My Personal Sign Shangri-La
I recently got to attend two amazing sign-related events in a 24-hour span. Plus a new Inconspicuous News Roundup and a whole lot more!
Note: This post includes several short videos that are an important part of the story, so I strongly recommend that you read the web version, not the emailed version. Enjoy! — Paul
As you all know by now, I love signs and write about them fairly often here on Inconspicuous Consumption. So you can imagine how I felt when fate recently dropped not one but two tremendous sign-centric events into my lap in a 24-hour period last week. The first one was a special sale where people got to purchase signs that were originally installed at New York subway stations, and the other was an exclusive tour of a factory where all sorts of traffic-related signs are made. Getting to attend these events on back-to-back days was like a sign-o-rama, a signapalooza, a signgasm. I’m excited to tell you all about it today.
The festivities began last Thursday, October 16th, when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that operates New York City’s subways and buses, held its fifth annual sale of decommissioned subway signs. For the previous four years, this event required a reservation, and those slots always filled up in no time flat, so I was never able to attend. But this year the MTA switched to a walk-in format, so I went down to the sale site (a desolate industrial lot in southern Brooklyn) at 10:30am, stood on a line for more than two hours, and then finally got inside.
I wasn’t interested in buying anything (the signs are pricey, plus I don’t have much available wall space in my home) — I just wanted to see the signs and check out the scene. The photo at the top of this page provides a sense of what it was like, and here’s another shot that shows roughly half of the space where everything was taking place:
