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 letting, 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.

When I’m in a vintage clothing shop, I don’t just look at the clothes. I also like to examine the labels, which comprise their own branch of retro design. So when I was in a vintage shop the other day and saw the rack of old white shirts shown above, I instinctively glanced at the label of the first shirt. It turned out to be a beauty:

Oh, man — the turquoise lettering, the orange horizontal stripes, the black drop-shadow on the crown. It’s a mini-masterpiece!

I beckoned to a friend who had accompanied me to the shop and showed her the label. She looked at it, nodded appreciatively, and then quietly uttered the word at the bottom of the label: “Sanforized.”

That word hadn’t initially registered with me, in part because I’d been so entranced by the rest of the label design but also because I’ve seen “Sanforized” countless times on other vintage clothing labels. It’s one of those things that’s so omnipresent that you (or at least I) essentially stop noticing it.

But that got me thinking, so I looked at the next shirt on the rack. It too was “Sanforized”:

I checked the next shirt. Sure enough, it was “Sanforized” — and this time the word was rendered in the same typography as on the previous label, with little dots or bullets on either side of the italic lettering and the oddly stylized “S”:

I went through the entire rack. There were 29 shirts, 13 of which were labeled as “Sanforized” — including one that was “Sanforized Plus”! Of those 13, 11 had the pair of bullets framing the italic lettering. Here are the remaining examples (you can click the images to see larger versions):

Despite the ubiquity of “Sanforized,” I’d never noticed that the word was essentially a logotype. Moreover, despite being a professionally curious person who’s spent a lot of time looking at vintage clothing, I suddenly realized that I didn’t even know what “Sanforized” meant! I knew it signified, uh, something fabric-related, but I wasn’t sure what that something was. This felt like an embarrassing gap in my knowledge — one that needed to be remedied.

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Note: This article is a updated version of a piece I originally wrote in 2014 for the now-dormant design website re:Form. A dozen years later, it still resonates as a fun discussion of a classically inconspicuous phenomenon, so I’ve decided to reproduce it here on IC. It does not have a paywall. Enjoy! — Paul

We’re often told that urban streets conceal a hidden subterranean world of water mains, sewer lines, electrical wiring, and more. That’s true enough, but the surface of the urban roadway — the blacktop that we navigate each day by car, bike, and foot — presents a complex world of its own. Where the untrained eye may see only pavement, lane markers, and crosswalks, a person who knows how to “read the street” will see a detailed system of painted codes and symbols, markings on manhole covers and storm drains, and small but telling records of construction work, all of which combine to form a language that tells the street’s story.

In New York, where I live, that language includes a particularly intriguing element: a series of circular plastic markers embedded in the roadway, each measuring an inch and a half across. Appearing in a variety of colors and stamped with a jumble of words and numbers, they have a bit of Pop Art feel, sort of like poker chips.

Once you start noticing them, you can’t stop — they appear on virtually every city block. At first glance they seem to be randomly distributed, but upon closer inspection it becomes apparent that they appear only on asphalt patches — spots where the roadway has been torn up by a utility or contractor and then repaved.

These markers are called A-tags (short for asphalt tags). They’re often used in other municipalities as “Call Before You Dig” warning markers, but in New York they’ve been adapted to create a recordkeeping and accountability system. When a utility or contractor is issued a permit to excavate a hole or trench in the roadway — something that happens hundreds of thousands of times a year in New York — the asphalt patch that’s applied at the end of the job must include an embedded A-tag. Each tag has three anchor legs, which, along with a bit of epoxy and a finishing back-and-forth by the guy operating the steamroller, help keep the tag in place.

Each tag carries a number indicating the year that the asphalt was patched (“18” for 2018, “23” for 2023, etc.), each broad contracting category has its own color, and each individual contractor or utility is identified either by name or by a unique five-digit number. All of this allows city officials to identify who worked on a given patch, which comes in handy if, say, the patch is starting to sink or buckle and the contractor needs to come back and fix it, or if someone is suing the city after a street-related accident and wants to know the names of everyone who worked on a particular block in the past five years.

“Before the A-tags, we used painted marks,” says Joseph Yacca, Director of Operations for the New York City Department of Transportation, who helped initiate New York’s A-tag program in 2006. “But the painted marks were just color-coded — they didn’t identify the individual user. For example, every plumber was green, so if you found a green marker, you knew you were looking for a plumber, but you didn’t know who. So we used to have to pull all the old permits and so on. Now we can pinpoint it much faster.”

Yacca says contractors like the A-tags, too. “There was initially some resistance, because they viewed it as another annoying regulation, but now they’ve seen the value of it,” he says. “Let’s say three or four contractors have been working on a new row of townhouses. There may have been violations issued to the wrong person because they were in the same area. This new system solves that problem.”

A-tags also allow laypeople and inconspicuists to have a greater understanding of their surroundings. Once you know the system, you can start to fit the pieces together: “Oh, here’s where they put in a gas line for that new house. And this is where they connected the sewer line. And this must be from when they installed that new traffic light.” And so on.

A-tags were patented in 1991 (the official invention name on the patent application was “utility cut patch identification tag”) and brought to market by a Minnesota-based company called Rhino Markers. Rhino was later acquired by Texas-based Trident Solutions, which continues to sell A-tags today (as do several other vendors). Tom Preston, a Rhino executive, describes the little markers with a mix of nonchalance and pride. “You know that little plastic thing that holds up the center of a pizza box? It’s basically a glorified version of that,” he says. “But it’s been a really good success story — we solved a problem for New York City.”

Indeed, New York’s A-tag experience has been so positive that Boston officials started a similar program for their own streets in 2011. “It started when the mayor at the time [Thomas Menino] drove over a patch that had settled, and he wanted it fixed,” says Mark Cardarelli, Supervisor of Utility Coordination and Compliance at the Boston Public Works Department. “He called our department and we couldn’t identify who had done the patch. I checked with all the utilities, and they all said, ‘It wasn’t us!’ So I went online and saw that New York City was using these color-coded tags. I gotta give them credit for coming up with that.”

