November 20, 2024 • 63 mins
Lisa Michele, @relentlesshistory, joined me for this week's episode of International Sign Finders as her second book--Vintage Signs of Utah Vol II--hits the store shelves.
I need to apologize for the crappy sound of this week's episode...I forgot to switch the sound input of MY mic, so I was just using my computer's mic and Lisa Michele sounds great.
Me...well...you're here for her and that's the main point.
We talk about Salt Lake City, Ogden, Helper, Panguitch and places here there and everywhere.
You can follow her on:
Instagram
Website
You can purchase her books here:
Vintage Signs of Utah, Vol. I
Vintage Signs of Utah, Vol. II
Historic Apartments of Salt Lake City
Follow these fine folks:
neonlover801
vinguycol
Jacob Barlow
House Genealogy
photographybylaurie.biz
I need to apologize for the crappy sound of this week's episode...I forgot to switch the sound input of MY mic, so I was just using my computer's mic and Lisa Michele sounds great.
Me...well...you're here for her and that's the main point.
We talk about Salt Lake City, Ogden, Helper, Panguitch and places here there and everywhere.
You can follow her on:
Website
You can purchase her books here:
Vintage Signs of Utah, Vol. I
Vintage Signs of Utah, Vol. II
Historic Apartments of Salt Lake City
Follow these fine folks:
neonlover801
vinguycol
Jacob Barlow
House Genealogy
photographybylaurie.biz
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Welcome everybody to another episode of International Signfinders. Sorry, it's
been a while since I've gotten back on the mic.
A lot of school the election, working with the radio
last week. I just think it was just the hangover
from all the crazy that's been happening. And now we're
finally back on the air. I'm your host, Drew Abernathew
(00:40):
glad that you're with us, and tonight we have a
special guest coming to us from the Beehive State. And
you know there's a lot I've interviewed quite a few
people over the past few weeks to have done books.
We had all Heavy Pages Press last week talking about
the hand painted signs of Chicago going there putting out
(01:00):
a book about the stock car racing, handpainted numerals on
those cars and stuff like that out of the Chicago area.
We had Heather David on a few weeks ago. She's
done some stuff with San Jose and the restoration projects
of San Jose. She's also done Motel California. She's got
(01:22):
another book out as well. I think it's out of
print right now. And also can't forget Retroroside Photography, who
has a great website and it would not surprise me.
She puts out a book within the next little while
as well, And tonight you're going to learn why not
just Salt Lake City, but the whole state of Utah
(01:46):
should be on your bucket list, because there's some amazing
signs and restoration projects and just areas of Utah that
really you should pay attention to. And a writer, if
not just one volume, but two volumes of relentless history
(02:07):
is our guest tonight, Lisa Michelle Church. Welcome to the show.
Lisa Michelle Thanks, it's great to be here. Yeah, glad
to have you here. And ever since I saw that
you did a book one, oh what was it, back
in twenty one or twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Two, Yeah, twenty twenty two, I did Vintage Signs of
Utah Volume one, and then just this month is Vintage
Signs of Utah Volume two.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
It's coming out weird. I mean, we're lucky just to
be on the front end of this of the second
project here at International Sign Finders. And before we get
to anything else, before we get to the books, what
have you? Won't you introduce yourself to the sign community
if they don't know you already.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Sure, so I'm Lisa Michelle. I have been posting on
Instagram for about six and I've been active in photographing
signs for probably fifteen years. Oh wow, I'm a road
trip kid. I was raised in California in the sixties,
at the height of the mid century, when there were
(03:16):
millions and millions of beautiful signs in the West. And
my dad was a truck driver, a long haul truck driver,
so we were always on the road and just really
saw signs as art, really as beauty on the road.
My dad was originally from southern Utah. My parents were
(03:38):
from southern Utah, so there was all kinds of road
trips from northern California and southern California across Nevada into
Utah as a kid, which was the height of like
going across the desert at night because of the heat,
waiting for the neon to, you know, come up on
the horizon, and then me and my brother and sister
(04:00):
are like, oh, come on, dad, it's got a pool.
Let's stop there. You know, you just have It's just
a formative time of my life when I just romanticized
the American Highway and fell in love with signs and
little motels. And cafes and theaters and all the things
that had me on signs. So then I, you know,
(04:23):
I grew up, went to college in Salt Lake City,
lived on the East Coast for a while, became a lawyer,
raised my family, but I always kept up on the
road trips, and I raised my kids on road trips.
And so when my law career started to wind down
fifteen years ago, I decided, Hey, I just want to
devote myself to this. I always was a photographer, and
(04:47):
I thought, I'm just gonna get on the road and
take pictures and document these things before they're all gone.
