October 28, 2024 • 60 mins
Kelsey McClellan joins the show this week and educates me about the Chicago Style of Sign Painting, the Beverly Sign Company, and Stock Car painting. I get a bit derailed, per usual, but I'm glad to admit I was a tabla rasa when it comes to this topic. Kelsey was very awesome to share the Beverly Sign Company story and tell us about the books that are hitting the shelves soon!
You can follow Kelsey and Andrew here:
Heart and Bone Signs
Heavy Pages Press
You can order your Book about the Bevery Sign Company at
Heavy Pages Press
and also check out the Chicago Sign Painters.
The Neon Sign museum I got wrong is the Museum of Neon Art in Glendale, CA.
And one of the Houston Neon videos I talk about is here.
You can follow Kelsey and Andrew here:
Heart and Bone Signs
Heavy Pages Press
You can order your Book about the Bevery Sign Company at
Heavy Pages Press
and also check out the Chicago Sign Painters.
The Neon Sign museum I got wrong is the Museum of Neon Art in Glendale, CA.
And one of the Houston Neon videos I talk about is here.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Welcome everybody to another week of international sign finders. Glad
you're with us. Hopefully you got out hit the pavement,
got pictures some awesome Neon signs, even hand painted signs
as a hint hint about this week, and hopefully you
got on to Instagram, flicker, wherever you go, even Twitter.
I share stuff on Twitter every so often. Oh excuse me,
(00:37):
thank you Elon for changing that. But yes, share them
with everybody. Let us know about it. We don't care
if you're what if you have one follower or one
hundred thousand followers, be sure to share them with us
so we can see them and see your take on
maybe some other favorite signs or even a brand new
favorite side that we just haven't found yet. We have
(01:00):
the pleasure of having uh some sign painters on. We've
We've had Corky at Todd, which had worked with you know.
Corky works on recovering signs there in Denver, and Todd
is a Neon tube bender, which is an amazing art
that blows my mind. I've seen people bending tubes and
(01:22):
get them in the shapes and I'm like, yeah, I
can I can not do that. Uh, But tonight we
have a hand, you know, a sign painter, sign painters,
and there they also have some books that they're releasing
as well. And welcome to the show from Heavy Letter
Press Kirsten McClellan, and also Andrews of the background somewhere
(01:44):
a few chimes in, we'll welcome him to But welcome
to the show, Kelsey.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Thank you. Glad to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, glad to have you here. Now, what introduce yourself
to everybody who may not know you. I know Heather, uh, Heather,
David follows you, and I think there's some other folks
that I follow that you know, we're kind of in
our circle as well. But introduce yourself to the other
people who may have not had the pleasure of meeting
(02:11):
you yet. Sure.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
So, my husband and I are sign painters, like you said,
and we run a traditional sign painting and gold leaf
glass sign shop based out of Chicago. We travel all
over the country, but we are based in Chicago and
(02:34):
we learned the craft here. We learned from a gentleman
named Robert Freeze who's our mentor, who has been doing
gold leaf signs in Chicago for the past forty years.
So we are basically carrying on the tradition in the
city and go ahead, and I'll add that I won't
(02:58):
go into this, but we have recently started publishing or
our self publishing our own our first book, and working
on some other books. So hence the heavy pages press.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah, and just the you know, if you go to
their Instagram account, I will have links up on the
show notes on how you get to their Instagram account
and also their website. Just the introduction, what it gets
you thirsty for more? What's your whistle? No, what's your
whistle means? It satisfies you, it leads you thirsty for more?
(03:31):
I think that's a better phrase. When did When did
you get the idea to create this book based off
the Beverly Sign company.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
So that's a fun story. So basically, in summer of
twenty twenty two, there was a ghost sign that was
unveiled in the Ravens World neighborhood of Chicago, And funny enough,
you'd talked about Twitter. It was put on Twitter and
(04:05):
my friend sent it to me and said, hey, did
you see this? And I saw pictures and I was like,
oh man, we have to go see this. Basically, what
happened was a building was going to be demolished, and
they took the asbestos build sighting off in the middle
of the night and it revealed these incredible signs. And
(04:28):
we went down there saw them and they were on
wood panels and it was like walking back in time.
I mean they had been basically covered for I guess
the last seventy years with this sighting, and so they
(04:49):
were like perfect shape, and they were over one hundred
years old. And one was a shell sign from the
nineteen twenties and the other one was a Wards Bread sign,
which is the predecessor to Wonderbread, Oh Wow and beautiful
beautiful signs. Then the Ward's Bread sign had a signature
(05:12):
on it that said Briggs Sign co Yeah. Well, what
we found out was that Briggs is Jack Briggs who
started Beverly's Sign COO, and Beverly Sign Coo is kind
of They're well known within my community, within the sign
(05:34):
painting community. There's a whole exhibit on them in the
American Sign Museum that Cincinnati.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Oh Wow.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
They're kind of well known for their experimental design design principles.
They sort of influenced modernist sign design and they were
they developed this the Chicago style and this tool for
(06:01):
design layout called panelization. So basically they're super influential sign company.
And when we found this out, Todd Swarmstead from the
Sign Museum. We contacted him. We were like, hey, we
I think we might want to try to save these signs.
(06:25):
You guys have any interest in them because they're giant.
It was the size of an entire building, and he
obviously knows about Beverly and Todd was like, yep, I'll
come down. I'm going to help you guys get this
sign down. So part of this is that we had
to get scaffolding, so we did a whole fundraiser for scaffolding.
(06:50):
The public got really excited because everybody saw the signs.
Everybody was really excited. They were really glad we were
going to save them because a lot of people saw
them and they're like, oh, I wish we could save
these and we were like, yeah, oh we're gonna save them,
Like why wouldn't we save them? So basically the developers,
(07:11):
we had actually worked with them in the past, and
so we contacted them. We were like, hey, can we
save these signs? They said, if you can get them
down the next twenty days, you can save them.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
So we got everything together, Todd came down, we got
the words Bread signed down, and it just so happened
that the new wing in the museum had this open
space in it for a sign like this, and so
now the sign lives in the museum, which is super cool. Ever,
(07:44):
I know, it was just such a crazy experience. And
then and so it led into another sign painter because
there's a lot of sign painting history in Chicago. And
a friend of ours named Bob Mahonik, whose mentor Ken
(08:05):
Millar worked at Beverly. He said, Hey, I have this
collection of like four hundred original drawings from Beverly. Ken,
my mentor, always wanted to make a book. What do
you guys think? Would you help me do this? And
we were like, well, let's look at the drawings. We
(08:27):
looked at the drawings and we were like, well we
have to do this. Sorry, hopefully we egnitted that out.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, it's live radio basically, there's a treat Okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
So we saw that all the sketches and we were like, well,
this is just a no brainer. We have to Maybe
we're just the kind of people that just jump into stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Well know what that happens?
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, and you know that's why I kind of when
I found your podcast and I said listening, I was like, oh,
these people are kind of my people. Like everybody's really
into preservation and talking and documenting about signs, and so
that's kind of, you know, on top of our profession.
(09:15):
We're super passionate about that as well. So we have
basically put together this book and it's going to come
out like next week. We get it next week. Oh wow,
so super excited.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Talk about smell of fresh off the press is holy cow.
So uh, this is a that's a perfect ending to
the first segment of this week's podcast with heavy press books.
Hopefully I got that right, heavy pages press. Yeah, there
we go, heavy pages press. I'll get it right. And
when we come back, I'm gonna ask you about the
(09:53):
Chicago style because I admit I am very new to
the sign painting community. Yea, let's put it this way.
I am like, brush out the wound right now. I
don't know much. I just know that, you know, LA
has a big presence of sign painting. There's a book
put out about that. I keep talking about it and
(10:14):
I wish I'd bought the book. There's a guy I followed,
can't remember his name out of Toronto and he does
sign painting up there, and you know Ontario. I'm sure
that you know different regions may have different styles of specialises,
because you've already talked about Chicago style. Yea, when we
come back this, let's get into that. And also I
noticed that you guys sell Ken Malar blueprints on your site.
(10:38):
We might get into that. So you're listening to International
Sign Finders, Welcome back to International Sign Finders. Glad you're
with this and this week. You know, I talk about
(10:59):
the big diagram of sign hunting and sign finding where
it kind of overlaps with urban exploration and antiques and
cool classic cars, and now we're adding another circle to
that diagram of sign painting. For me, I always love
(11:21):
We were talking before the show how I've kind of
fallen in love with like, for lack of better term,
grocer sponts, like if you go to a broken store,
you see the hand painted fonts outside, letting you know
what specials there are. Also they're really cool, like bebling.
Chelsea sent me a photo of I believe it was you.
(11:43):
Hopefully that's not too much an assumption I kind of
put to I put two and two together, and you're
painting these amazing gold gold plated goldflake signs at the
beveling the and you have to do.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
It backwards, right, Yeah, it's all reverse.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Oh man? Oh yeah, I could write reverse and upside down.
But that's about it. But uh, take us into the
Chicago style. You mentioned the Chicago style earlier and how
one of your how the Beverly Sign Company, kind of
paid the way for this new style to happen, and
also they were innovators and other different styles, especially modernist.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, or to think for some.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Reason constructivist comes to mind, but that's an old Soviet
stripped down design style, mental, highly minimalist. What yea the
modern design? And also what is the Chicago style?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
So, uh, the Chicago style this is sort of a
loose term. I mean, it's maybe it can be applied
to a lot of different things, so okay with outside
of hot dogs and pizza.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
But yeah, let's start that argument going.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah, oh I know a lot about that too. But
as far as signs, so for gold leaf, actually the
beveled signs that you're talking about, that we call that
the Chicago style convex so with gold leaf that is
actually term. It's a it's the technique of a Chicago
(13:29):
style guild. So that's something that we do so and
specialize in. It was kind of I think, you know,
San Francisco has a style, Boston has a style as
far as gold leafy, and you know, we're kind of
researching where that came from. But our mentor did it.
(13:51):
His mentor did it, and it's everywhere you go downtown.