Paul here. When I originally wrote that article in 2014, New York and Boston were the only major municipalities using A-tags. In the dozen years since then, several more cities have gotten on board, including Denver; New Orleans; Pittsburgh; Scranton, Pennsylvania; and Syracuse, New York. There’s no central A-tag registry, but I have a strong hunch that the markers have spread to other cities as well. (If you have more info on this, you know what to do.)

Meanwhile, speaking of colored dots and hidden street-level codes, it’s fairly common here in New York to see storm drains adorned with a series of colored dots. They look sort of like a Morse code version of graffiti:

The dots are actually part of the city’s effort to combat mosquitoes. Beneath each drain is a catch basin that helps to prevent drain clogs by sifting debris the storm water. These moist, cozy catch basins are ideal breeding grounds for mosquitos, so the city workers routinely treat them with larvicide. The dots are a color-coded protocol that indicates when the drain was last treated. San Francisco has a similar system.

Do you know of other street-level codes or design systems hiding in plain sight? If so, do tell.

After Looking Down, Try Looking Up

I was at the beach the other day and saw several airplanes towing ad banners (including the one shown above). That’s not a new thing, of course, but it got me thinking. Here are a few musings that crossed my mind:

• In our increasingly digitized, internet-driven, and AI-infested world, there’s something endearingly dorky, or maybe even miraculous, about ads still being towed by airplanes.

• Related to the above: In a world where an increasing share of the advertising we see is algorithmically micro-targeted to match what we’re interested in (or at least what the algorithm thinks we’re interested in), it’s kinda wild to see that some advertisers are willing to just toss out a message to the undifferentiated mass of people on a beach.

• This form of aerial advertising was pioneered in the 1920s and really hit its stride in the 1940s after the introduction of the Piper Cub airplane. In those days, it was a new and modern form of advertising; today it’s old-fashioned. Yet its sense of novelty persists.

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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. You can contact him here.

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

For the past year or so I’ve been conducting raffles with an unusual stipulation: To enter, you have to mail me a handwritten letter in a hand-addressed envelope. This has led to some interesting missives, including the one shown above, which I recently received from reader Mark Smith.

As you can see, Mark’s raffle entry was written on letterhead from the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies (which I’d never heard of before, although it’s been in existence since 1901). Mark referenced the letterhead in his note, writing, “My grandfather kept this stationery from his work in the 1950s.”

Naturally, I was intrigued, so I contacted Mark and asked about his grandfather (while resisting the urge to mention how he’d written his letter in purple ink, presumably just to fuck with me). That kicked off a good back-and-forth that resulted in a really interesting piece that Mark has guest-written for us today. Enjoy!

My Grandfather’s Elite Washington DC Ticket Collection

By Mark Smith

You wouldn’t typically describe someone with a 57-year Senate career as “inconspicuous,” but that’s the case with my grandfather, J. Mark Trice, who served in the Senate in various administrative capacities. He began as a 14-year-old page in 1916, retired as Republican party secretary in 1973, and had several additional jobs and titles in between. But while he was well-known in the halls of the Capitol, he was largely unknown to the general public.

I suspect that was just the way he liked it. Despite his close association with powerful people and institutions, he did not often speak about his work. After he retired, the Senate Historical Society repeatedly attempted to interview him, but he consistently refused. He likely heeded the advice given by Senator Matthew Quay to Carl Loeffler, whose own 50-year Senate career followed a career arc similar to my grandfather’s: “My boy, if you wish to succeed, keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut.”

My grandfather did, however, save numerous mementos of his long and distinguished career. Many of them are tickets, passes, and other credentials that provided entry to various events or spaces. Taken together, they provide a sense of the rarefied access that my grandfather had, and how so much of Washington runs on that kind of access.

For example, Trice was working as a deputy in the Senate Sergeant at Arms office in early 1933. When the Sergeant at Arms was removed for disparaging comments he made about the Senate in a newspaper article, Trice was made Acting Sergeant at Arms, which put him on the committee to plan president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first inauguration. That marked the start of Trice’s long connection to presidential inaugurations. Here are some tickets from various inaugural ceremonies he arranged and attended:

As the Executive Secretary of the Joint Congressional Inaugural Committees, Trice also had access to all sorts of parking passes for different types of attendees. Here’s a representative sampling:

Some officials working at the inaugurations were required to wear badges or ribbons. Here’s one worn by a doorkeeper at Eisenhower’s 1957 ceremony, with the manufacturer’s promotional literature still attached to it:

Trice’s duties also involved arranging funerals. After a rash of deaths in the 1940s, he standardized the funeral procedures that were followed after the death of a sitting Senator. And funerals, like inaugurations, require tickets:

Trice’s work in the Senate also led to invitations to other events around Washington. These too required tickets or passes:

The collection also includes some head-scratchers. For example, my mother was a teacher, and here is a pass signed by Maryland Senator James G. Beall (more commonly known as J. Glenn Beall), admitting her and her students to the Senate chamber. The pass has a preprinted date of 1953, but my mother and her class didn’t take that field trip until the spring of 1968, which would have been after Beall was defeated in 1964, but before Beall’s son J. Glenn Beall Jr. won the seat in 1970:

As a history teacher myself, I have made use of some of my grandfather’s mementos in my classes. In so doing, I’m trying to follow the advice of historical anthropologist James Deetz, who wrote the following his influential 1977 book, In Small Things Forgotten:

For in the seemingly little and insignificant things that accumulate to create a lifetime, the essence of our existence is captured. We must remember these bits and pieces, and we must use them in new and imaginative ways so that a different appreciation for what life is today, and was in the past, can be achieved.

Paul here. I love all of this so much — a fascinating peek into a world that most of us will never get to experience. Big thanks to Mark Smith for sharing all of it with us.