And that was kind of my journey.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Yeah, and it's you know, just following you or the
amount of time I have, You've really kind of put
into my consciousness all these signs that have both been
you know gone the way of you know, the earth,
whatever that phrase is, or the ones that been like
(05:18):
not well, some of them they repurposed, like the Bowling Alley,
uh there in south south State Street that's now apartment complex. Yeah, classic, Yeah,
I give them a lot of credit for doing that. Well,
you mentioned Nevada. I don't think people outside of the
(05:40):
people who don't go outside of Las Vegas. Let's just
put it that way, Vegas that is ADHD Neon all
in one, you know, amalgamation or whatever you want to
call it. But you know, little towns like Wells and Elie,
win amuck A, Battle Mountain, Sparks, heck, Reno, the world's
(06:02):
biggest little city, has a lot of really cool neon.
What direction would you go through Nevada? Would you come
up through uh, if you don't want to tell me,
that's fine. Would you come up through like Las Vegas?
Or would you go across where you know I eighty
is over? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I think I think you'd have to do I eighty.
I mean, Nevada is pretty desolate. So you got to
mind your p's and q's if you're going to go
across the middle of Nevada. But if you go across
southern Nevada on I fifteen, you know, you do get
a lot of cool remnants of the old Highway ninety one,
which was originally called the Arrowhead Highway from LA to
(06:42):
Salt Lake, and then it became Highway ninety one and
today it's known as Interstate fifteen. But they you know,
you just get off the road at any exit you
guys have all heard of the roy sign, you know,
in those kind of places, and so you just find
those little pockets all long, either I fifteen or I eighty,
(07:03):
which goes from Salt Lake to San Francisco. And when Laca,
as you know, is a really great place for old signs.
And then there's wind Over Will you know. He's a
big kind of like Vegas, vic except he's at the
northern end of the intersection between Utah and Nevada. And
(07:24):
so there's a lot in Nevada. But you got to
be a pretty hardcore road trip person because they are
a few and far between, and then when you hit them,
they're really exciting.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Now the way advantage I have when it comes to
Nevada and we'll get to Utah. Don't don't get me wrong,
we're going to get into the Utah stuff here. If
you're listening, you every want to get into that more.
But I have a buddy who is a regional manager
for NAPA for West Idaho and I want to say
(07:55):
northern Nevada. He also gets part of northern Utah and
every so often he'll sit be pictures from like Elee
from Battle Mountain. He knows I love Battle Mountain. I
want to get there. Have a friend who works at
a gold mine in Battle Mountain. But it's just one
of those little because they were they were listed as
(08:17):
the Armpit of America at one point and we wanted
to go on a road trip there and we never
got to it. But you know, you have the Owl Club,
which is probably one of my bucket list places, and
we'll get into bucket list later on. If you're a
fan of the show, you know we'll do that. But
the Owl, he just every time he's a Battle Mountain,
(08:38):
it senits me a photo of the Owl and I
love it, absolutely do. And I'll share some of his
stuff on Instagram. But have you have you got to
document any of the like that I know there's the
Nevada Neon Project. Have you gone back into Nevada and
got some photos over there recently.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Or not recently? I mean I've definitely because I go
back and forth to California on those roads. But when
I set out to do my books, I had to
really focus on one particular geography, and so I just
decided I'm going to do the state of Utah. Make
sure I document every single thing. Anyone tips me off
to because my focus was still existing signs that people
(09:21):
could take my book in their car, they'd beat wherever
they were in the state, they'd look it up, and
then there'd be this whole history of the sign that
they were looking at right that minute.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Oh that's amazing, and that's a great place to stop.
For the first segment of this week's episode of International
Sign Finders. When we get back, we're going to get
into that. We're going to talk about not just the
Sign of History Volume one, but we'll also get into
volume two, which just came out fresh off the press.
As you can smell the four color you know, printing
(09:53):
press right now as we speak, and you're listening to
International sign Finders. Welcome back to International Signed Finders. Glad
you're with us. We have Relentless History Lisa Michelle on
(10:15):
with us. You can go and I'll have how you
can get in contact with her and find her where
you can buy her book and stuff like that in
the show notes Relentless History on Instagram. But tonight we're
gonna be talking about her books. We're gonna kick off
starting off talking about her books, and she has just
(10:36):
said that her books if you're looking to do a
tour of Utah by signed Tour of Utah. These are
great resources for that, just like Heather David made the
It's a little painful type of book. It's a cool
little book though, but you can use that book as
kind of a guy to start a starting point for
the signs of San Jose. This is a great resource
(10:59):
for signs of Utah. Boom Utah. Right then you Wan's
surprised with jackieo Photo does one of Wyoming. So she
took a whole month and just went across Wyoming and
that needs to be done as well.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
So let's down.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Into the books. So volume one, what does that entail?
And then we'll get to volume two and what that's
all about.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Okay, So Volume one, which came out in twenty twenty two,
was a compilation of about two hundred a little over
two hundred signs in Utah that are from the period.
Really I start with nineteen hundred and I go to
about nineteen seventy. I stick pretty much in that time period.