That's the look of the signs. So it's very prominent,
very common, and we like to continue that tradition. But
as far as hand painted signs and Beverly, the Chicago look,
(14:12):
really it came out of when So what Beverly did
was they painted billboards and they painted large scale brick
signs and the designers so they would have a group
of people who designed and then they would have the
wall dogs, the guys who took the designs and went
(14:33):
out and painted it on the wall. And the designers
really developed these kind of in the sixties, I would
say fifties sixties, these interesting layouts where they would use
sheapes to put emphasis on different parts of the advertisement.
(14:54):
So if it was a car advertisement and they wanted
to emphasize you know, the pri or, you know, the
style of the car, maybe it's a Chevy or something
like that. They would use sheapes to emphasize those components
and nobody had really done that before in sign layout,
(15:15):
which seems insane because at this point with design, we've
seen we've kind of seen it all. So that at
that point was unique and across the country. People would
refer to it as the Chicago style, the Chicago look
because it was recognizably out of Chicago. And one thing
(15:37):
that was interesting is that, and this is kind of
how I found out about Heather Davis, is this style
then went and influenced California sign designed and a lot
of the designers in California, which I mean California, they
just exploded with amazing creative sign design. One company in particular,
(16:04):
Heath and co Uh started there. There two head guys
I'm forgetting his first name, but they both worked at Beverly,
so they went they learned everything at Beverly, went out
to California and then took those design principles and became
really famous and you know, influenced sign design in California.
(16:26):
And you had also mentioned some you know, sign painting
in California. There is like one of the last remaining
trade schools in California, LA Trade Tech, and they effectively
are also teaching these uh layout principles and also the
(16:52):
different lettering styles that were heavily used in Chicago sign design.
So it's kind of this everybody kind of influenced each
other and then kind of spread out all over the country.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yep, that's that's so cool. And I've seen like a
mockups of like, you know, tomatoes on sale dollars sixty
nine and behind them was like a circle or an oval. Yeah.
Was it mostly just like circles and ovals or did
you incorporate or did they incorporate other like mid century
(17:26):
shapes like the amorphic blobs that they say in signs
across the country.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, they did all kinds of shapes. I mean, like
you know, maybe even like triangles.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
They really had a lot of fun with it. I
mean I heard one story that they would put a
bunch of shapes on like a board and throw a
dart at it and then whenever wherever it landed, that
was the shape they'd used. They just like were having
fun and ironically they were what I've heard is that
they were really inspired by grocery stores as well, and
(18:02):
the packaging and the marketing behind grocery stores, so they
would take a lot of that influence and put it
into the sign design.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
See, I'm glad that other people use random stuff from
the inside because for me, I've been trying to learn
Japanese comm owns, you know, the Samurai kres, the family
crest from Japan. And I have a professor who's Japanese
for my art class, and I was telling her about that,
and what I would els sometimes do is I have
(18:36):
a website that I go to. It's got thirty one
pages of one hundred and twenty family cress. I'll do
a randomness number generator first page. Second, you know, you
know column number, and I'll try to combine them all.
Doesn't mean it's gonna look good, but I'm just glad
that you know random. Yeah, randomness is can be a
(19:01):
part of the sign design because it makes you create,
It makes you push the limits of your creativity, if
that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, totally. I think that's one of the biggest takeaways
I've had from this is that they were really just
having fun. They and they were putting as much creative
intuition and energy into these designs that they could because
they could get away with it, and they were really
good at what they were doing, and it was all
(19:33):
about just having fun. So I think, you know, I've
been in the sign industry as a sign painter for
over I guess it would be like maybe thirteen fourteen
years now, okay, and you know, and I go to
like the big trade shows, and a lot of signs
(19:56):
are just not very fun. Like, yeah, I think people
have moved so far away from that, and it's really nice.
That's one of my hopes is that people realize that signs,
advertising marketing should be fun and creative.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Well, one thing about Houston is there's a lot you know,
there's kind of like the blockie sign painting. You'll see
that here in Houston along oh, what was it a
ship North Durham with all the different car shops. But
there's also a lot of improvisation. Like one of my
favorite signs, it's an old sign, but a new company
(20:38):
just came in and you can tell they tried to
make their own. They tried to like draw it out,
but it's very crudely done. So there's a lot of
crudely done signs here in Houston. That's what I'm trying
to say. Yeah, yeah, I don't think that that's our
I'll per se, but yeah, you see it a lot Houston. Unfortunately,
(21:02):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
I've not been to Houston. I've been. I recently went
to Austin and I was really impressed with the signs.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Yeah, oh man, I need to get up to Austin
because there's like a resurgence of like mid century design
using your knon and stuff, and there's kind of one
here at Houston too. It's just there's it's growing so
fast and you have all these Mama pops popping up.
There's also I will say this about Houston, they're there
(21:30):
are a few graffiti guys that will sometimes be hired
out to do signs, and they could do some really
amazing things for companies. Well, that'll bring us to the
end of our second segment. When we come back, I'm
gonna ask you about your upcoming book, because I know
the first one's, you know, coming right off the presses.
(21:51):
Everything's being nicely and neatly packaged and you can go
over to heavy uh heavy uh, he just pressed. I'm
so sorry. For I'm terrible at remembering. I at least
remember Kelsey. I have forgot people's names before because yeah me. Yeah.
(22:14):
But the other book that you have coming out is
one that intrigues me. Maybe it's because of my Southern roots. Uh,
you know NASCAR. That's a hint. But we'll get into
the second part, the second book that's coming up after
this brief message. Welcome back to international sign fighters. Glad
(22:45):
you're with us. We have Kelsey McClelland she is with
Heavy Pages Press. They just they just are putting to
bed their book about the Beverly Sign Company. You can
head over to heavy Pages Press dot com and there
you can find out how you can order not just
the book, but there's some also some cool stickers, bagged shirts.
(23:11):
You could even buy the old blueprints that were used
for some of these signs and maybe you'll see some
of the randomness in those blueprints. I can't make any promises,
but hey, you never know. Now you've got another book
coming out dealing with the race car scene, the stock
car scene in Chicago, I mean coming from North Carolina.
You have the with the Moonshine Runners which led to NASCAR,
(23:34):
and I'm sure that may have had some influence up
there because you had a guy all you know, you
may know him as al Capone, you know. I think
he started as a bookkeeper or something weird like that,
and eventually he got to moonshine, you know, moonshining and
bootlegging stuff like that. I've heard a lot of interviews
(23:54):
about him on Coast to coast AM. But one thing
that I always loved about those old stock cards with
those numbers just handcrafted. You know, you'll see him sometimes
in font bundles with some you know, script fonts and
(24:14):
some cursive fonts and they'll thirway kind of like a
race car number series. Uh man, just go to Richard Petty.
Richard Petty's car was awesome. So thos guy that Davey Allison,
the uh oh, the Yarborough, kayl Yarborough. You know all
those old s. Yeah, numbers, but there's just something about
(24:37):
the fifties, sixties and maybe seventies, let's go, thirties, forties,
fifty sixty, seventies, that whole era of numbers. What did
you find and have you been asked to do that
for someone's stock car before?
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Well, what happened with how the story came about was,
uh bas one of the sign painters for Beverly Sinco.
His name is Danny Collier. He's in his eighties now,
and we interviewed him, and you know, I'm asking him questions.
(25:15):
I'm trying to learn more about Beverly, you know, I
want to know, like, what was it like day to day?
What was it like painting these signs? And he's you know,
kind of remembering things here and there. He has great stories,
but as soon as we start talking about cars, all
he wants to do is talk about cars.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
That's where I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
So like half of the conversation we're talking about cars.
And I realized his you know, his day job was
painting signs, but his passion was race stock car painting
and racing and his car he raced a car called
Double seven and he was super into James Bond. You know,
(26:01):
all of the stories are just awesome. And after learning
about this, it kind of segued into seeing finding a
bunch of photographs from the stock car races and uh,
you know a lot of these guys still get together
and they still do pin striping, They do a lot
(26:24):
of fundraising and you know, they want to tell their story,
and personally, I think it is super cool. I find
it fascinating. I mean, they used to do stock car
racing at Soldier Field, which is the Bears play and
do well, so I think it would be cool if
they did stock cars again. But NASCAR has come to Chicago.
(26:48):
I don't know if you've heard of that. I think
they're out there.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
They do a road course there or they do kind
of like a restyle race.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Yeah, which is really cool. I mean they they basically
shut the city down for like two weeks and oh wow,
then get ready for it. So it's a big deal here.
So I guess for me, it's just become way more
on my radar and then learning about, uh the sign
painting related to it. I've just gotten really into it
(27:17):
and they you know, I've looked at other smaller cities
that had stock car racing and I realized that their
cars were, you know, we're kind of rudimentary, you know,
like how do we we were talking? Or maybe the
sign painters because at the end of the day, these
cars got beat up. So some people didn't take it
(27:38):
that seriously. They just put some numbers on there and
call it a day. But the Chicago guys really wanted
their cars to look slick, and they were all sign
painters working at these amazing sign shops. So that's kind
of the entry into it.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
And I'm taking a look at it from your website
of the double oh seven number one. Yeah, it is
pretty ballsy to have a checkered flag on the top
of your.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
They they did such cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Yeah, I mean, you want to talk about having confidence
or maybe being cocky throw a checker fag how the
top of your car?
Speaker 2 (28:19):
I know, And I think they were. I think that's
the thing is that they were really cocky and wanted
to be flashy, and they wanted everybody to see them.
And then you know, they would all talk about each
other and probably when they were at their job day
job painting signs, they'd be like, hey, did you hear
did you see double seven?
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Yeah? Like you know. So also that Bevling he incorporated
the beveling into his number. Would it be okay if
I took a screenshot of this and put in the
promo reel from your website. Yeah, I just want to
get your permission and don't worry out all water market.
But also the second picture on your website page as
(29:03):
heavypagespress dot com. You can go over there and find
out more about the book that's coming out and also
other stuff that you can order from Kelsey and Andrew McClellan.