It’s worth pointing out that we wouldn’t have learned any of this if I had run a conventional raffle with emailed entries. Insisting on snail-mailed entries cuts down on participation but sometimes pays off with special results like this one. That’s part of what makes regular mail so much fun!

Meanwhile: Mark Trice saved lots of things besides tickets and credentials, so we may follow up with a subsequent post at some point down the road — stay tuned.

Inconspicuous News Roundup

• The white line on the edge of a roadway, as seen in the photo above, may seem eternal, but it wasn’t pioneered until the 1950s. Here’s a really, really good article about the guy who came up with it, and why it was such a key road-safety innovation. IC’s highest rating! (From Rich Kronenberg)

• The logo for Udi’s, a brand that specializes in gluten-free baked goods, includes a mark that doubles as an apostrophe and the dot above the “i.” (From Nathan Haas)

• Reader David Zwiep briefly got excited when he saw a sign promoting an upcoming “I.C. Festival,” but in this case the abbreviation did not stand for “Inconspicuous Consumption”:

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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. You can contact him here.

Note: This post is being published simultaneously on Inconspicuous Consumption and on Uni Watch. It is not paywalled. — Paul

I recently published an Inconspicuous Consumption article about JFK half-dollars. That prompted an interesting email from reader Dave Truman, as follows:

I spent about 15 years as a lacrosse referee in St. Louis, and they always taught the new guys to use half-dollars for the coin toss. (The logic was probably connected to the size of the coins: easy to flip, easy to catch, easier to find in the grass if you dropped it, etc.) … Usually I had to go get them at a bank, but on the rare occasions when I got one as change, I made sure to put it into my equipment bag.

That got me thinking: What do other referees use for coin tosses? I figured I probably have plenty of readers besides Dave who’ve done some sports officiating, so I invited Uni Watch readers and Inconspicuous Consumption readers to share any noteworthy stories they might have about coin tosses.

I got lots of responses (thank you!), some of which veered off into fun non-sports directions. Here are the most interesting ones:

Skyler Archibald

I typically use a coin provided by our officiating association. I have a few of them (see above) that I’ve collected over the years as a part of different associations or have acquired as a result of officiating at some state tournaments.

One cool tradition I’ve seen was in Washington State. The officials for some playoff games are from all different associations or regions around the state, so each official would bring something from their “home” association — often a coin — for the other officials, and then you’d share those things with the crew before the game. Kinda fun to see what other associations are using.

The coin toss procedures for youth or middle school football games are often a bit less structured. Depending on the weather, the officials might be wearing shorts, which is less friendly for carrying a coin during the game. So the officials often skip the coin and have the captains do “Rock, paper, scissors” instead, which is really fun.

Some referees like to catch the coin, some like to let it hit the ground. The best referees will indicate beforehand how they’ll be handling it. I’ve had many a chuckle over referees who try to catch it and drop it, which happens often.

Randy McCallum

To supplement my income when I was in the Army, I would umpire games in the leagues of whatever post I was at. If I was new to the post, I’d use the challenge coin from the highest-ranking person at my last post (see photo above). Whenever I got a new challenge coin from a new base, I would start using that and then upgrade every time I got another challenge coin from a higher-ranking person.

Now I umpire a sober league, so I use my 10-year coin for games.

Mike Styczen

I’m not a ref but I’m a curler. We do our own coin toss for hammer (i.e., who gets “last licks”) at the beginning of every game. I’ve kept the same toonie (shown above) in the zippered back pocket of my curling pants for a decade. I don’t even take it out when I wash the pants, so there’s always a coin.

But when there’s no coin for whatever reason, we use the stopwatch app on someone’s phone and play “odd/even.” You start the timer, one team calls “odd” or “even,” you stop the timer, and the last hundredths digit of the timer determines the winner.

Joe Lombardo

My son played flag football until he was 14. Instead of a coin, they did “laces or no laces”: The ref (usually a 19-year-old kid working for the YMCA) would throw the ball in the air, and you’d win or loss depending on whether it came to rest with the laces facing up or down

My son also played high school tennis, which had no officials — the boys always officiated themselves and were on their honor. But the players still had to decide who served first, and no 17-year-old kid is carrying pocket change on the court, so they’d flip a racket, and you’d call something, like the “W” on a Wilson racket facing up or down, something like that. I remember this clearly, because I cringed every time the $350 racket that I bought for him got thrown.

Christopher Carvalho

I’m a high school rugby ref out here in Connecticut. My old boys’ rugby team had challenge coins made up for when we traveled and went to tournaments, so I use that (shown above). The “heads” design has our insignia — an hourglass — and “tails” has the logos or insignia of our five “feeder” clubs.

It’s nice and heavy and easy to spot on the pitch. When I’m not reffing, I make sure to have it on me at the drink-up or I’m buying a round for whoever catches me without it!

Brad Evers

Soccer ref here. I opt for a half-dollar. I know some refs use commemorative coins from tournaments they’ve worked in the past, but the half-dollar is great for me, especially when the grass is long and a quarter won’t land nicely. Even if I choose to catch the coin in that situation, the half-dollar is easy to see.

R. Scott Rogers

Curling games begin with a coin flip, and it’s quite common for neither of the designated coin-tossers to have a coin on hand. I’ve seen people resort to flipping wildly inappropriate things like gloves or gripper pads. So when I curled, I took to carrying a 2007 Madison dollar in my curling vest pocket, just in case nobody else had a coin. I chose the James Madison coin because the Madison Curling Club was my home club, which made the coin a good conversation starter. On home ice, folks would think it was neat; at out-of-town tournaments, it would get people asking about the Madison club.

Joe Jordan

I’m an athletics administrator for a Division III athletics program. I had the privilege to use this Keith Jackson challenge coin (shown above) as the coin-flip tiebreaker to decide the designated home team in the 2024 NCAA DIII Baseball regionals. Our team won the flip but lost the game.