(11:43):
I have all kinds of signs. I have billboards, I
have neon obviously most of them are neon. I have
a lot of ghost signs painted on buildings, and I
have some bulb signs. And then one of my quirky
things is signs that are in weird shape, like bowling
pins or gigantic keys, or we have an amazing sign
(12:06):
in Utah that's a double ice cream cone, scoop double
scoop of ice cream cone that rotates. So to me,
that was kind of the categories. And then the book
has sections based on the type of business. So it
has a whole chapter on motels, a whole chapter on cafes,
chapter on theaters, chapter on stores and markets, and then
(12:32):
a chapter on just various things that don't fit one
of those categories. And then I finished with the ghost signs.
So for me, it's pretty uh, carefully curated, because I
wanted people to be able to stop in their tracks
when they're on a road trip and just be like, Wow,
that's sign. I wonder where that's from, what's that about?
(12:54):
And so then they can just pick up my book,
flip to the index, get right to the picture, and
then and every single picture has a little paragraph that
talks about who started the business. If I know who
designed the sign, what year it was built, who restored it,
you know, just all the details that you would want
to know if you were sitting right in front of
(13:15):
the sign.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
I mean, it's basically a database in your hands. I
was like, and for me, I'm not very organized. I
will just be making a list of size to get
take pictures up. I'm ahead of the curve get away.
But it's for the first book. Was it just like uh,
(13:40):
you know, like the you know, like Solid Valley, Utah Valley,
or was it all of Utah?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
All of Utah? I had my entire sign photo archive.
I divided exactly in half. I didn't put all the
good ones in volume one and leave the not good
ones for volume two. I divided it in half on
perse because I wanted both books to be equally stunning
as far as the cool signs that are in them.
(14:07):
And then in the first book, I did a history
of the sign artists in Utah. So who are the
artists behind these amazing signs. I look at science first
as art pieces, then I look at them as mom
and pop businesses, Then I look at them as community history,
and then finally I look at him as what gives
(14:29):
me my sense of place in the world. You know,
the map that gets built in your head when you're
a kid, like oh, we're almost to the bowling Pin signs,
so we're almost to Grandma's house, or you know those
kind of memories that get pegged as a little kid.
You don't realize it, but that map is in your head.
And I really did my books so I could go
(14:51):
speak to people about signs. So I speak almost every
month somewhere and they always yeah, they always start out
by telling me that story, like oh, do you have
a picture of the of the tree Sombres sign? Because
those three guys would just wave back and forth up
on Highland Drive and I would see them every day
when my mom drove me to school, and you know
(15:12):
what I mean, there's always a pig like that. So
I wanted to know who the sign artists were, and
I researched them. The original ones premon that painted all
the signs. They were hand painted. Those guys were actual
oil painters, like famous artists. They had won prizes at
the Territorial Fair for their landscape artistry, but they couldn't
(15:37):
make a living at it, so they ended up being
commercial artists just to make a living. And it was
really fun to develop their stories. And then when Neon
came in. There was some really amazing artists. Thomas Young
who started Young Electric Sign Company, which is now known
as Yesco and it's an internationally famous sign company. But
(16:00):
Thomas Young was an immigrant to Utah in the nineteen
hundreds and he actually got his start painting names on caskets.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Oh he did.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Yeah, they pinstriped and did decorative painting on caskets and
he got all of his experience on the hand painted
signs in that business. But in nineteen.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
He sorry, in my mind, now I get like, you know,
you're talking about pinch stripes on caskets. I'm thinking of
like the pinch stripes of the Low Riders. Yeah. Yeah,
so they're Telefornia and you have like some amazing pinch
striping and you know, you go out of this world
to the next.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Right what not? A lot of people see the work
so after it's done. But anyway, he was a big one.
But he's still you know, their company's still around. They're
the ones that did all the Vegas strip in the
nineteen thirty these and forties. They moved to Vegas and
opened a branch office and they are responsible for every
(17:06):
famous sign you associate with and they just barely did
like Allegiance Stadium in Las Vegas, all the signage there.
So I talk about Thomas Young, but I also talk
about the little shops, like in nineteen thirty two, brothers
Harvey and Leonard Brimley, they just jumped in the car
and drove to Chicago and found a neon bender shop
(17:29):
and just said, teach us how to bend neon. We
want to do signs, And they bought all the equipment,
drove back to Salt Lake and they did hundreds and
hundreds of our Neon signs throughout the rest of the
twentieth century and they're in still in business, the fifth
generation Brimley Neon. And then I did a lot on
(17:50):
Rainbow Neon, which is another multi generation Neon vendor company
that is still in business with Vin Sky Coley, who's
on Instagram you can find him. But anyway, it was
just really important to me to document the artists in
that first book. I really wanted people to understand this
was not just a commercial enterprise, it was an art enterprise.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
And I've you know, just seen some of those signs.