But the next one is almost a well you would
almost call like an eighties style what we call what
I would call like an eighty style number. But obviously
(29:24):
this is sixties, fifteen sixties at number seventeen, almost like
an evil can evil stripe behind it with the stars.
But that number, you know, oh, man, I'm trying to
think who drives the car like that. I want to
say one of the Bush brothers has numbers like that
on their car. Now I'll have to as well. But
(29:47):
that number seventeen on a on a VW bug, you
know that? Well that has you know you're driving a bug.
You're You're like, oh, there's not much between you and death. Oh,
I know it's true to reinforce that son of a gun.
But what what do I how do I ask this question? Sorry,
(30:11):
I'm kind of stump. I stumped myself. That's today why
you've talked about all the uh, you know, the sign
guys coming there? Were they trying to one up each
other with the style of numbers on their cars because
you know, of course competition. You want people to come
(30:33):
and you want people to hire you out to come
over to their business and paint the sides of their
windows or what have you even inside. Uh, maybe some
sort of bill or something like that to let people know, hey,
you're here, here's what we specialize in, et cetera, et cetera.
But were they using these stock cars as a billboard
(30:57):
for the sign companies?
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Yeah, some of them did. Yeah, they would write their
own signed company on there, or if they some of
them would have their employer would sponsor them, or like
a you know, a local car shop would sponsor them.
So there they were advertising the same way that you
know NASCAR does now. Yeah, and then you know, I
(31:23):
think that was a lot. A big part of it
is that they would use all these flashy paint techniques
on their numbers or you know, other parts of the
car so that the people in the crowd would look
at them, but also so that photographers would take photos
of the car.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Man that that's seventeen number. Oh wow that I know.
I'm geeking out about it a lot. But you know,
the the three D lettering. The uh, I can only
assume this. This car is a white car with blue
numbers and a red stripe on the side. I'm just guessing.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
I wish we had color, but I do. I like
the black and white. I think they're cool. We do
have some color photos too, but there's something nice about
the black and white.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
It just has that authentic feel. Yeah, I'm gonna talking
about like, you know, reminiscing type. I'm talking about it.
It's like authentic. These guys did it. And no matter
how I mean, there was even like a blocky, athletic
I'm looking at your video right now, kind of advertising
(32:36):
the book about the lettering, about the speedway lettering. But
they were almost forard thinking in the types of numbers
of letters that we used today. I know it keep
going back to this, but you know, they were innovating
on a multitudinous fronts. I think you've talked about that,
(32:59):
and maybe it's just sinking in right now.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
It tasted so much of what we see now is
coming from these people. Yeah, you know Nascar, I mean,
the numbers, everything, they kind of developed it. So it's
really cool to kind of find these the you know,
the point of reference of where some of these styles started.
(33:24):
I mean, and you know, they would paint trucks. Everything
used to be painted, so they knew how to paint
cars properly. They knew how to you know, put numbers
on the cars properly. Like now everything is vinyl wrapped,
all the cars. And sometimes i've there are really great
(33:48):
vinyl wraps. But you know, sometimes you'll see something and
just doesn't fit the car correctly. And that's the thing
that they'll say is that they love the cars. They
knew the car in and out, and they knew how
to place all the graphics, all the numbers, all the lettering,
all the pinstriping on it so perfectly. You know, it
(34:09):
was for them. It was a work of art for sure.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
Yeah. And the one that Kirk Busch had you should
drive a forty one car and it has a similar
not the exact same, but it has a similar feel
as at seventeen that you that you feature on your website.
So I did get that one kind of right. Nice,
But yeah, let me pat myself on the back. My
(34:34):
shelter gets to hurt a lot more. No, But this
is just I just wish I had a better question
to ask you, because I enjoyed looking at this and
I'm like, where do where's the next step to go
in these questions. But it's also amazing that you know,
(34:56):
a lot of you know, like cars have you know,
best pro shop, eminems and stuff like that, these guys
are putting their sign shops in the front of it.
And it is a moving billboard. I mean, we say
that today and we kind of think, you know, multi
medium billion dollar companies, but these guys are some of them.
Maybe you know, they may not know where their nickt
(35:18):
you know, meals coming from, yes, and so they're they're
painting them on there is like, hey, look at us.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
And that's what I thought was really cool too, is
that they these were just average guys, good boys, yeah,
and they wanted they that's what they did. Friday night.
They went and they raced the cars and they had
a good time and families would go out. And a
lot of the people that we've talked to are they were,
(35:48):
you know, young teenagers and they would go to the
races and then they would meet the guys and that's
how they got into it. And you know a lot
of them are that because a lot of the a
lot of it is going away. I mean, obviously NASCAR
(36:09):
is still going you know, yeah, Indianapolis, I mean there's
a there's the big corporate racing, but the small Mama
pop racetracks those are really they're closing like rapidly. So
these guys are really glad to talk about it and
(36:29):
are super passionate about it.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
So it was probably the first LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Totally.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
So welcome assigned painting. This is your LinkedIn account, what's
the account number seventeen, that's your page.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Go it around and that's the thing is that, you know, advertise.
That was the other to throw it back to the
Beverly book. That was a big influence on why they
designed the signs the way they did because cars began,
(37:05):
you know, getting faster, more people were in cars. So
the way that they designed the billboards the signs were
so that people could read them in a certain amount
of time while they drove by. And eventually what happened
is that fast cars, I mean obviously, cell phones, colored television,
(37:28):
all of these other ways of advertising made those signs
basically irrelevant, and so that's why we don't see them
as much.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
And plus also they used to hand paint billboards back
in the day.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Right, Oh yeah, they were all hand painted.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Because now you know, for me, you know, I've just
used to them wrapping them up on the boards.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Yeah, it's like now they're like a big print. Yeah,
and I I'll say some of them were like wheat pasted.
Some of them were printed and okay in sheets, but
a lot of them were painted.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Yeah, which boggles my mind because that is a big
I mean, there's a big canvas.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Oh man, it's so cool. And that's one of the
things I liked about the sketches are they would take
these drawings of the designer would make and go up
on the wall, so they would be up and swing
stages and things like that and take this drawing. They
would oftentimes like grit it out on the drawing, put
(38:39):
their little put their notes, they would mix paint, put
the paint on the sketch. I mean, these things have
been like candled and used and uh so then they survived,
you know, eighty years. It's really cool to see how
they did it and what they're the process behind what
they were doing that.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
You know, that'll bring us That's a perfect segue into
our final segment because I just got a history lesson myself.
I love it when this happens. I had Richard Gutman
on and he's like the nation's foremost expert on diners,
like going back to the old diner carts, like the
they would bring around overnight, and they're in like Providence,
(39:22):
Rhode Island, and harperd Connecticut and Boston. His horse drawn
carts kind of like their original food truck. And so
you get up work, it's midnight, you're hungry. Here's a
diner cart all the way to you know, the neon
signs on diners and all that stuff. There's a exhibit
(39:42):
based on his work at the Henry Ford Museum going on.
I think right now it may have ended, but I'm
not sure when it ends, but just recently they've had
a exhibit. Maybe one of these days you'll get an
exhibit too. Hopefully I'll petition someone. I don't know who,
but I'll putition to someone for that. But uh, I
can't make I shouldn't make promises I can't keep, but
(40:04):
I'll we'll see what we can do. But we But
but we've had the amazing Kelsey mkolan on go and
follow her at Heavy Pages Press. I remember to that time,
heavy pages, press on Instagram, heavy pages, press dot com.
Do you have a Flicker account?
Speaker 2 (40:21):
No? Oh?
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Is that maybe I need to get into that.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Maybe I don't know. I need to get into it too,
because I've interviewed quite a few people who do the
Flicker and their se O was a search Again, Instagram
is a pain in the neck. Just to be honest,
they're searching sucked. YEA Wicker is kind of tied into
a better se O. Uh, search engine optimization and so
(40:50):
uhh that's Heather. Heather David uh said that she would
put put a picture up of us one of the
Neon signs, and she would use some you know, hashtags
or whatever to tag the photo and she would get
she gets a lot more interaction with her Flicker account
(41:11):
because the SEO is so much better than Instagram.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Oh that's cool to know.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Yeah, I still haven't figured out social media tags.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
I'm at him.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
That's kind of one. I want to go into a
social media management But we will talk about that. But
but when we come back, we'll get into some of
Kelsey's bucket list places she'd like to go. Does she
want to go out to la and study that more?
Does she would go across the sea. You know, they've
got some really cool stuff over in Italy and Germany
(41:41):
and England. We'll find out where she wants to go.
You're listening to International sign Finders. Welcome to back to
(42:07):
International sign Fighters. Glad you're still with us. We have
the amazing Kelsey McClelland go and follow her on Instagram
at Heavypagespress dot com you can follow Oh wait, that's
her website, Heavy Pages Press at Instagram. It all comes
out in the wash basically, but and I'll also have
If that confused, you just go to the show notes.
(42:28):
We've got links there. Now we've talked about I know
that we've just scratched the surface, scratched the surface of
the We've gone into the back history of Beverly Sign Company.
We've gotten into the ties between the Chicago stock car
scene and sign painting, which you know the original LinkedIn.
You can't forget about race cars and NASCAR and stock
(42:51):
car racing, because what better way to advertise your place
than going out to the dirt track on a Saturday
night with the family cheering on your favorite car. You realize,
oh mac hike, Chevrolet, wonder what they have you know,
going on with them. Now we've talked about you know,
the books are coming out. Now let's get into where
Kelsey would like to go. I always like to finish
(43:13):
off with what's your bucket list of places or signs
or what have you that you would like to see
in the future that you haven't gotten to yet, or
you've gotten to it, but you will see if it's
still there.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
That's a good question.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
It's a loaded question.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Yeah, you know what you did, hit the nail on
the head. I would really like to go out to
Los Angeles. That's definitely on my list. Yeah, I don't
know if there's a particular sign, but I am interested
in following this link to Heath and Co. And seeing
(43:51):
if any of those signs are still there. You know,
there's still signs in like Illinois outside of Chicago that
I'd like to see. I really love hot dog stands.
Obviously we have great ones here in Chicago, but there's
lots that are like in the suburbs. And then I
(44:17):
would love to go overseas. I mean, you said Italy.