The coin was given to me by a dear friend who knows I love the Rose Bowl and Keith Jackson! When not in use at baseball games, I keep the coin on display in my office and refer often to Keith’s Nine Core Values.

Whoa, Nelly!

Eric Bangeman

When I refereed rugby, I used a 1921 Morgan silver dollar for coin tosses. I was a coin collector, and this was a “pocket piece,” as it was a duplicate and not in great condition. Usually one of the captains would comment on it during the coin toss, and sometimes I’d give a very brief numismatic or history lesson.

Unfortunately, the coin fell out of my pocket during a match and I was unable to locate it on the pitch afterwards. After that, I used a USA Rugby coin for tosses.

Amer Shamaa

I’m a licensed official in four sports here in Indiana. I’m not senior enough to do a coin flip for football (that’s usually reserved for ref), but I used to keep a quarter or at least a nickel on hand for basketball in the case of tournament play or where there wasn’t a visible possession arrow visible. I’d switch pockets to keep track of possession. I did that until I switched to doing the same thing with a backup whistle.

Jay Roddy

As a baseball umpire, I don’t normally need a coin. But in travel tournaments, and occasionally in youth ball, it’s not always clear which team is the home team, so I try to be prepared with a quarter. If I forget or am surprised by the question at the pregame plate conference, we’ll flip a ball/strike indicator (i.e., the clicker). Typically, the team that has traveled farthest gets to call it. Heads is the side with the numbers; the plain side is tails.

Joe Bailey

I’m going into my 26th year of officiating high school football. When I started, 2001, I went on eBay and found a commemorative Cleveland Browns coin marking their return to the NFL in ’99 (shown above). I’m predominantly an umpire at the varsity level, so we don’t use my coin for those games. But I’m sometimes the referee for JV and youth games. I tell the captains, “The helmet is heads and the writing is tails.” (Oh, the Browns went 2-14 that season.)

In addition to that, my chapter of the NYS Football Officials created a coin for our members to use, which is much more traditional:

Matt Maldre

In my house, there are often disputes over who picks what to watch on TV, who gets to sit in the front seat, and so on. We resolve these disputes by using an official family coin — a French Piastre from 1908 (shown above). I originally got it mostly because I wanted to own something from 1908 when the Cubs last won the World Series, just so I could hold something in my hand that physically existed from that time period. (There’s more information about the coin and its role in our family here.)

Curt Rogers

I’ve been a soccer referee for 36 years. Leagues and tournaments will often given out special coins to use. One annual tourney in particular gave out a commemorative coin with a slightly different design each year, usually incorporating the tournament logo (see above). The thing I remember about those in particular is that they were heavy — much heavier than a normal coin, so you really had to put some oomph into it when you flipped it. My favorite version of the coin was the year they made it square, which I thought was really unique.

Derek Linn

I refereed soccer from 2011-2022. I almost always used an Eisenhower silver dollar for high school games and I used the NISOA coin (shown above) for college games. When I used the Eisenhower coin, I would always ask the captains who the silhouette was, and I don’t think anyone ever got it correct.

Anonymous

I’m not a referee, but in 2023 I took my son to an Indoor Football League game, and the head referee gave him the coin used for the opening coin toss (shown above) — a very cool move.

The “coin” is plastic and appears to be more of a customized poker chip than a traditional coin, though it has enough heft that some metal may be inside. The obverse features the IFL logo, while the reverse includes the logos of 12 IFL teams. Interestingly, there are 12 team logos, which appears to correspond with the IFL’s 2021 season; they were up to 14 teams in 2023, when my son received the coin.

Gabe Cornwall

My mother officiated D1 and WUSA soccer and college basketball for more than 20 years. She kept a 1921 Peace silver dollar for coin-flipping purposes. Her husband in those days — my late stepfather — was an enthusiastic numismatist, so I’m sure that had plenty to do with which coin she chose. My mother still has his coin collection, which includes the 1921 dollar.

Jeff Economy

This is not about refereeing exactly, but the coin toss conversation immediately reminded me of the 1971 Australian film Wake in Fright. If you’ve not seen it, you’re in for a wild ride. It has been synopsized thusly: “After a bad gambling bet, a schoolteacher is marooned in a town full of crazy, drunk, violent men who threaten to make him just as crazy, drunk, and violent.” The gambling debt has to do with a coin toss game, and although I don’t think using half-dollars would have affected the outcome, it does make me wonder how a small-town American version of the same concept would play out if centered around the saintly profile of the fallen JFK.

———

Paul here. Good stuff! Big thanks to everyone for sharing your stories, and doubleplusthanks to Dave Truman for getting the ball rolling on this one.

Incidentally, the road that led to this post began nearly a month ago, when I published an article about receiving a buffalo nickel as change. That led to the post about about the stationery shop in Maine that gives out half-dollars as change, which ultimately led to all of these coin-flip stories. I love it when one topic begets another, and another. It’s like an IC perpetual-motion machine!

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.

I recently wrote about receiving a 1928 buffalo nickel as change. That article prompted a comment from reader Frank Boscoe, who wrote, “Every so often I get some half-dollars from the bank and put them back into circulation. They make good conversation pieces.”

That got my attention because I’m a longtime fan of the Kennedy half-dollar. For starters, it’s clearly our best-looking coin: the fine-grained swoop of JFK’s hair, the wide-spaced ʟ ɪ ʙ ᴇ ʀ ᴛ ʏ lettering, the handsome eagle on the reverse — it’s a beauty. I also like its size and weight, which make other coins seem like mere tokens by comparison. A half-dollar feels substantial and tactile in the hand and has a resonant ring when hitting a countertop or table. A very satisfying physical object.