The one that comes to mind first is the Salt
Late Costume company, right when I took the picture. There's
a church across the street from the apartment complex that
has the sign there, and then you have fins right
across the street from that church as well, and some
(18:36):
other things. I just remember getting strange looks from the
folks who were setting up for the Christmas dinner, and
I was like, eh, yeah, so I tried to walk
across get my pictures a get at fixed. Oh I didn't,
you know, have the cops called on me? But uh,
it's just the the the character. I mean, yeah, there's
(19:02):
I mean the painting sign, you know, the artistry. Wait,
that's that sign is a character as well, because yeah,
you today, this is medieval. This is a you know,
we're we got some cowboy. We're just strapping some armor
on him. History book, it's true. But here's the cool
(19:26):
thing you can look at. Okay, So, Lloyd Coley is
Vince's dad, and Lloyd Colly is the one that did
the Solid Costume Company sign. He's passed away, but his
work lives on. He sat and drew that up and
when you look at it on the internet, you'll be
stunned at how how detailed it is. And and so
(19:48):
two really great things about that. So years and years later,
after his dad had passed away, Vince got the call
and the people that owned the building, and they said,
can you come restore the sign because we're closing the
costume company, but we're gonna save the sign and we're
going to make it into apartments and call it salt
like costume apartments. So isn't that amazing that.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Vince got to restore his dad's sign And it's still
super gorgeous, But just a couple blocks away there's a
totally different, contrasting vintage sign. It's called Stark Steering Yes,
and it is just Lloyd Coley and the and girls
start sitting there on a napkin, drawing it up in
(20:31):
their own little handwriting and making and making me on.
When you look at it, you will see the evidence
that this is just some guy's handwriting. It's it's beautiful
in itself. It's not solid costume, but it's still a
really amazing art piece.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
And just reminds me like the El Cortes for some reason,
because that still is handwriting as well. And when you
sit in it's a real estate company that's there that
has the start a steering Now is that right.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
It's actually an art gallery now, but it's been through
a couple of things, but they all have kept the sign,
which I'm so so happy about. But Vince told me
when I was first interviewing him, I was looking at
the archive of the name of Rainbow's neon signs and
he was showing me, Oh, my dad did this one, Oh,
(21:23):
my dad did this one. And he kept saying, this
is my dad's handwriting like this, you know, And it
was really evocative for him because his dad was an
art student. He had an art degree from Weaver State College.
He wasn't you know, a casual person about this. He
really before they had computer fonts, imagine he could do
(21:46):
some art as handwriting and then make it into a sign.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
It just reminds me of the old Dan ex Solo
font books. You know, probably one of the biggest influencers
of like the nineteen twentieth century for fonts is Dan
Solo and just seeing some of the the artistry behind
those fonts. Even like a big grotesque or brutalist font,
(22:14):
there's art behind it.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Mm hmm. That's right. And Brimley's story was kind of
the same. I mean, his dad, Kirk Brimley carried on
the tradition and they did lots of signs with their
own designs. And David Brimley has this great quote. He says,
but the design is everything. You know, you can be
the greatest neon vendor in the world, but if you
(22:37):
don't have a good design, you're not really an artist
to begin with. The rest of it kind of fails.
And I just respect that so much.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah, I get in it. Oh man. So I'm in
our class right now, and there's a whole bunch of
beginning guys. And I've taught myself, had to draw and such.
But it's interesting to see my fellow classmates grow. And
I couldn't imagine being there in the nineteen thirties secteen forties,
(23:10):
where you're creating this, Like you said, this is whole cloth.
You're just you just have an idea in your head.
You're going with it free hand, freehand. Oh my gosh. Yes, yeah,
that's how I draw normally. It's freehand. But that is
beyond amazing. And that's a great place to end our
(23:31):
second segment. When we come back, we'll get it to
a volume. We should we get into volume two. In
the next sect y yeah. Okay, we'll get into volume
two and this will get us some places of interest
for me, a couple of bucket list places. You're listening
to International sign Finders. Welcome back to International Signfinders. Glad
(24:06):
you're with us. I'm your host, Drabernathy, And tonight we
have the amazing Lisa Michelle on with us, relentless history,
author of Bitious Signs of Utah Volumes one and two.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (24:19):
That's correct? Volume two just barely came out.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Man, congratulations on that. That's it's a labor of love.
If you do not come away, just even if you're
just looking at like the highlights, you don't view it
as a labor of love. I don't know what to
tell you, honestly, uh, to be honest with you. But
(24:42):
for some reason, oh what is that? There's a niche
clothing shop in Salt Lake City is gonna skip my mind.
It's a new it's a new place with new neon,
but they have a very much mid century modern feel
to the sign. He's gonna do you know who created
that one?
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Or are you are you thinking of retro Betty?
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yeah, retro Betty?
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Yeah, yep, yep, that's a David Brimley sign. Amazing new
neon but very cool.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Yeah, and I just love that they kept they kept
the motif going. You know, with then mid century, it's
gaining new life in a new century. And maybe it'll
it'll evoke a future signed makers and neon benders and
stuff like that within the Salt Lake Provo, you know,
(25:35):
the Wasatch Front. Maybe it'll inspire them. Hey, let's let's
get to you on the tradition. Uh yeah, So buying
two you get in some pretty cool little areas. You know, Helper, Utah.
You don't hear many people outside of pro Utah and
the Inner Mountain West talk about Helper, but there's something
(25:57):
magical about that little town with its neon.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yeah, it's definitely a coming on, big, huge center for
neon restorations. So the tiny little town in central Utah,
it used to have twenty thousand miners in it because
it's in coal mining country, but now it's very very small.