Italy would be amazing. I will say one of the places,
one of my favorite places, surprisingly was Vietnam. I was
able to go. Yeah, Vietnam had and still has some
(44:40):
really really amazing hand painted signs, and I was able
to go with my grandfather in like two thousand maybe
two thousand and eight, and at that time there were
still a ton around and I went. I've subsequently gone
(45:04):
back quite a few times. I've actually taught workshops there
on sign painting and gold leaf and they have Unfortunately,
I think this is the story you probably hear over
and over. Vinyl's been replacing a lot of signs. People
like led, people like screens, so those are coming in.
(45:28):
And they also have really great reverse glass signage as well,
so they have their own like traditional ways of doing it.
So if any sign finders are interested, I would definitely
recommend Vietnam. I'd love to go back there again, yeah,
(45:49):
I mean and oh, actually one place I really do
want to go is Australia. They have a really yeah,
they have a really cool sign painting seen there. Like
you know, I'm part of this big community of sign
painters that are contemporary sign painters, kind of probably how
you guys are. Where we meet each other online, we
(46:12):
all kind of know each other. It feels like we're
we know each other, but a lot of us have
never met, but we admire each other's work. And so
there's a lot of great sign painters in Australia and
lots of really cool old ghost signs. Yeah, that I've
seen online through people who document it. So it's just
(46:34):
one time. Yeah, there's one guy I think in Melbourne
specifically that like Melbourne Ghost Signs or something great Instagram.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
Or Victoria ghost Signs.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, it might be.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
I'm following. I'm following so in for Victoria, the state
of Victoria and Australia. If you're wondering, sorry to cut
you off, but the milk bar signs those are pretty
interesting too. Milk bars are kind of like convenience stores
here of I'm I hope I'm getting that right.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
I think I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
Yeah, it's got a funky name like that. Yeah, at
least to us, it's kind of funky. But Australia, for
some reason that doesn't surprise me. I don't know why.
But you know, there's still that old English, you know,
influence and them coming into modern I don't want to
(47:34):
make it sound like there's some criminive people.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
They're not.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
They're basically our cousins in a way. But you can
see where the where the the old styles come in,
and especially from the micro communities, because there's like a vibrant,
you know, community of like Germans and Eastern Europeans and
stuff like that in Australia from what I gather, so
(47:59):
I can see that all influencing Australia.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Yeah, it's it's a lot like America where it's a
melting pot.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Ye, Victor, I'm looking it up right housing free a ghosts.
I don't know, you're it's probably Melbourn ghost signs. Yeah.
So this is part of the show that people get
frustrated with me because I go out, my mind goes
off and Melbourn underscore ghost signs and also ghost signs
(48:29):
me melb both of them. I think that.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Yeah, so yeah, this is the part where my ADHD
takes over. I'm in the middle of doing something, a
middle of interview, and I just Scar looking stuff up
and it's like, come back, go back, Drew, come back.
So are there any neon signs? I have to ask
this because you know then my nature. Are there any
(48:54):
nance signs that you because Chicago's got some. I mean,
you can't talk about Chicago, ill go without mentioning Central camera.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Yeah, and well I actually just walked by that today
and took pictures of it.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
And that survived riots didn't it?
Speaker 3 (49:11):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Almost? It basically got burned down and the sign survived. Ah.
It's such a cool store. I mean that sign is amazing.
It kind of just it's bizarre. It's just there and
nothing around it is like that. There's one down the
street called Miller's Cub but that's.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
A pretty ok. There's also that flower shop that's like
two stories tall and it is like Bossier.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Yeah, let's sells.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Okay, let's sell there we go. I was that was close.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
That one's beautiful. I love that one.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
There's there's a couple of cool Neon sign companies like yeah,
I think it's one was called white Wave. Best Neon
Flash Trick is.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
One flash Trick.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Yeah, that's a great name. I mean we uh we
work with a Neon Benber and all design Neon signs
uh and they will basically blow them for us. They'll
make the sign and hook it up to the electricity
(50:26):
and everything, which is really cool. So can we love
to It's it's hard, I will say sign code is
what has made sign sign is not as great as
they once were. It's the sign code. And I bet
most sign finders agree that sign code is super prohibitive
(50:51):
and so really kind of in the sixties they changed
all the sign code, and particularly with neon and flashing
signs in Chicago, they basically outlawed it so you can't
have anything that's flashing, which is really a bummer for Neon.
(51:13):
And uh so a lot of the Neon that's done,
if it's it's scarior, is pretty minimal or restoration. Like
the guy that we work with redid the Wrigley Field
sign and we designed a sign that's for a restaurant
(51:35):
across the street from there that he made for us.
But yeah, I love Neon. I wish we could get
more Neon contracts because it's just so cool and beautiful.
Speaker 1 (51:49):
So Chicago be more like San Jose.
Speaker 2 (51:54):
Yes, be like Austin.
Speaker 3 (51:55):
I feel you know, it's I wish, are you know
city officials understood how important signs are to the identity
of a city and people.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
You know, I mean when you if you were to
look up Chicago and Instagram and photographs, everybody takes a
picture in front of the Chicago side. Yeah, Mark on
the theater. I mean it is like what people do,
and that's what people make, you know, T shirts out
of and all these things. They're super important, so you know,
(52:30):
they got to let people make them.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
Houston did. If you I keep going back to these
videos that I found on YouTube and I need to
send I need to somehow find a way to get
those shared on my Instagram without breaking the copyright laws.
I think it'd come from the University of Houston. But
Houston used to used to glow. I mean, oh yeah,
(52:53):
I'll try and send you a link and I'll put
a link to one of the Houston Houston Neon But
back in the sixties and seventies there was just all
these amazing neon signs. And then in the seventies a
councilwoman was like iore laws and also with billboards. Houston
got hammered by Lady Bird Johnson, the first lady went
(53:15):
after Houston hard, right.
Speaker 2 (53:19):
I think that really her laws really affected the whole country. Yeah,
which is crazy to think that that has lasted so long.
Speaker 1 (53:28):
But yeah, but Houston's kind of I like old working signs.
There's probably like six are there old signs around. I've
counted about one hundred some odd maybe ish wow, maybe
those are like you know, me retaking pictures. Let's say
fifty to one hundred that are either skeletons or they've
(53:51):
just been painted over. But that's it left in Houston.
I mean, I know that Denver has lost a lot,
especially around coal Fax where the Children's hospital is now. Yeah,
cuds of those motels are just torn up.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
Yeah. I actually grew up in Denver, and I think, yeah,
so I grew up on Coalfax. Really, my grandmother lived
in just off of the Fitzsimmons Air base or the base,
not air but and so I would drive up and
(54:28):
down coal Fact as a little kid to get back
and forth from her house. So all of those signs
that I think, that's probably why I really like signs
is because I would see them. And yeah, Denver is
like not anywhere near what it was, which is really sad.
But I do know that Corey, who I haven't met,
(54:50):
I need to go. I'm going out there for Christmas.
They need to go meet him. And it's really cool
what he's been doing to like actually stave them.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
It's here. Here's here's just you know one bit of
self flattery? Did you hear? Did you see the promo
I did with Corky and Todd where I was like,
if you don't do this, we'll get Sarah McLaughlin's to
get a commercial about saving the sign.
Speaker 2 (55:16):
Oh my god?
Speaker 1 (55:17):
And yeah it does. But still Denver's got us beat
Denver's guys used to beat by a mile. Yeah. And
also salt Lake. Don't forget salt Lake. The Yeah Rainbow
Sign Company was one of the big ones in yes co.
Uh ogged in salt Lake not so much. I don't
(55:40):
know if probo has much. But then there's someone down
in a little town called Springbilt, south of Provo, Utah,
where he saved a ton of signs and puts him
on his property unless people go around and see them.
So okay, yeah, pervate collections do come in. So uh
that will bring us to end of the show. So
we promoted your website, your Instagram. Is there anything else
(56:04):
you'd like to promo or give a shout out?
Speaker 2 (56:08):
I guess I'll say my business's name. Yes, do that
heart and Bone signs? So heart at Heart and Bone
signs on Instagram. And then Chicago Signpainters.
Speaker 1 (56:22):
Dot com all right, I'll get I'll try to get
those in the show notes. And what else did I
put in the show notes? Oh yeah, the link to
the Houston signs and stuff like that. But Kelsey has
been amazing having you on the show, and you never know,
we may do another one together in the future.
Speaker 2 (56:40):
Yeah, but maybe when the Speedway books out.
Speaker 1 (56:43):
Yeah, definitely, definitely. And also if you are a museum
and you want to highlight some amazing art. First off,
by Lisa, let's put all these people in the same
room together. Lisa Tenna Art, her hand painted watercolored neon
signed paintings are out of this world. You've got Kelsey
(57:05):
and Andrew with their hand painted signs, which are I
mean just just a samples she shared with me. Yeah,
it's amazing.
Speaker 2 (57:15):
I will plug the American Sign Museum's new wing if
no one has been there. We were part of a
team that got to paint the signs.
Speaker 1 (57:24):
Oh out of here on Main Street.
Speaker 2 (57:27):
We were part of this incredible team of sign painters
and we all went down there for a week. We
worked our butts off and the I mean it is amazing.
So if you haven't gone since they reopened the new wing,
I recommended.
Speaker 1 (57:45):
I need, I need more money to travel.
Speaker 2 (57:48):
Oh man, that have you been there?
Speaker 1 (57:51):
No, I've been. I've been through Cincinnati. I haven't been
to the American Sign Museum.
Speaker 2 (57:59):
Oh my gosh, you have to put at the top
of the list.
Speaker 1 (58:02):
Yeah, and oh you wouldn't. My wife have to drag
me out after a couple of days. And then you
have the looming Neon Sign Museum in Kansas City that's
getting off the ground of course, the Vegas Neon Sign Museum,
the Los Angeles, uh, the Neon Museum, the Neon Museum
(58:24):
of Art, and I forget what it's called there in LA.