Despite these aesthetic and material pleasures, the JFK half-dollar’s public profile these days is essentially nil. The U.S. Mint produced 34 million of them last year, which might sound like a lot until you realize that they also produced 1.3 billion pennies in 2025, along with 1.04 billion nickels, 1.38 billion dimes, and 697 million quarters. Vending machines and other coin-operated gadgets don’t take half-dollars, retailers don’t keep them in their cash registers, and even banks sometimes don’t have any on hand. Although JFKs have been circulating for more than 60 years, there’s a decent chance you’ve never spent one or gotten one back as change.

How did this attractive coin end up becoming so inconspicuous? I looked into that question myself in a 1997 magazine article (later reprinted in issue No. 8 of my zine, Beer Frame: The Journal of Inconspicuous Consumption). Here’s a key passage:

One frequently cited reason for [the JFK half-dollar’s relative obscurity] is its considerable heft, which some find unwieldy. But Tim Sanford, editor of the trade journal Vending Times, points out that the JFK is precisely the same size and weight as its predecessor, the Franklin half-dollar, which was minted from 1948 through 1963. “Nobody used to say the Franklins were too big,” says Sanford. “They used them! For some reason, something happened in the public mind when the JFK was introduced. The 1960s saw the 50-cent piece slide right off the boat.”

James C. Benfield, Executive Director of a Washington lobbying group called the Coin Coalition, thinks he knows why. First, he explains, the year that the JFK was introduced — 1964 — was the last year when dimes, quarters, and half-dollars were still 90% silver, which led to a rash of hoarding in the mid-’60s. (The silver content was reduced to 40% in 1965 and eliminated altogether in 1971. The current composition for all three coins is 92% copper and 8% nickel.) Since all Franklin half-dollars were minted during the 90% silver era, they disappeared from circulation almost immediately. Meanwhile, with the new half-dollar rushed into production just months after Kennedy’s death, grief-stricken Americans held onto the JFK instead of spending it. The large, good-looking 50-cent piece essentially became a commemorative keepsake instead of a circulating coin. “So Franklin gets hoarded because he’s silver,” Benfield summarizes, “and Kennedy gets hoarded because he’s popular. So you had double-hoarding, and it killed the 50-cent denomination.”

Still, as the price of candy bars and soda rose to 50 cents and beyond, you’d think the half-dollar would’ve been a natural for vending machines. But that didn’t happen either. Why? Quoting again from that same 1997 article:

Early vending machines were never tooled to accept half-dollars because most vended products at the time cost only a nickel or dime anyway. By the time inflation made the JFK viable for coin-op purchases, the country had basically stopped using it [due to the double-hoarding phenomenon just described]. “Vending is a demand-driven industry,” says Sanford, the Vending Times editor. “I assure you that if people were saying, ‘Gee, it would really be convenient if I could use a 50-cent piece in this machine,’ the industry would start thinking seriously about it. But the coin has just dropped off everyone’s radar.”

All of which brings us back to IC reader Frank Boscoe and his comment about getting half-dollars from the bank and putting them into circulation. When I contacted him off-site to learn more, he said the story really begins with his son, Keenan, who runs a small shop in Camden, Maine, that sells stationery and maps. “He gives half-dollars as change to the right type of customer,” said Frank.

So I recently arranged a Zoom call with Keenan and Frank. Here’s a transcript, edited for length and clarity:

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

Earlier this week I wrote about an old receipt that my grandmother saved. Today I want to follow up with another story related to her — one that I’m pretty certain many of you can relate to.

Here’s the deal: Shortly before my father died in 2009, he gave me his childhood stamp collection. He had kept the collection in an album that his parents gave to him as a Chanukah present in 1935, when he was 11 years old. I know that’s when they gave it to him because of this inscription on the first page:

Yes, my father’s name was Irwin. But I’m more interested in the other two names: “Dad” and, especially, “Mommy.”

My paternal grandparents’ names were Charles and Fannie, but of course I never knew them by those names. In fact, I didn’t know my grandfather at all — he died in 1966, when I was a toddler (and my other grandfather died long before I was born). But my grandmother — the same one who saved the refrigerator receipt — was a big part of my life until her death when I was 16, and I knew her as Nanny. That’s what my parents always called her, and that’s how my mom still refers to her when she comes up in conversation. I’ve always known that she was my father’s mother, of course, but I still find it a bit jarring to see that she signed the stamp album as “Mommy,” because I never knew her in that role.

And that’t the thing: “Mommy” and “Nanny” aren’t just names, they’re roles, and grandparents end up playing both of them.

My other grandmother — my mom’s mom — went by Nana. So we had Nanny and Nana, which could occasionally be confusing when they were both in the same room. I recently asked my mother how these two nicknames were chosen. She said she wasn’t sure, but she thinks my grandparents were consulted about what they wanted to be called, and those were the names they chose.

My two brothers and I all opted not to have kids of our own, so we never had to address the issue of generational nicknames. Or to put it another way, I’m very ignorant on this topic. So here are some questions (feel free to post your responses in the comments):

• If your grandparents were alive when you were growing up, what did you call them? Do you know how those names were chosen?

• If you have kids, what do they call their grandparents (i.e., your parents and in-laws), and how were those names arrived at?

• If you are a grandparent, what do your grandchildren call you, how was that name chosen, and how do you feel about it? Also, does it ever feel weird for your nickname to toggle back and forth (between “Dad” and Grandpa,” say), depending on which generation you’re interacting with?

• If you think you’ll probably become a grandparent, have you thought about what you’d like to be called?

• Any related issues worth addressing?

Again, I realize this is probably basic stuff for most families, but not so much for mine. Thanks in advance for educating me on this topic!

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.

I was recently helping my mom clean out a dresser drawer, which was filled with jewelry she no longer wears and other detritus. At the back of the drawer was an unremarkable-looking women’s wallet, which Mom said she didn’t recognize. It had a few zippered compartments, one of which contained the slip of paper shown above — a receipt for a two-door Hotpoint refrigerator delivered to a Mrs. Lewkowitz in the Long Island town of Patchogue on August 7th, 1975.