Coal mining went away, but at that time they have
(26:22):
thirty three bars in the mid twentieth century and some
houses of prostitution and things like that that come along
with communities. And so then it just got abandoned when
the coal mining went away, and for twenty or so
years sat vacant, and then these guys that have restored it,
(26:43):
they all just kind of came together in a magical
moment about ten or fifteen years ago. One of them
is called Gary Vincent, Gary de Vincent, and he was
a Harley Davidson guy who had a shop up in
northern Utah and place where he kind of restored old cars.
And as usual, you know, the city made it tough
on him where he lived, and so he got on
(27:06):
his bike and drove around and came upon Helper and
he thought, this is a place I could call home.
And at the same time, there were a lot of
people that were artists looking for places off the Los
Ate Front, and so they all came there as art galleries.
And luckily all the old signs were still in place.
They were just resting in the buildings, and so people
(27:29):
like Gary, he went on like he's walks up to
this shed that's old wooden shed, and he just looks
at the proportions of it and he goes, you know
what that looks like an old service station. And he
peeks in the window and he can see that the
shed was built around a nineteen thirty's chronicle station that's
pretty much in place. The original Neon sign is still
(27:54):
sitting there with the original Neon and you know not
he knocks down the shed and just makes the station
come to life. And David Bramley of Bramley Neon was
hired by de Vincent to come in and redo the
sign and then they just made this great partnership where
they've gone into this place like called the Lincoln Hotel
(28:16):
on Main Street in Helper, and they've redone that whole
vertical blade sign that goes up the building. De Vincent
and his friends have all worked on painting the old
ghost signs that are on almost every building there. They're
repainted so you can read the Piggly Wiggly market sign
or the automotive services signs. There's an original J. C.
(28:40):
Penny's metal yellow and black sign on a building that
is now an art gallery. Yeah, it's Helper is incredible
and they have just taken off. They have car shows there,
they have you know, markets there every weekend. The main
street is now completely lit. Me On Brimley redid the
(29:02):
Strand Theater sign, which is an enormous rainbow it's just
really breathtaking and fun to see a community rally around
something like restoring signs and streets, gate and buildings and storefronts.
You know, it really takes your breath away and helpers kind.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Of the of what is the is it Highway two
or six?
Speaker 2 (29:28):
It's Highway six in Highway forty. It's a hard place
to get to. It's not by any interstates, which is
why it remained in that amazing preserved condition. You know,
nobody wanted to come and redevelop it until they did,
and it took artists to do it. And I give
them a lot of credit those artists that have really
(29:50):
stuck with keeping it authentic. It's more than nostalgia. It's
not corny. It's like really gritty and it still has
its minor it's ability to it, but it's but it's
got the signs and I just love it. It's been
fun to feature them. I featured Helper really prominently in
my second book, as well as Ogden. Ogden in northern Utah,
(30:14):
they have a historic twenty fifth Street and they've restored
all their Neon signs along twenty fifth Street and it's
just wonderful because it's right next to the old rail depot,
so it was all kinds of people, all kinds of
hotels again, bars, restaurants. One of the most famous signs
(30:35):
on Ogden's twenty fifth Street is called the Star Noodle Dragon.
Is it really famous? Yeah, And it was actually featured
in the movie Blade Runner because it's got this dragon
head where he he because of the neon is animated.
(30:55):
He sticks out his tongue, he blinks his eyes. He's
a pretty Fairs dragon. And I was able to interview
the guy that restored it just recently, is named Steve White.
He works for Yesco. And in my book, I have
pictures of all the different models that he had to
build just to give him self a sense of, you know,
the lines of the sign and the surfaces and how
(31:18):
to recreate different parts of it that had rotted. But
it's in beautiful shape now and so it's featured in
the book. And then the third place I feature in
the book is Sugar House, which is an area of
Salt Lake City that has one of the last rotospear
signs still in existence. If you know what that is?
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Cool? Yeah? Is it a sign an object or it's
a sign?
Speaker 2 (31:44):
I mean it's a sign. It has the word Granite
Furniture used to be on it because it was the
granite Furniture store that bought it in nineteen sixty one.
But you know, there were only two hundred and something
signs in the whole country that were designed by that
guy in Milk and the rotosphere rotated and it was
completely illuminated and you could see it for miles and
(32:07):
miles and yeah, ours was restored again a few years
ago because of community efforts, and it still spins above
the city, but it doesn't have the granite furniture anymore.
It's just the sign because people loved it and it
was such a landmark.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
I've also seen from Neo Lover eight one's feed. It
was a Springville very south of Probo. There's a guy
who has kind of like a old bar type thing
and he's got a lot of restored neon.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah, right, yeah, there is there. He's mostly got petroleum signs.