I'll look that up and correct myself. But there's so
many of there popping up, even Edmonton, Edmonton on Edmonton,
Alberta better than I get the confused with Ontario. But Edmonton,
Alberta has a sign museum as well, which is I
need to Yeah, I need about a million dollars a
(58:45):
year just to hit all these places. So that will
wrap things up for this week's edition of International Sign Fighters.
As we say every week, get out there, hit the pavement,
have fun, take pictures, and keep your hands in a swivel.
Especially when it's late at night and you're getting those
nighttime neon shots and share them with this have fun,
(59:07):
and until next time, happy side finding.
Welcome everybody to another week of international sign finders. Glad
you're with us. Hopefully you got out hit the pavement,
got pictures some awesome Neon signs, even hand painted signs
as a hint hint about this week, and hopefully you
got on to Instagram, flicker, wherever you go, even Twitter.
I share stuff on Twitter every so often. Oh excuse me,
(00:37):
thank you Elon for changing that. But yes, share them
with everybody. Let us know about it. We don't care
if you're what if you have one follower or one
hundred thousand followers, be sure to share them with us
so we can see them and see your take on
maybe some other favorite signs or even a brand new
favorite side that we just haven't found yet. We have
(01:00):
the pleasure of having uh some sign painters on. We've
We've had Corky at Todd, which had worked with you know.
Corky works on recovering signs there in Denver, and Todd
is a Neon tube bender, which is an amazing art
that blows my mind. I've seen people bending tubes and
(01:22):
get them in the shapes and I'm like, yeah, I
can I can not do that. Uh, But tonight we
have a hand, you know, a sign painter, sign painters,
and there they also have some books that they're releasing
as well. And welcome to the show from Heavy Letter
Press Kirsten McClellan, and also Andrews of the background somewhere
(01:44):
a few chimes in, we'll welcome him to But welcome
to the show, Kelsey.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Thank you. Glad to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, glad to have you here. Now, what introduce yourself
to everybody who may not know you. I know Heather, uh, Heather,
David follows you, and I think there's some other folks
that I follow that you know, we're kind of in
our circle as well. But introduce yourself to the other
people who may have not had the pleasure of meeting
(02:11):
you yet. Sure.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
So, my husband and I are sign painters, like you said,
and we run a traditional sign painting and gold leaf
glass sign shop based out of Chicago. We travel all
over the country, but we are based in Chicago and
(02:34):
we learned the craft here. We learned from a gentleman
named Robert Freeze who's our mentor, who has been doing
gold leaf signs in Chicago for the past forty years.
So we are basically carrying on the tradition in the
city and go ahead, and I'll add that I won't
(02:58):
go into this, but we have recently started publishing or
our self publishing our own our first book, and working
on some other books. So hence the heavy pages press.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah, and just the you know, if you go to
their Instagram account, I will have links up on the
show notes on how you get to their Instagram account
and also their website. Just the introduction, what it gets
you thirsty for more? What's your whistle? No, what's your
whistle means? It satisfies you, it leads you thirsty for more?
(03:31):
I think that's a better phrase. When did When did
you get the idea to create this book based off
the Beverly Sign company.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
So that's a fun story. So basically, in summer of
twenty twenty two, there was a ghost sign that was
unveiled in the Ravens World neighborhood of Chicago, And funny enough,
you'd talked about Twitter. It was put on Twitter and
(04:05):
my friend sent it to me and said, hey, did
you see this? And I saw pictures and I was like,
oh man, we have to go see this. Basically, what
happened was a building was going to be demolished, and
they took the asbestos build sighting off in the middle
of the night and it revealed these incredible signs. And
(04:28):
we went down there saw them and they were on
wood panels and it was like walking back in time.
I mean they had been basically covered for I guess
the last seventy years with this sighting, and so they
(04:49):
were like perfect shape, and they were over one hundred
years old. And one was a shell sign from the
nineteen twenties and the other one was a Wards Bread sign,
which is the predecessor to Wonderbread, Oh Wow and beautiful
beautiful signs. Then the Ward's Bread sign had a signature
(05:12):
on it that said Briggs Sign co Yeah. Well, what
we found out was that Briggs is Jack Briggs who
started Beverly's Sign COO, and Beverly Sign Coo is kind
of They're well known within my community, within the sign
(05:34):
painting community. There's a whole exhibit on them in the
American Sign Museum that Cincinnati.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Oh Wow.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
They're kind of well known for their experimental design design principles.
They sort of influenced modernist sign design and they were
they developed this the Chicago style and this tool for
(06:01):
design layout called panelization. So basically they're super influential sign company.
And when we found this out, Todd Swarmstead from the
Sign Museum. We contacted him. We were like, hey, we
I think we might want to try to save these signs.
(06:25):
You guys have any interest in them because they're giant.
It was the size of an entire building, and he
obviously knows about Beverly and Todd was like, yep, I'll
come down. I'm going to help you guys get this
sign down. So part of this is that we had
to get scaffolding, so we did a whole fundraiser for scaffolding.
(06:50):
The public got really excited because everybody saw the signs.
Everybody was really excited. They were really glad we were
going to save them because a lot of people saw
them and they're like, oh, I wish we could save
these and we were like, yeah, oh we're gonna save them,
Like why wouldn't we save them? So basically the developers,
(07:11):
we had actually worked with them in the past, and
so we contacted them. We were like, hey, can we
save these signs? They said, if you can get them
down the next twenty days, you can save them.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
So we got everything together, Todd came down, we got
the words Bread signed down, and it just so happened
that the new wing in the museum had this open
space in it for a sign like this, and so
now the sign lives in the museum, which is super cool. Ever,
(07:44):
I know, it was just such a crazy experience. And
then and so it led into another sign painter because
there's a lot of sign painting history in Chicago. And
a friend of ours named Bob Mahonik, whose mentor Ken
(08:05):
Millar worked at Beverly. He said, Hey, I have this
collection of like four hundred original drawings from Beverly. Ken,
my mentor, always wanted to make a book. What do
you guys think? Would you help me do this? And
we were like, well, let's look at the drawings. We
(08:27):
looked at the drawings and we were like, well we
have to do this. Sorry, hopefully we egnitted that out.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, it's live radio basically, there's a treat Okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
So we saw that all the sketches and we were like, well,
this is just a no brainer. We have to Maybe
we're just the kind of people that just jump into stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Well know what that happens?
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, and you know that's why I kind of when
I found your podcast and I said listening, I was like, oh,
these people are kind of my people. Like everybody's really
into preservation and talking and documenting about signs, and so
that's kind of, you know, on top of our profession.
(09:15):
We're super passionate about that as well. So we have
basically put together this book and it's going to come
out like next week. We get it next week. Oh wow,
so super excited.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Talk about smell of fresh off the press is holy cow.
So uh, this is a that's a perfect ending to
the first segment of this week's podcast with heavy press books.
Hopefully I got that right, heavy pages press. Yeah, there
we go, heavy pages press. I'll get it right. And
when we come back, I'm gonna ask you about the
(09:53):
Chicago style because I admit I am very new to
the sign painting community. Yea, let's put it this way.
I am like, brush out the wound right now. I
don't know much. I just know that, you know, LA
has a big presence of sign painting. There's a book
put out about that. I keep talking about it and
(10:14):
I wish I'd bought the book. There's a guy I followed,
can't remember his name out of Toronto and he does
sign painting up there, and you know Ontario. I'm sure
that you know different regions may have different styles of specialises,
because you've already talked about Chicago style. Yea, when we
come back this, let's get into that. And also I
noticed that you guys sell Ken Malar blueprints on your site.
(10:38):
We might get into that. So you're listening to International
Sign Finders, Welcome back to International Sign Finders. Glad you're
with this and this week. You know, I talk about
(10:59):
the big diagram of sign hunting and sign finding where
it kind of overlaps with urban exploration and antiques and
cool classic cars, and now we're adding another circle to
that diagram of sign painting. For me, I always love
(11:21):
We were talking before the show how I've kind of
fallen in love with like, for lack of better term,
grocer sponts, like if you go to a broken store,
you see the hand painted fonts outside, letting you know
what specials there are. Also they're really cool, like bebling.
Chelsea sent me a photo of I believe it was you.
(11:43):
Hopefully that's not too much an assumption I kind of
put to I put two and two together, and you're
painting these amazing gold gold plated goldflake signs at the
beveling the and you have to do.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
It backwards, right, Yeah, it's all reverse.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Oh man? Oh yeah, I could write reverse and upside down.
But that's about it. But uh, take us into the
Chicago style. You mentioned the Chicago style earlier and how
one of your how the Beverly Sign Company, kind of
paid the way for this new style to happen, and
also they were innovators and other different styles, especially modernist.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, or to think for some.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Reason constructivist comes to mind, but that's an old Soviet
stripped down design style, mental, highly minimalist. What yea the
modern design? And also what is the Chicago style?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
So, uh, the Chicago style this is sort of a
loose term. I mean, it's maybe it can be applied
to a lot of different things, so okay with outside
of hot dogs and pizza.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
But yeah, let's start that argument going.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah, oh I know a lot about that too. But
as far as signs, so for gold leaf, actually the
beveled signs that you're talking about, that we call that
the Chicago style convex so with gold leaf that is
actually term. It's a it's the technique of a Chicago
(13:29):
style guild. So that's something that we do so and
specialize in. It was kind of I think, you know,
San Francisco has a style, Boston has a style as
far as gold leafy, and you know, we're kind of
researching where that came from. But our mentor did it.
(13:51):
His mentor did it, and it's everywhere you go downtown.
That's the look of the signs. So it's very prominent,
very common, and we like to continue that tradition. But
as far as hand painted signs and Beverly, the Chicago look,
(14:12):
really it came out of when So what Beverly did
was they painted billboards and they painted large scale brick
signs and the designers so they would have a group
of people who designed and then they would have the
wall dogs, the guys who took the designs and went
(14:33):
out and painted it on the wall. And the designers
really developed these kind of in the sixties, I would
say fifties sixties, these interesting layouts where they would use
sheapes to put emphasis on different parts of the advertisement.