Mrs. Lewkowitz was my grandmother — my father’s mother1 — and Patchogue Gardens was the apartment complex where she lived when I was growing up, so the wallet must have belonged to her. She died in the fall of 1980, five years after the refrigerator delivery. My parents must have thought that my mom might one day use the wallet, so they apparently stowed it in the back of the drawer with the jewelry and other accessories, where it remained for another 46 years. During that time, my parents moved to a retirement community (2004), my father died (2009), my mom moved to a smaller retirement apartment (2010), and then she moved again to assisted living (2015). Each time, the dresser moved with her; each time, the wallet was inside the dresser drawer and the fridge receipt was inside the wallet, waiting to be discovered.

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A recent Inconspicuous News Roundup included an item about a guy who works at a bookstore and collects the improvised bookmarks that people have left in the used books that pass through his shop. That prompted a comment from reader Peter K., who mentioned that he had a whole rotation of improvised bookmarks.

I followed up off-list with Peter, who said:

I have always been a collector of miscellaneous debris — ticket stubs, stickers, shirt tags — and enjoy using them as bookmarks. This is better for the miscellaneous items (instead of being stashed in a junk drawer or decaying in a landfill, they get to have a continued purpose), and I also find it more satisfying than using conventional bookmarks that don’t have a backstory.

You can see a bunch of Peter’s improvised bookmarks in the photo above. At my request, he explained the significance of some of these items (the numbers in the photo correspond to the following paragraph numbers):

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Last month I wrote about a great piece of mail that I received from an IC reader. That prompted a comment from another reader, named Matt Douma, who wrote:

[This] reminds me of a show I saw at the San Francisco Public Library years ago of postcards and letters that a stamp collector mailed to himself, with his name and address hand-lettered to reflect the design of the stamps. I stumbled across it by accident, and it was one of the best displays of art I've ever seen. I highly recommend this video about the project.

The video is about 10 minutes long, and it took me a few days before I got around to watching it. But once I did, I was completely blown away, just as Matt was. After digging a bit deeper and learning more, I’m not so sure I’d go so far as to call it one of the best displays of art I’ve ever seen, but it’s definitely one of the best long-term art projects I’ve ever seen.

Here’s the story: In 1968, a guy in San Francisco named Alan Blackman began mailing letters to himself, a habit he maintained for 36 years. These were all first-day covers, meaning that he mailed the letters using stamps that had just been released that day, so the stamps received a special “First Day of Issue” cancellation mark. (More on this in a minute.) Blackman was a calligrapher, and at some point he began matching the lettering style of his name and address on the envelopes to the visual style and/or thematic content of the stamps. For example, when a new Uncle Sam stamp was issued in 1998, Blackman styled his address like a flag-themed top hat (as seen in the photo at the top of this page).

Sometimes Blackman’s lettering designs depicted figures or characters, as in the case of the address accompanying these 1997 Bug Bunny stamps:

Since Blackman mailed these letters to himself, he was able to maintain a collection of all the designs. In 2015, the San Francisco Public Library hosted an exhibit featuring some of his most notable envelopes. That show, called “Letters to Myself: The Calligraphic First Day Covers of Alan A. Blackman,” is the one that reader Matt Douma was referring to in his recent comment, and the video that Matt linked to is an overview of the exhibit. Here are some screen shots from that video, showing the depth and breadth of Blackman’s front-of-the-envelope creativity:

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Like most people, I don’t use cash as much as I used to. But when I do use it, I’m sometimes reminded of the pleasures that only a cash transaction can provide.

The most recent instance of this happened the other day when I bought a few items at my local bodega. The total came to $14.90, so I paid with a $20 bill and received a fiver and two nickels as change. I don’t know why the shopkeeper gave me two nickels instead of a dime, but I’m glad he did, because one of them, as you can see above, was a 1928 buffalo nickel! I’ve seen them before, but I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve received one as change. This one is nearly 100 years old, so it’s fun to think of all the pockets it’s been in, the places it’s gone, the commerce it’s been part of, the stories it could tell.

Despite its age, this nickel not particularly valuable. My amateur assessment is that it’s in “VG” condition, which according to various online price guides means it’s worth somewhere between $1.75 and $3.50. This isn’t surprising when you consider that 1928 nickels aren’t exactly scarce (the Philadelphia mint made over 23.4 million of them), plus nickel isn’t a precious metal (a 1928 quarter in comparable condition is worth $12 to $15, mainly because it’s made of silver).

But while this buffalo nickel may not have much monetary value, it nonetheless ended up sending me down a fun rabbit hole. For starters, some of you may be thinking, “Wait a minute, where’s the buffalo?” That’s because the titular animal (which is actually a bison, not a buffalo) appears on the back of the coin. The front, or obverse, shows a profile view of a Native American — a composite of several men, according to the coin’s designer, James Earle Fraser — so I’ve never understood why these are typically called “buffalo nickels” instead of “Indian head nickels.” I mean, we don’t call the current five-cent coin a “Monticello nickel,” right? Are any other American coins commonly referred to by what’s on the back?

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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. The truth is, I’m not a very good designer.

But maybe some of you folks are. 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.”

A few notes for those who want to take on this challenge:

• You’re welcome to run with my eye-dotted “i” idea if you like, but that’s absolutely not required.

• Your design can include the words “Inconspicuous Consumption” or not. Up to you.

• Similarly, your design can include images of things we’ve talked about here (Brannock Devices, manicules, zebra boards, etc.), or not. Again, up to you.

• If you can find a way to use the phrase “I see,” said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw, I’ll be very impressed.

• If I particularly like your design, I will put it on a T-shirt that I’ll make available in the IC shop. I’ll split the sales profits with you 50/50, plus you’ll get a free T-shirt with your design.

• This is a design challenge, not a contest. I may end choosing multiple designs for the T-shirt treatment, or just one, or none. Depends on how I like the designs.

• Please: No AI or AI-assisted designs.