It's mostly old service station signs, but yeah, he's got
hundreds and hundreds of them. It's right there in Utah County,
just about twenty miles south of Salt Lake City. It's
a fun place to go. Me I really like him,
and they're now natural habitat. So I'm not quite as
(33:03):
excited about the museums. Although I'm totally happy that they
preserve neon signs anywhere. I'm very happy. But to me,
there's just something so magical about seeing them in the wild,
you know, where they were originally built and where they've
been repurposed. I think that's that's my preference. But but yeah,
I mean, I love the guy Petrolinia. He's got a
(33:26):
lot of really cool signs. And same with the Neon
Museum in Vegas. You know, it was started by Jesco
where they put all their boneyard signs and it's super
fun to walk around and there's a lot of old
Utah signs that got boneyard there, and so I'm glad
that they're there, and I'm not criticizing them. I'm just saying,
can't we find a way to keep them in our communities?
Speaker 1 (33:50):
And like, well, I was talking to Oh, who was
it from Chicago recently? Oh? It was heavy pages pressed.
I was talking to Day and like Chicago has some
weird laws that yeah, you can have neon, but you
can't have animated or blinking Neon. So a lot of
(34:11):
those old blinking arrow signs, like the big bulbs are
gone now because of the dumb city ordinances. And guess
I said, dumb mom, you can. You can wash my
mouth out later. But like in uh Denver and some
other places, you have to fix the sign on the spot.
(34:34):
You can't I think San Francisco. Parts of San Francisco,
you have to do this in order to restore it.
You have to do it there on the spot, or
you have to take it down completely. You can't put
it back up.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
You know, Saltlate Orance, they did have that ordnance. But
when the Salt Lake costume sign came up, and that's
been like ten or fifteen years ago, when that came
up for restoration, the whole community need lobbied the Solid
City Council to change the ordinance and they got it change,
so we don't have to do the restorations in place anymore,
(35:08):
which is such a great thing for all of us
sign lovers.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
No, is it just solid like or is like the
surrounding towns like West Valley City, Taylorsville.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Most of them have followed suits. That was you know,
the sign ordinance was anachronism back in the days, like
you said, where the city beautification would just say, you know,
if it's an old sign and you're not taking care
of it, you have to take it down. But there's
a lot more respect for old signage now in Utah,
and I'm really proud of the communities that have rallied
(35:41):
around And that's why I featured him in the book
because I want other communities to say, hey, we could
do that with our signs too. One thing I want
to mention about Utah in particular, because we were on
the way to somewhere, like you were saying about Nevada.
Utah wasn't always a destination state. It is now more
with the National parks, but in the early days, it
(36:04):
was just on the way to somewhere, and so we
had so much neon on that old Highway ninety one,
with motels and cafes especially, and all of that until
the sixties and seventies was completely in place, and then
the interstate passed it all by and none of those
cities got you know, very good exit ramps. So it
(36:26):
was cool for us signed lovers because all that just
stayed in place, and the people built new motels over
on the on ramps and all the downtowns. Get off
Interstate fifteen. If you're driving through Utah, just get off
every single town and drive through it and you will
see some cool signs every single town and.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Even like out of the way town you showed Bryce Canyon. Yeah,
this will be a quick we'll do a brief break
we come back. I kick myself for not taking pictures
of signs in Penguich, Utah. I oh yeah, so it's
(37:08):
a treasure trove. Yeah, and we'll talk about that when
we come back. And this, this segment of regret is
brought to you by me and I just oh yeah. Anyway,
you're listening to International sign Finders. Welcome back to International
(37:34):
sign Finders. I'm your host, Drew Abernathy. We have the amazing,
wonderful Lisa Michelle with us tonight, relentless history, author of Bitches.
Signs of Utah, Bolumes one and two. Get them both.
I need to get them. Maybe it'll be an early
Christmas present or something like that if my wife loves me.
But uh, the question that comes to mind when you're
(37:57):
talking about all the little towns like Pinguich, I've seen
the Bryce Canyon Motel. I think there's a few more there.
In Pinguich. What are you got? Moab which has a
lot of cool signs and stuff like that there, Bryce
kind of does from memory. They have that custard shop
(38:20):
on the south side of town, which is that paint
me on is just amazing. It's right across from the McDonald's.
I remember because we stopped there honorary back to Houston
because my wife's family has a place in Park City. Yeah,
I trust man, I don't have that money. That's a
family thing.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
But if you go to Park City, just about ten
miles away as Coleville peenial Ottle Town, and they have
so many ghost signs. Oh my gosh, they've done an
amazing job of keeping all their ghost signs. Every single
building has a beautiful hand painted sign from like Levi's
or a chocolate come. It's really amazing. You wouldn't even
(39:02):
know it because it's just like a few a few
miles off the interstate.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
And I need to get to Kimmera or Wyoming. I
know that's Wyoming, not Utah, but you know you go
through Diamond Coachville, Uh, Diamondville, I think, and Kimera's a
little bit off the beaten path if I remember, right,
you know, that's the first JC Penny was There's right,
that's right. So yeah, so like hidden gin little towns
(39:27):
like you know, we City. Cedar City is a bigger town.