(14:54):
So if it was a car advertisement and they wanted
to emphasize you know, the pri or, you know, the
style of the car, maybe it's a Chevy or something
like that. They would use sheapes to emphasize those components
and nobody had really done that before in sign layout,
(15:15):
which seems insane because at this point with design, we've
seen we've kind of seen it all. So that at
that point was unique and across the country. People would
refer to it as the Chicago style, the Chicago look
because it was recognizably out of Chicago. And one thing
(15:37):
that was interesting is that, and this is kind of
how I found out about Heather Davis, is this style
then went and influenced California sign designed and a lot
of the designers in California, which I mean California, they
just exploded with amazing creative sign design. One company in particular,
(16:04):
Heath and co Uh started there. There two head guys
I'm forgetting his first name, but they both worked at Beverly,
so they went they learned everything at Beverly, went out
to California and then took those design principles and became
really famous and you know, influenced sign design in California.
(16:26):
And you had also mentioned some you know, sign painting
in California. There is like one of the last remaining
trade schools in California, LA Trade Tech, and they effectively
are also teaching these uh layout principles and also the
(16:52):
different lettering styles that were heavily used in Chicago sign design.
So it's kind of this everybody kind of influenced each
other and then kind of spread out all over the country.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yep, that's that's so cool. And I've seen like a
mockups of like, you know, tomatoes on sale dollars sixty
nine and behind them was like a circle or an oval. Yeah.
Was it mostly just like circles and ovals or did
you incorporate or did they incorporate other like mid century
(17:26):
shapes like the amorphic blobs that they say in signs
across the country.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, they did all kinds of shapes. I mean, like
you know, maybe even like triangles.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
They really had a lot of fun with it. I
mean I heard one story that they would put a
bunch of shapes on like a board and throw a
dart at it and then whenever wherever it landed, that
was the shape they'd used. They just like were having
fun and ironically they were what I've heard is that
they were really inspired by grocery stores as well, and
(18:02):
the packaging and the marketing behind grocery stores, so they
would take a lot of that influence and put it
into the sign design.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
See, I'm glad that other people use random stuff from
the inside because for me, I've been trying to learn
Japanese comm owns, you know, the Samurai kres, the family
crest from Japan. And I have a professor who's Japanese
for my art class, and I was telling her about that,
and what I would els sometimes do is I have
(18:36):
a website that I go to. It's got thirty one
pages of one hundred and twenty family cress. I'll do
a randomness number generator first page. Second, you know, you
know column number, and I'll try to combine them all.
Doesn't mean it's gonna look good, but I'm just glad
that you know random. Yeah, randomness is can be a
(19:01):
part of the sign design because it makes you create,
It makes you push the limits of your creativity, if
that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, totally. I think that's one of the biggest takeaways
I've had from this is that they were really just
having fun. They and they were putting as much creative
intuition and energy into these designs that they could because
they could get away with it, and they were really
good at what they were doing, and it was all
(19:33):
about just having fun. So I think, you know, I've
been in the sign industry as a sign painter for
over I guess it would be like maybe thirteen fourteen
years now, okay, and you know, and I go to
like the big trade shows, and a lot of signs
(19:56):
are just not very fun. Like, yeah, I think people
have moved so far away from that, and it's really nice.
That's one of my hopes is that people realize that signs,
advertising marketing should be fun and creative.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Well, one thing about Houston is there's a lot you know,
there's kind of like the blockie sign painting. You'll see
that here in Houston along oh, what was it a
ship North Durham with all the different car shops. But
there's also a lot of improvisation. Like one of my
favorite signs, it's an old sign, but a new company
(20:38):
just came in and you can tell they tried to
make their own. They tried to like draw it out,
but it's very crudely done. So there's a lot of
crudely done signs here in Houston. That's what I'm trying
to say. Yeah, yeah, I don't think that that's our
I'll per se, but yeah, you see it a lot Houston. Unfortunately,
(21:02):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
I've not been to Houston. I've been. I recently went
to Austin and I was really impressed with the signs.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Yeah, oh man, I need to get up to Austin
because there's like a resurgence of like mid century design
using your knon and stuff, and there's kind of one
here at Houston too. It's just there's it's growing so
fast and you have all these Mama pops popping up.
There's also I will say this about Houston, they're there
(21:30):
are a few graffiti guys that will sometimes be hired
out to do signs, and they could do some really
amazing things for companies. Well, that'll bring us to the
end of our second segment. When we come back, I'm
gonna ask you about your upcoming book, because I know
the first one's, you know, coming right off the presses.
(21:51):
Everything's being nicely and neatly packaged and you can go
over to heavy uh heavy uh, he just pressed. I'm
so sorry. For I'm terrible at remembering. I at least
remember Kelsey. I have forgot people's names before because yeah me. Yeah.
(22:14):
But the other book that you have coming out is
one that intrigues me. Maybe it's because of my Southern roots. Uh,
you know NASCAR. That's a hint. But we'll get into
the second part, the second book that's coming up after
this brief message. Welcome back to international sign fighters. Glad
(22:45):
you're with us. We have Kelsey McClelland she is with
Heavy Pages Press. They just they just are putting to
bed their book about the Beverly Sign Company. You can
head over to heavy Pages Press dot com and there
you can find out how you can order not just
the book, but there's some also some cool stickers, bagged shirts.
(23:11):
You could even buy the old blueprints that were used
for some of these signs and maybe you'll see some
of the randomness in those blueprints. I can't make any promises,
but hey, you never know. Now you've got another book
coming out dealing with the race car scene, the stock
car scene in Chicago, I mean coming from North Carolina.
You have the with the Moonshine Runners which led to NASCAR,
(23:34):
and I'm sure that may have had some influence up
there because you had a guy all you know, you
may know him as al Capone, you know. I think
he started as a bookkeeper or something weird like that,
and eventually he got to moonshine, you know, moonshining and
bootlegging stuff like that. I've heard a lot of interviews
(23:54):
about him on Coast to coast AM. But one thing
that I always loved about those old stock cards with
those numbers just handcrafted. You know, you'll see him sometimes
in font bundles with some you know, script fonts and
(24:14):
some cursive fonts and they'll thirway kind of like a
race car number series. Uh man, just go to Richard Petty.
Richard Petty's car was awesome. So thos guy that Davey Allison,
the uh oh, the Yarborough, kayl Yarborough. You know all
those old s. Yeah, numbers, but there's just something about
(24:37):
the fifties, sixties and maybe seventies, let's go, thirties, forties,
fifty sixty, seventies, that whole era of numbers. What did
you find and have you been asked to do that
for someone's stock car before?
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Well, what happened with how the story came about was,
uh bas one of the sign painters for Beverly Sinco.
His name is Danny Collier. He's in his eighties now,
and we interviewed him, and you know, I'm asking him questions.
(25:15):
I'm trying to learn more about Beverly, you know, I
want to know, like, what was it like day to day?
What was it like painting these signs? And he's you know,
kind of remembering things here and there. He has great stories,
but as soon as we start talking about cars, all
he wants to do is talk about cars.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
That's where I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
So like half of the conversation we're talking about cars.
And I realized his you know, his day job was
painting signs, but his passion was race stock car painting
and racing and his car he raced a car called
Double seven and he was super into James Bond. You know,
(26:01):
all of the stories are just awesome. And after learning
about this, it kind of segued into seeing finding a
bunch of photographs from the stock car races and uh,
you know a lot of these guys still get together
and they still do pin striping, They do a lot
(26:24):
of fundraising and you know, they want to tell their story,
and personally, I think it is super cool. I find
it fascinating. I mean, they used to do stock car
racing at Soldier Field, which is the Bears play and
do well, so I think it would be cool if
they did stock cars again. But NASCAR has come to Chicago.
(26:48):
I don't know if you've heard of that. I think
they're out there.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
They do a road course there or they do kind
of like a restyle race.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Yeah, which is really cool. I mean they they basically
shut the city down for like two weeks and oh wow,
then get ready for it. So it's a big deal here.
So I guess for me, it's just become way more
on my radar and then learning about, uh the sign
painting related to it. I've just gotten really into it
(27:17):
and they you know, I've looked at other smaller cities
that had stock car racing and I realized that their
cars were, you know, we're kind of rudimentary, you know,
like how do we we were talking? Or maybe the
sign painters because at the end of the day, these
cars got beat up. So some people didn't take it
(27:38):
that seriously. They just put some numbers on there and
call it a day. But the Chicago guys really wanted
their cars to look slick, and they were all sign
painters working at these amazing sign shops. So that's kind
of the entry into it.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
And I'm taking a look at it from your website
of the double oh seven number one. Yeah, it is
pretty ballsy to have a checkered flag on the top
of your.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
They they did such cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Yeah, I mean, you want to talk about having confidence
or maybe being cocky throw a checker fag how the
top of your car?
Speaker 2 (28:19):
I know, And I think they were. I think that's
the thing is that they were really cocky and wanted
to be flashy, and they wanted everybody to see them.
And then you know, they would all talk about each
other and probably when they were at their job day
job painting signs, they'd be like, hey, did you hear
did you see double seven?
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Yeah? Like you know. So also that Bevling he incorporated
the beveling into his number. Would it be okay if
I took a screenshot of this and put in the
promo reel from your website. Yeah, I just want to
get your permission and don't worry out all water market.
But also the second picture on your website page as
(29:03):
heavypagespress dot com. You can go over there and find
out more about the book that's coming out and also
other stuff that you can order from Kelsey and Andrew McClellan.
But the next one is almost a well you would
almost call like an eighties style what we call what
I would call like an eighty style number. But obviously
(29:24):
this is sixties, fifteen sixties at number seventeen, almost like
an evil can evil stripe behind it with the stars.
But that number, you know, oh, man, I'm trying to
think who drives the car like that. I want to
say one of the Bush brothers has numbers like that
on their car. Now I'll have to as well. But
(29:47):
that number seventeen on a on a VW bug, you
know that? Well that has you know you're driving a bug.
You're You're like, oh, there's not much between you and death. Oh,
I know it's true to reinforce that son of a gun.