• Email your design to me by June 25th (that’s three weeks from today). You can submit as many designs as you like.

I think that covers it, but let me know if you have any additional questions. Thanks, and have fun with your designs!

Inconspicuous News Roundup

• You know how the USPS logo shows a stylized eagle? A bird-centric artist named Alex Tominson has reimagined the logo for all of the country’s official state birds (see above).

• Did you know that Nepal has its own time zone, which is 15 minutes off from all the others? It’s true!

• Oh man, check out this absolutely sensational pop-up book — so good (from Trish Clark):

• Miriam Sicherman spotted this car with a 1976 Carter/Mondale bumper sticker (see below). Not sure if that’s just an isolated instance or if retro political bumper stickers are a trend. Anyone know more?

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.

My friend Janet recently attended an event at Green-Wood Cemetery, the celebrated Brooklyn oasis that opened in 1838 and is now the final resting place for about 600,000 souls.

Fifty-eight of those souls are listed on the two-page spread shown above, which Janet photographed during the event. Those pages are part of a ledger listing people who were interred at Green-Wood in 1884. Let’s zoom in a bit to get a better view of the spectacular penmanship:

The registry has all the column headings you’d expect to see: “Name,” “Place of Birth,” “Age,” etc. But what really gets me is the column on the right-hand page labeled “Cause of Death,” which earns extra pathos points for having the various maladies rendered in that same magnificent calligraphy:

I have so many questions. For starters, note that the very first cause of death listed at the top of the column is “Paralysis,” which is not something I’d normally think of as a fatal condition. Like, can you really die of paralysis? Wouldn’t it be more likely that you died of something else that caused the paralysis? (By odd coincidence, paralysis also appears as the final entry at the bottom of the column, so the list is essentially bookended by immobility.)

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Yesterday I wrote about how I recently rediscovered an old Juicy Fruit gum wrapper that I thought I’d lost about 20 years ago. The wrapper was originally sent to me back in 1996 by friends who thought I’d be interested in the odd slogan printed on the packaging: “The Gum With the Fascinating Artificial Flavor.”

As it turns out, that slogan is just one small part of a brand history that’s loaded with surprising details. For example:

1. Juicy Fruit was Wrigley’s first commercial gum.

When William Wrigley Jr. went into the gum biz (he had previously sold soap and baking soda), Juicy Fruit was his first commercial product, launching in 1893. Wrigley’s Spearmint, which has become much more iconic in the marketplace, debuted later that same year. Doublemint followed more than two decades later, in 1914.

2. Juicy Fruit’s key marketing term is “fascinating.”

As near as I can figure, the earliest use of “fascinating” in Juicy Fruit marketing came around 1930, when the phrase “Fascinating Flavor” began appearing on the gum’s packaging. You can see it on the underside of the Juicy Fruit pack shown in this ad:

The “Fascinating Flavor” phrase was soon amended to become “Has a Fascinating Flavor” (emphasis mine), as seen in this 1931 ad:

By the 1940s, this slogan had morphed into “A Fascinating Artificial Flavor” (emphasis mine). This seems bizarre by contemporary standards, but the advent of synthetic flavorings probably seemed modern and science-y at the time. Here’s how it looked on an individually wrapped stick of Juicy Fruit:

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In 1996 — that’s 30 years ago — my friends Eve and David were doing some renovations on their home in Portland, Oregon. At one point they pulled up a floorboard and saw an old Juicy Fruit gum wrapper that had somehow ended up there, probably after being discarded by a worker. It looked very much like the brand’s then-current wrapper design, except for the slogan printed beneath the Juicy Fruit logo: “The Gum With the Fascinating Artificial Flavor.”

They don’t write marketing pitches like that anymore! Eve and David knew this was precisely the type of thing I tend to be intrigued by, so they mailed the wrapper to me. I ended up writing about it in 1997, as part of a magazine article about products with unusual flavors, and then the following year I reprinted that article in issue No. 8 of my zine, Beer Frame: The Journal of Inconspicuous Consumption.

After I wrote about the wrapper, I put it in a drawer where I typically save little oddball treasures. And then … honestly, I’m not sure what happened after that. Although I don’t recall the exact timeline, I know at some point I realized that the Juicy Fruit wrapper had disappeared. Had I carelessly discarded it? Was it hidden away in a spot where I hadn’t thought to look for it? Did it somehow get separated from the rest of my possessions during a move? All I knew for sure was that I felt shitty about losing this special gift that two friends had sent to me.

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As most of you know by now, I love mail, especially if it comes in a hand-addressed envelope. But while all handwritten mail is good, some dispatches are particularly exceptional. The letter shown above, which I was recently lucky enough to receive, is one such specimen.

There’s so much to love here, beginning with the loooong manicule (i.e., a pointing hand), which is a topic we’ve previously explored here on IC. Even better, this manicule is left-handed! And of course I love the striped sleeve, complete with ribbed trim on the cuff.

If we zoom in, you can see that the sender used stamps that are actually celebrating the U.S. Postal Service! In other words, this is mail that’s about mail — perfect for a postal enthusiast like me.

If we shift our focus from the upper-right corner to the upper-left, something remarkable becomes apparent: The return address, which appears to be a rubber stamp based on handwritten lettering, includes an upside-down “N,” which is another topic that’s been covered here on IC!

Now let’s turn the envelope over. The back flap has an appealing illustration of a safety pin, making it look like the envelope had been pinned shut.

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

On Sunday evening I went to the Manhattan cocktail bar Pearl Box, where the matchbook-centric website Oh, What a Match! was hosting a meet-and-swap gathering of phillumenists (read: matchbook collectors). Although I’m not a phillumenist myself, I’m always interested in collections and the collectors who collect them, so I was curious to see what this scene was all about. I brought along the 1956 matchbook catalog that I recently wrote about, which I figured would make for some good show-and-tell.