But like Penguich and Beaver and places like that.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Yep, every one of them in my book, every one
of them has two or three incredible signs. You probably
have seen the Sleepy Lagoon Motel which burned down a
long time ago, with the sign is still up that one.
Google it. It's right outside Beaver. Like I said, just
get off the interstate. There's a town every hour in Utah.
(39:58):
That's how Brigham Young planned it that way in the
old days with the pioneers. There needed to be a
town every hour an hour wagon right away. And so
you just get off the interstate at Saint George. When
you first come into the state on the south end,
there used to be twenty seven motels in a town
of five thousand people. There were twenty seven motels because
(40:20):
of the traffic thesion.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
And also it's on the way to Las Vegas, right
and you know, you know California, you get scoot over
to Arizona from there too.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Right, so there's only a few left. But the Sands
Motel in Saint George is a definite bucket list. Most
of my Instagram people will will say that, then you
go up an hour to Cedar, you'll see cool signs
on the main street. Then you go up an hour
to Beaver, you see the sleepy lagoon. Then you go
over an hour east and you get to Penguiche. Well,
(40:57):
no interstate ever came to Pengui, so it's just Christine,
Christine and Church's Blue Pine Hotel has their original nineteen
fifties neon. That's my husband's family. Oh cool, And yeah,
Penguich is so cool. And then it's right next to
Bryce Canyons. You can have a little outing, and then
you go north from Panguich up through Richfield, and then
(41:20):
you can go to Price and help her like we
just talked about, and then circle back into the big
Wassat's front urban area, go through Springville and Provo, and
then you get the Salt Lake Valley and you'll see
in my book hundreds of signs in the Salt Lake
Valley that you can enjoy. And then keep going to
Ogden another hour up the road, you'll see historic twenty
(41:44):
fifth Street, and all this stuff in Ogden keep going
up farther you get to Logan, Logan, Utah's college town,
and they have a bunch of amazing neon still. And
you know the old Bluebird Cafe, which is from nineteen
fifteen East have neon bluebirds lining up the whole building.
But there's there's still one neon blue bird. If you
(42:07):
go get out of your car and stand in front
of the cafe which is closed, and look up, there's
a there's still a neon bluebird that lights up.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Now Brigham City. Does Brigham City have a big neon
welcome sign?
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, they do. Ogden and Brigham City have the two
remaining welcome signs that span the whole highway, and their neon.
One of them's led. Now actually they've changed the part.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Darn them. And I can understand, you know, the price
of neon price that's redundant.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
It's it's it's also heavy neon, super heavy. So like
that Rhoto spear sign, they had to take the neon
off and put led because it really saved on the
energy costs. And it made me sad, but we were
better to have the sign and not have it at all.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
And Brew Canyon, Uh, Bring Canyon loved that little town,
you know, pass through you know, several times, going you know,
from Moab up to I seventy I think it is.
And then we've always just not stopping Green Canyon there. Finally,
back in twenty twenty two, I convinced my wife, let's
(43:24):
stop at Green Canyon. And you like Sleepy Hollow, the
rob Robbers.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Robbers Roost, yep, they're all in my book and the Cult,
and you can read in the back of the book.
It'll tell you who started the Robbers Roost, who you know,
who designed a Sleepy Hollow? All of those are documented.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Yeah, Now who came up with the one with the
homemade pies?
Speaker 2 (43:47):
And that's the Thunderbird Cafe sign down by Zaion National Park.
It's it's it's called Mount Carmel Junction. Well, the family
is proud of it. I mean, that's the same family
that's on it since the forties. And they they thought
it was a clever way to spell homemade. They you know,
(44:08):
they feign innocence, but it is. It is a double
on tundra and it's so colorful. Everyone loves that sign.
It's one of the most photographed.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
It's sorry, my my inner like twelve year old just
giggles at it. Every time he comes up with my feed.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
I'm like here, yeah, oh gosh, and we'll be like,
did you get out to like Hurricane and yeah, all
to that in place like that, and well you said,
yeah you did.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Uh well, I think there's there's probably a few I've missed,
but I really cooperate a lot with Neon lover. I
don't want Brandon Nev. He's amazing, and so if I
couldn't get somewhere, he would always let me use his
sign pick in my book. So he got out to Vernal,
which is very far east, and then the Vernal Theater
(44:59):
was restored that marquee. And he also gave me his
amazing picture of the Dinoville Hotel, which is a giant
pink dinosaur, a flexic class dinosaur. So yeah, the far
flung ones. He gave me some help on. There's another
town that was a railroad town west of Beaver, Utah.
(45:19):
It's in the middle of nowhere. It's called Milford, and
Milford has incredible Neon and it's all just like when
you walk up to this, I walk up to the
hotel Milford, and I say to the guy, Hey, I
just want to take a picture of your sign, and
he's like, well, I turn it on for you. But
last time the building caught fire, so it's like turn
(45:41):
it on. It's it's a hot bed. That's what I'm saying.
If you get off the beaten path, almost every town
in Utah will have two or three this.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
It just kind of reminds me also of Wyoming. Uh, Like,
you know, we're going through we just went past dow Boys.