But what what do I how do I ask this question? Sorry,
(30:11):
I'm kind of stump. I stumped myself. That's today why
you've talked about all the uh, you know, the sign
guys coming there? Were they trying to one up each
other with the style of numbers on their cars because
you know, of course competition. You want people to come
(30:33):
and you want people to hire you out to come
over to their business and paint the sides of their
windows or what have you even inside. Uh, maybe some
sort of bill or something like that to let people know, hey,
you're here, here's what we specialize in, et cetera, et cetera.
But were they using these stock cars as a billboard
(30:57):
for the sign companies?
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Yeah, some of them did. Yeah, they would write their
own signed company on there, or if they some of
them would have their employer would sponsor them, or like
a you know, a local car shop would sponsor them.
So there they were advertising the same way that you
know NASCAR does now. Yeah, and then you know, I
(31:23):
think that was a lot. A big part of it
is that they would use all these flashy paint techniques
on their numbers or you know, other parts of the
car so that the people in the crowd would look
at them, but also so that photographers would take photos
of the car.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Man that that's seventeen number. Oh wow that I know.
I'm geeking out about it a lot. But you know,
the the three D lettering. The uh, I can only
assume this. This car is a white car with blue
numbers and a red stripe on the side. I'm just guessing.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
I wish we had color, but I do. I like
the black and white. I think they're cool. We do
have some color photos too, but there's something nice about
the black and white.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
It just has that authentic feel. Yeah, I'm gonna talking
about like, you know, reminiscing type. I'm talking about it.
It's like authentic. These guys did it. And no matter
how I mean, there was even like a blocky, athletic
I'm looking at your video right now, kind of advertising
(32:36):
the book about the lettering, about the speedway lettering. But
they were almost forard thinking in the types of numbers
of letters that we used today. I know it keep
going back to this, but you know, they were innovating
on a multitudinous fronts. I think you've talked about that,
(32:59):
and maybe it's just sinking in right now.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
It tasted so much of what we see now is
coming from these people. Yeah, you know Nascar, I mean,
the numbers, everything, they kind of developed it. So it's
really cool to kind of find these the you know,
the point of reference of where some of these styles started.
(33:24):
I mean, and you know, they would paint trucks. Everything
used to be painted, so they knew how to paint
cars properly. They knew how to you know, put numbers
on the cars properly. Like now everything is vinyl wrapped,
all the cars. And sometimes i've there are really great
(33:48):
vinyl wraps. But you know, sometimes you'll see something and
just doesn't fit the car correctly. And that's the thing
that they'll say is that they love the cars. They
knew the car in and out, and they knew how
to place all the graphics, all the numbers, all the lettering,
all the pinstriping on it so perfectly. You know, it
(34:09):
was for them. It was a work of art for sure.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
Yeah. And the one that Kirk Busch had you should
drive a forty one car and it has a similar
not the exact same, but it has a similar feel
as at seventeen that you that you feature on your website.
So I did get that one kind of right. Nice,
But yeah, let me pat myself on the back. My
(34:34):
shelter gets to hurt a lot more. No, But this
is just I just wish I had a better question
to ask you, because I enjoyed looking at this and
I'm like, where do where's the next step to go
in these questions. But it's also amazing that you know,
(34:56):
a lot of you know, like cars have you know,
best pro shop, eminems and stuff like that, these guys
are putting their sign shops in the front of it.
And it is a moving billboard. I mean, we say
that today and we kind of think, you know, multi
medium billion dollar companies, but these guys are some of them.
Maybe you know, they may not know where their nickt
(35:18):
you know, meals coming from, yes, and so they're they're
painting them on there is like, hey, look at us.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
And that's what I thought was really cool too, is
that they these were just average guys, good boys, yeah,
and they wanted they that's what they did. Friday night.
They went and they raced the cars and they had
a good time and families would go out. And a
lot of the people that we've talked to are they were,
(35:48):
you know, young teenagers and they would go to the
races and then they would meet the guys and that's
how they got into it. And you know a lot
of them are that because a lot of the a
lot of it is going away. I mean, obviously NASCAR
(36:09):
is still going you know, yeah, Indianapolis, I mean there's
a there's the big corporate racing, but the small Mama
pop racetracks those are really they're closing like rapidly. So
these guys are really glad to talk about it and
(36:29):
are super passionate about it.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
So it was probably the first LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Totally.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
So welcome assigned painting. This is your LinkedIn account, what's
the account number seventeen, that's your page.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Go it around and that's the thing is that, you know, advertise.
That was the other to throw it back to the
Beverly book. That was a big influence on why they
designed the signs the way they did because cars began,
(37:05):
you know, getting faster, more people were in cars. So
the way that they designed the billboards the signs were
so that people could read them in a certain amount
of time while they drove by. And eventually what happened
is that fast cars, I mean obviously, cell phones, colored television,
(37:28):
all of these other ways of advertising made those signs
basically irrelevant, and so that's why we don't see them
as much.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
And plus also they used to hand paint billboards back
in the day.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Right, Oh yeah, they were all hand painted.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Because now you know, for me, you know, I've just
used to them wrapping them up on the boards.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Yeah, it's like now they're like a big print. Yeah,
and I I'll say some of them were like wheat pasted.
Some of them were printed and okay in sheets, but
a lot of them were painted.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Yeah, which boggles my mind because that is a big
I mean, there's a big canvas.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Oh man, it's so cool. And that's one of the
things I liked about the sketches are they would take
these drawings of the designer would make and go up
on the wall, so they would be up and swing
stages and things like that and take this drawing. They
would oftentimes like grit it out on the drawing, put
(38:39):
their little put their notes, they would mix paint, put
the paint on the sketch. I mean, these things have
been like candled and used and uh so then they survived,
you know, eighty years. It's really cool to see how
they did it and what they're the process behind what
they were doing that.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
You know, that'll bring us That's a perfect segue into
our final segment because I just got a history lesson myself.
I love it when this happens. I had Richard Gutman
on and he's like the nation's foremost expert on diners,
like going back to the old diner carts, like the
they would bring around overnight, and they're in like Providence,
(39:22):
Rhode Island, and harperd Connecticut and Boston. His horse drawn
carts kind of like their original food truck. And so
you get up work, it's midnight, you're hungry. Here's a
diner cart all the way to you know, the neon
signs on diners and all that stuff. There's a exhibit
(39:42):
based on his work at the Henry Ford Museum going on.
I think right now it may have ended, but I'm
not sure when it ends, but just recently they've had
a exhibit. Maybe one of these days you'll get an
exhibit too. Hopefully I'll petition someone. I don't know who,
but I'll putition to someone for that. But uh, I
can't make I shouldn't make promises I can't keep, but
(40:04):
I'll we'll see what we can do. But we But
but we've had the amazing Kelsey mkolan on go and
follow her at Heavy Pages Press. I remember to that time,
heavy pages, press on Instagram, heavy pages, press dot com.
Do you have a Flicker account?
Speaker 2 (40:21):
No? Oh?
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Is that maybe I need to get into that.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Maybe I don't know. I need to get into it too,
because I've interviewed quite a few people who do the
Flicker and their se O was a search Again, Instagram
is a pain in the neck. Just to be honest,
they're searching sucked. YEA Wicker is kind of tied into
a better se O. Uh, search engine optimization and so
(40:50):
uhh that's Heather. Heather David uh said that she would
put put a picture up of us one of the
Neon signs, and she would use some you know, hashtags
or whatever to tag the photo and she would get
she gets a lot more interaction with her Flicker account
(41:11):
because the SEO is so much better than Instagram.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Oh that's cool to know.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Yeah, I still haven't figured out social media tags.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
I'm at him.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
That's kind of one. I want to go into a
social media management But we will talk about that. But
but when we come back, we'll get into some of
Kelsey's bucket list places she'd like to go. Does she
want to go out to la and study that more?
Does she would go across the sea. You know, they've
got some really cool stuff over in Italy and Germany
(41:41):
and England. We'll find out where she wants to go.
You're listening to International sign Finders. Welcome to back to
(42:07):
International sign Fighters. Glad you're still with us. We have
the amazing Kelsey McClelland go and follow her on Instagram
at Heavypagespress dot com you can follow Oh wait, that's
her website, Heavy Pages Press at Instagram. It all comes
out in the wash basically, but and I'll also have
If that confused, you just go to the show notes.
(42:28):
We've got links there. Now we've talked about I know
that we've just scratched the surface, scratched the surface of
the We've gone into the back history of Beverly Sign Company.
We've gotten into the ties between the Chicago stock car
scene and sign painting, which you know the original LinkedIn.
You can't forget about race cars and NASCAR and stock
(42:51):
car racing, because what better way to advertise your place
than going out to the dirt track on a Saturday
night with the family cheering on your favorite car. You realize,
oh mac hike, Chevrolet, wonder what they have you know,
going on with them. Now we've talked about you know,
the books are coming out. Now let's get into where
Kelsey would like to go. I always like to finish
(43:13):
off with what's your bucket list of places or signs
or what have you that you would like to see
in the future that you haven't gotten to yet, or
you've gotten to it, but you will see if it's
still there.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
That's a good question.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
It's a loaded question.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Yeah, you know what you did, hit the nail on
the head. I would really like to go out to
Los Angeles. That's definitely on my list. Yeah, I don't
know if there's a particular sign, but I am interested
in following this link to Heath and Co. And seeing
(43:51):
if any of those signs are still there. You know,
there's still signs in like Illinois outside of Chicago that
I'd like to see. I really love hot dog stands.
Obviously we have great ones here in Chicago, but there's
lots that are like in the suburbs. And then I
(44:17):
would love to go overseas. I mean, you said Italy.
Italy would be amazing. I will say one of the places,
one of my favorite places, surprisingly was Vietnam. I was
able to go. Yeah, Vietnam had and still has some
(44:40):
really really amazing hand painted signs, and I was able
to go with my grandfather in like two thousand maybe
two thousand and eight, and at that time there were
still a ton around and I went. I've subsequently gone
(45:04):
back quite a few times. I've actually taught workshops there
on sign painting and gold leaf and they have Unfortunately,
I think this is the story you probably hear over
and over. Vinyl's been replacing a lot of signs. People
like led, people like screens, so those are coming in.