Most of the other attendees had matchbooks and matchboxes spread out and available for swapping on the tables in front of them, as shown in the photo above. Here are some additional pics, just to give you a sense of the proceedings (click on the thumbnails to see larger versions):

A few notes:

• I was surprised to see that nobody was collecting or swapping vintage matchbooks — just current or contemporary stuff. In that regard, this collecting culture was very alien to me, because I’m all about vintage items. But that’s just me. There’s nothing wrong with collecting current stuff!

• I talked to several of the phillumenists. Some said they adhered to certain protocols, like collecting matchbooks only from places they’d actually visited in person (which is one fun aspect of collecting current items instead of vintage). Others were more interested in the matchbooks’ aesthetics, regardless of any personal connection to the establishment. All were very enthusiastic.

• It was a young crowd, with most of the attendees in their 20s or early 30s. My friend Adriene and I, both in our early 60s, were easily the oldest people there (including the staff).

• The most intriguing thing, at least to me, was that the crowd also skewed female — about 70-30, I’d say, maybe even 80-20. Collector-geek scenes are usually very male-oriented, so it was kind of refreshing to encounter a collecting community that doesn’t fit that mold.

All the tables were taken by the time Adriene and I arrived, so I sat in between two tables and opened up the 1956 catalog, which I hoped would be a good conversation starter.

So how did that go? Honestly, not so well. There were two people who were very interested in the catalog right when I sat down, but I appeared to be invisible to nearly everyone else. A few people made brief eye contact with me as they walked by, so I said, “This is a 1950s matchbook catalog…” and then I could see their eyes glazing over and they moved on. They just didn’t care.

And that’s fine. Like I said, these people weren’t into vintage stuff, so I can understand why a 1950s catalog didn’t interest them. Moreover, I’m not a real phillumenist and I didn’t have anything to swap, so I was kinda crashing their party. It was mostly an interesting fly-on-the-wall social experiment.

Since I didn’t have anything to trade, I didn’t get anything from the other attendees, but I nonetheless left with some matches. First, the bar had a really interesting giveaway matchbox designed like a pack of cigarettes:

That’s pretty cool! Maybe the cigarette-esque box is a common design format these days (can anyone confirm?), but I’d never seen it before.

In addition, the website that organized the event was giving away noir-ish feature matchbooks (as you may recall from this recent post, “feature” refers to a design being printed on the actual matchsticks, not just on the cover):

Incidentally, one of the few men on hand was a reporter from Bloomberg Businessweek, who told me he was there because he’s working on an article about the renewed enthusiasm for freebie matchbooks at restaurants and bars. It’s not every day that Businessweek and Inconspicuous Consumption both have a reporter covering the same event, but that just goes to show how phillumeny is enjoying a cultural moment these days.

Apostrophes, Continued

Shortly after I published Tuesday’s deep dive about apostrophe positioning on vertically lettered signs, I became aware of a particularly interesting example: Ralph’s Club, located in Tracy, California. As you can see in the photos above, the sign includes a centered apostrophe, but it’s turned sideways, so it looks more like a hyphen! I’ve never seen anything quite like that before.

Those photos are are both from the early 2010s. The sign was refurbished in 2023. The bad news is that they used LEDs instead of true neon (grrrr), plus they monkeyed with some of the letterforms (the new “A” is particularly awful). But the good news is that they retained the odd apostrophe:

I’ll tell you what: If you wanted to come up with a good organizing theme for a cross-country road trip, you could do a lot worse than planning your route around vertical, apostrophe-inclusive signs. Hmmmm.

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Inconspicuous News Roundup

• Reader Llarry Amrose recently visited Egeskov Castle in Denmark, which has an cool exhibit of vintage bicycle bells (shown above).

• Whoa, check out these magnification pics of sand from various locations around the world. So many variations! (From Jason Hillyer)

• Here’s a faaaascinating article on a really interesting topic: Back in the pre-Linotype days, when compositors set metal type by hand, there were typesetting races, with the fastest, most dextrous compositors competing against each other. Who knew?

• These animated letters are amazing.

• On the topic of obsessive recordkeeping: There’s a fan of the Polish soccer club Raków Częstochowa who for the past several decades has kept notebooks in which he meticulously documents the game-by-game starting lineup and kits for Raków and their opponents. You can see a typical notebook page below; additional pics and info here (from Ed Zelaski).

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.

I was walking down Canal Street in Manhattan the other day with my friend (and IC reader!) Adriene Zepka when I noticed the Drake’s sign shown above and stopped to take a photo of it. “Wait, you’re photographing that?” she said. “What’s so special about it?”

The answer, of course, is that the Drake’s sign presents one possible answer to an eternal typographic question: Where should the apostrophe be positioned on a vertically lettered sign for a business with a possessive name?

There’s no straightforward solution to this conundrum, but there are four primary approaches that signmakers have taken over the years, plus a workaround option, each of which feels at least somewhat imperfect. Let’s take a look at each one, beginning with…

1. Put the Apostrophe in Front of the “S”

The Drake’s sign on falls into this category. Based on my photo research, however, this is a relatively uncommon option, with only a few other examples that I could find:

2. Put It After the Penultimate Letter

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Fed up with his inability to quell the constant flow of objects into his apartment, and determined to be able to fit his life into the trunk of his car, one day John Freyer decided to sell everything he owned on the internet. He invited his friends over to tag his possessions and systematically put them up for sale on eBay. An opened box of taco shells, half a bottle of mouthwash, almost all of his clothes, his favorite records, his sideburns (in a plastic bag), his family’s Christmas presents (not yet given), furniture — John didn’t let sentiment or utility stand in his way. Soon his belongings were sold all over the world, with a bag of Porky’s BBQ Pork Skins making its way to Japan, and a chair ending up in the Museum of Modern Art.

This project (which also inspired a book) is so completely in my wheelhouse, I’m not sure how I’d never heard of it before. Big thanks to reader Clint Wrede for bringing it to my attention.

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