click on the images to enlarge):

All kidding aside, most municipalities have style guides to cover this sort of thing. And while changing graphics standards occasionally lead to a certain degree of inconsistency (many cities, including mine, have slowly been replacing all-caps signs with title case, for example), Green Bay’s lack of uniformity does seem a bit extreme.

Oh, and I should add that what Norb refers to as “Street Sign font” is actually Highway Gothic. I didn’t change it in his text because I thought his nomenclature was amusing.

An appreciation for the finer points of street signage runs in Norb’s family. As you may recall, his brother, Kurt Rozek, was a longtime employee of the Street Department in the Green Bay suburb of Allouez. He recently retired, but shortly before that he spotted a new street sign that was due to be installed but was missing the dot over an “i” (sometimes referred to as a tittle), so he used some reflective tape to create a DIY dot for the sign. The tape he used was silver while the rest of the sign lettering was white, creating an endearingly inconspicuous anomaly.

Kurt didn’t remain on the job long enough to see his DIY-dotted sign installed on the street, but he recently had a dental appointment in Allouez, so he drove by and saw his silver-dotted sign in the wild:

So even though Kurt no longer works in Allouez, he’s left his mark on the town — literally.

Unless anyone can provide evidence to the contrary, I think we can safely say that the Rozek brothers take the prize for being IC’s most sign-obsessed siblings. I mentioned this to Norb, who wrote back:

My one experience similar to my brother’s dotting of the “i” was when I had a janitorial gig at an office complex in the ’80s. My boss had had some signs made up that I was supposed to go around affixing. They read “NO PARKING — VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED AT OWNER’S EXPENCE.” I was flabbergasted that no one caught “EXPENCE” at any step of the process.

After informing my supervisor of the error, I was told to go put the signs up anyway. My reward for pointing out the spelling mistake was to go back around to all the signs the next day with a bunch of little cover-up “S” stickers that they made to fix the problem. I put one of the stickers upside-down as some manner of statement or protest or something. Needless to say, no one caught it.

I will add one last thought here: I am not a fan of municipalities putting their town logo (or tourism logo, or whatever) on the left side of their street signs, as both Green Bay and Allouez have done. I’m not sure when this trend began, but there’s something about it that makes the sign feel more promotional than informational. How do you people feel about this?

And Speaking of Road Signs…

You may recall that my friend Liz Clayton was visiting family last year in Michigan City, Indiana, and sent us this photo of an unusually growth-stunted Stop sign, using her four-foot-tall daughter for scale:

Liz was recently back in Michigan City and saw that the Stop sign is still very short, but with a new twist:

As Liz put it when texting me the new photo, “This stop sign just can’t win!”

Inconspicuous News Roundup

• I’ve written before about artists who specialize in miniatures. If you liked those posts, you’ll love this article about photographer David Gilliver, who creates some really clever scenes out of tiny elements.

• Really fun development on the stationery front: envelopes made from old U.S. Geological Survey maps! (From Jason Hillyer)

• Nice, thoughtful review of a new book featuring photos of abandoned houses in and around Baltimore. (Another one from Jason Hillyer)

• Size matters: The famous Oscar Mayer weinermobile got stuck in a tunnel! (From Adriene Zepka)

• Here’s a faaaascinating piece on the newest movie craze: collectible popcorn buckets. That article is both informative and very entertainingly written — highly recommended!

• It’s been so hot in Japan that they had to come up with a new word for it.

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Meanwhile, in Case You Hadn’t Heard…

I think most of you know this by now, but just in case: I recently announced that the Uni Watch blog will go dark at the end of July, but that will not be the end of Uni Watch, because I’m moving the operations over to Substack, where I’ll be posting about uni-related items now and then. You can see my introductory post here. I’ll be publishing a new article early next week; you can make sure that you see it by subscribing. (It’s free for now, but I may be adding a paywall soon-ish.)

Inconspicuous Consumption is still my main priority, but I’m happy to keep Uni Watch going, even if at a much slower pace than in the past. Thanks to everyone who’s already subscribed!

Paul Lukas has been obsessing over the inconspicuous for most of his life, and has been writing about those obsessions for more than 30 years. You can contact him here.