(45:28):
And they also have really great reverse glass signage as well,
so they have their own like traditional ways of doing it.
So if any sign finders are interested, I would definitely
recommend Vietnam. I'd love to go back there again, yeah,
(45:49):
I mean and oh, actually one place I really do
want to go is Australia. They have a really yeah,
they have a really cool sign painting seen there. Like
you know, I'm part of this big community of sign
painters that are contemporary sign painters, kind of probably how
you guys are. Where we meet each other online, we
(46:12):
all kind of know each other. It feels like we're
we know each other, but a lot of us have
never met, but we admire each other's work. And so
there's a lot of great sign painters in Australia and
lots of really cool old ghost signs. Yeah, that I've
seen online through people who document it. So it's just
(46:34):
one time. Yeah, there's one guy I think in Melbourne
specifically that like Melbourne Ghost Signs or something great Instagram.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
Or Victoria ghost Signs.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, it might be.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
I'm following. I'm following so in for Victoria, the state
of Victoria and Australia. If you're wondering, sorry to cut
you off, but the milk bar signs those are pretty
interesting too. Milk bars are kind of like convenience stores
here of I'm I hope I'm getting that right.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
I think I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
Yeah, it's got a funky name like that. Yeah, at
least to us, it's kind of funky. But Australia, for
some reason that doesn't surprise me. I don't know why.
But you know, there's still that old English, you know,
influence and them coming into modern I don't want to
(47:34):
make it sound like there's some criminive people.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
They're not.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
They're basically our cousins in a way. But you can
see where the where the the old styles come in,
and especially from the micro communities, because there's like a vibrant,
you know, community of like Germans and Eastern Europeans and
stuff like that in Australia from what I gather, so
(47:59):
I can see that all influencing Australia.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Yeah, it's it's a lot like America where it's a
melting pot.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Ye, Victor, I'm looking it up right housing free a ghosts.
I don't know, you're it's probably Melbourn ghost signs. Yeah.
So this is part of the show that people get
frustrated with me because I go out, my mind goes
off and Melbourn underscore ghost signs and also ghost signs
(48:29):
me melb both of them. I think that.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Yeah, so yeah, this is the part where my ADHD
takes over. I'm in the middle of doing something, a
middle of interview, and I just Scar looking stuff up
and it's like, come back, go back, Drew, come back.
So are there any neon signs? I have to ask
this because you know then my nature. Are there any
(48:54):
nance signs that you because Chicago's got some. I mean,
you can't talk about Chicago, ill go without mentioning Central camera.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Yeah, and well I actually just walked by that today
and took pictures of it.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
And that survived riots didn't it?
Speaker 3 (49:11):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Almost? It basically got burned down and the sign survived. Ah.
It's such a cool store. I mean that sign is amazing.
It kind of just it's bizarre. It's just there and
nothing around it is like that. There's one down the
street called Miller's Cub but that's.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
A pretty ok. There's also that flower shop that's like
two stories tall and it is like Bossier.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Yeah, let's sells.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Okay, let's sell there we go. I was that was close.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
That one's beautiful. I love that one.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
There's there's a couple of cool Neon sign companies like yeah,
I think it's one was called white Wave. Best Neon
Flash Trick is.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
One flash Trick.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Yeah, that's a great name. I mean we uh we
work with a Neon Benber and all design Neon signs
uh and they will basically blow them for us. They'll
make the sign and hook it up to the electricity
(50:26):
and everything, which is really cool. So can we love
to It's it's hard, I will say sign code is
what has made sign sign is not as great as
they once were. It's the sign code. And I bet
most sign finders agree that sign code is super prohibitive
(50:51):
and so really kind of in the sixties they changed
all the sign code, and particularly with neon and flashing
signs in Chicago, they basically outlawed it so you can't
have anything that's flashing, which is really a bummer for Neon.
(51:13):
And uh so a lot of the Neon that's done,
if it's it's scarior, is pretty minimal or restoration. Like
the guy that we work with redid the Wrigley Field
sign and we designed a sign that's for a restaurant
(51:35):
across the street from there that he made for us.
But yeah, I love Neon. I wish we could get
more Neon contracts because it's just so cool and beautiful.
Speaker 1 (51:49):
So Chicago be more like San Jose.
Speaker 2 (51:54):
Yes, be like Austin.
Speaker 3 (51:55):
I feel you know, it's I wish, are you know
city officials understood how important signs are to the identity
of a city and people.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
You know, I mean when you if you were to
look up Chicago and Instagram and photographs, everybody takes a
picture in front of the Chicago side. Yeah, Mark on
the theater. I mean it is like what people do,
and that's what people make, you know, T shirts out
of and all these things. They're super important, so you know,
(52:30):
they got to let people make them.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
Houston did. If you I keep going back to these
videos that I found on YouTube and I need to
send I need to somehow find a way to get
those shared on my Instagram without breaking the copyright laws.
I think it'd come from the University of Houston. But
Houston used to used to glow. I mean, oh yeah,
(52:53):
I'll try and send you a link and I'll put
a link to one of the Houston Houston Neon But
back in the sixties and seventies there was just all
these amazing neon signs. And then in the seventies a
councilwoman was like iore laws and also with billboards. Houston
got hammered by Lady Bird Johnson, the first lady went
(53:15):
after Houston hard, right.
Speaker 2 (53:19):
I think that really her laws really affected the whole country. Yeah,
which is crazy to think that that has lasted so long.
Speaker 1 (53:28):
But yeah, but Houston's kind of I like old working signs.
There's probably like six are there old signs around. I've
counted about one hundred some odd maybe ish wow, maybe
those are like you know, me retaking pictures. Let's say
fifty to one hundred that are either skeletons or they've
(53:51):
just been painted over. But that's it left in Houston.
I mean, I know that Denver has lost a lot,
especially around coal Fax where the Children's hospital is now. Yeah,
cuds of those motels are just torn up.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
Yeah. I actually grew up in Denver, and I think, yeah,
so I grew up on Coalfax. Really, my grandmother lived
in just off of the Fitzsimmons Air base or the base,
not air but and so I would drive up and
(54:28):
down coal Fact as a little kid to get back
and forth from her house. So all of those signs
that I think, that's probably why I really like signs
is because I would see them. And yeah, Denver is
like not anywhere near what it was, which is really sad.
But I do know that Corey, who I haven't met,
(54:50):
I need to go. I'm going out there for Christmas.
They need to go meet him. And it's really cool
what he's been doing to like actually stave them.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
It's here. Here's here's just you know one bit of
self flattery? Did you hear? Did you see the promo
I did with Corky and Todd where I was like,
if you don't do this, we'll get Sarah McLaughlin's to
get a commercial about saving the sign.
Speaker 2 (55:16):
Oh my god?
Speaker 1 (55:17):
And yeah it does. But still Denver's got us beat
Denver's guys used to beat by a mile. Yeah. And
also salt Lake. Don't forget salt Lake. The Yeah Rainbow
Sign Company was one of the big ones in yes co.
Uh ogged in salt Lake not so much. I don't
(55:40):
know if probo has much. But then there's someone down
in a little town called Springbilt, south of Provo, Utah,
where he saved a ton of signs and puts him
on his property unless people go around and see them.
So okay, yeah, pervate collections do come in. So uh
that will bring us to end of the show. So
we promoted your website, your Instagram. Is there anything else
(56:04):
you'd like to promo or give a shout out?
Speaker 2 (56:08):
I guess I'll say my business's name. Yes, do that
heart and Bone signs? So heart at Heart and Bone
signs on Instagram. And then Chicago Signpainters.
Speaker 1 (56:22):
Dot com all right, I'll get I'll try to get
those in the show notes. And what else did I
put in the show notes? Oh yeah, the link to
the Houston signs and stuff like that. But Kelsey has
been amazing having you on the show, and you never know,
we may do another one together in the future.
Speaker 2 (56:40):
Yeah, but maybe when the Speedway books out.
Speaker 1 (56:43):
Yeah, definitely, definitely. And also if you are a museum
and you want to highlight some amazing art. First off,
by Lisa, let's put all these people in the same
room together. Lisa Tenna Art, her hand painted watercolored neon
signed paintings are out of this world. You've got Kelsey
(57:05):
and Andrew with their hand painted signs, which are I
mean just just a samples she shared with me. Yeah,
it's amazing.
Speaker 2 (57:15):
I will plug the American Sign Museum's new wing if
no one has been there. We were part of a
team that got to paint the signs.
Speaker 1 (57:24):
Oh out of here on Main Street.
Speaker 2 (57:27):
We were part of this incredible team of sign painters
and we all went down there for a week. We
worked our butts off and the I mean it is amazing.
So if you haven't gone since they reopened the new wing,
I recommended.
Speaker 1 (57:45):
I need, I need more money to travel.
Speaker 2 (57:48):
Oh man, that have you been there?
Speaker 1 (57:51):
No, I've been. I've been through Cincinnati. I haven't been
to the American Sign Museum.
Speaker 2 (57:59):
Oh my gosh, you have to put at the top
of the list.
Speaker 1 (58:02):
Yeah, and oh you wouldn't. My wife have to drag
me out after a couple of days. And then you
have the looming Neon Sign Museum in Kansas City that's
getting off the ground of course, the Vegas Neon Sign Museum,
the Los Angeles, uh, the Neon Museum, the Neon Museum
(58:24):
of Art, and I forget what it's called there in LA.
I'll look that up and correct myself. But there's so
many of there popping up, even Edmonton, Edmonton on Edmonton,
Alberta better than I get the confused with Ontario. But Edmonton,
Alberta has a sign museum as well, which is I
need to Yeah, I need about a million dollars a
(58:45):
year just to hit all these places. So that will
wrap things up for this week's edition of International Sign Fighters.
As we say every week, get out there, hit the pavement,
have fun, take pictures, and keep your hands in a swivel.
Especially when it's late at night and you're getting those
nighttime neon shots and share them with this have fun,
(59:07):
and until next time, happy side finding.
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