You're in the you're like, you know, central European thick
forest type of area, and all of a sudden you're
(46:16):
probably forty minutes outside of dou Boys, maybe give or
take about ten minutes, and you have the Archer Resort
sending in the middle of the woods. It's almost like
you take like the Norman Bates Motel, they put it
in the middle of the woods. If you're like this
(46:37):
seemed great. This is a great plot point for a
horror story, right, But it's so And even on the
other side of Yellowstone, going through Island Park, there's a
little bit of Neon in Island Park and that's I
don't know how big Island Park is probably one hundred
and fifty people.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
Do you have to figure each one of these commune
unities thought they were going to be big before the Interstates.
The Interstates changed everything in the Western United States. But
if you think about the thirties, forties and fifties, there
were Neon salesmen from Esco and all the little sign
companies driving around all of those states Wyoming, Idaho. They
(47:18):
were going to every community talking to the cafe owner saying,
you're going to get a lot more business if you
let me put up a Neon sign. A lot of
times this sign company would actually pay to build it
and just charge the motel or cafe owner a lease.
So it wasn't that Yeah, it wasn't that much fun
and money for him. But they had this sense that
(47:40):
it was going to make them a sophisticated community. And
you know, if the interstate had chosen them to pass through,
it would have worked. But a lot of those places
were never never really put on the map, and so
the Neon seems overdone to us, but to them it
was just the next step in progress. It was just
part of the twentieth century drive to progress.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
That was your Instagram, that was your TikTok. That was
your social media marketing. In a way, it was your
six signs, especially like the Western Appliances signer San Jose,
which is when I want to get you fully cow,
it's first than it's enormous. And you know if you
(48:25):
have like a forty for sign, picture for sign and
it's above the trees, yeah, you're going to go to
Western Appliance at least once in your life. So it
just amazes me that all these little ranger towns, all
these little coal mining towns, still have a remnants of
(48:46):
the old mid Midstentry West.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Mm hmm. Well have you have you read any of
the Rudy Stern stuff that he writes about Neon. He's yeah,
he's from New York. He's gone, I think now, but
he's his company is still there. But he says Neon
signs and symbols were the light of the American dream.
Oh doesn't that just say it right there? He says
(49:13):
it was the he calls it the electric pen where
we signed our identity along the highway, And I love it.
I've viewed those quotes in my book because driving around
the West as a kid, that was the way it
imprinted on my vision and I just wanted to document
it for my kids and grandkids.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
And you did the board's work. Let me just tell you,
just making his books is a step into the dark
in a way, and will people buy them? And then
you're putting all that out there is amazing?
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Well it was. It was a labor of love, but
it was super fun and I had so much help.
It's a great sign love and community out there. And
when you go into the store and you say, hey,
you're in my book and you show them that their
sign is in the book, They're just all over it.
It's not a hard sell at all. And you know,
like I said, go I speak everywhere for free. People
(50:12):
are like why signs? Why did you get into signs?
And by the time we get done talking, they're like, Oh,
I'm going to buy this for so and so because
this is a perfect gift for them. And so I
wasn't worried about the interest. Mostly, I was just trying
to document it because we lose signs every day and
I got so sad about that, and I thought, well,
(50:34):
at least I can take them, take the photo, put
it in a book, put it on the internet. It'll
always be in the library. People want to look it up,
they'll still be able to see what it looked like.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
Awesome, And that's a great segue for our last segment.
We're talking with Lisa Marie reliless history. Go and find
her books at King's English.
Speaker 2 (50:59):
King English Bookshop in Salt Lake City.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
Kings was poshed off in Salt Lake City. They have
online presence. I'll have a link to how you can
get the books in the show notes when this goes live,
which is kind of redundant because if you're listening to it,
it's already live. We'll work out the details later, but
when we come back, we will ask Lisa Marie what
are some of her bucketless places to go to? I mean,
(51:24):
she's already if you don't want to break out, like
the suv, the four wheel drive, the uh, you know
the old International Scout with the you know, the slant
four wherever that engine was. I just go around the
hills the mountain sides of Utah, search for science. I
don't know what to tell you. She's painted an amazing picture.
Speaker 2 (51:46):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (51:47):
When we come back, let's get to the places she
wants to go to. It you're listening to International Signfinders.
Welcome back to International Signfinders. I'm your host, Graver Anthy.
(52:10):
Glad you're with us. You are listening to the show
where we're featuring the amazing Lisa Michelle. Sorry I had
to bring bark.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
That's okay, I answered to Lisa. Sorry too, I get
it all the time, right right.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
And so we've been talking about Utah. Southern Utah. You know,
was that front Northern Utah EBD little towns that you
probably would never have even heard of unless somebody just
mitches in passing, unless you're from that area. Now let's
(52:50):
get into some buckles places because for me, I'm jealous
of the Utah sign experience because I don't remember much
Neon growing up in eastern North Carolina like I can.
I can only find one Neon sign that I know of,
and I didn't know it existed until I looked on
Google mats. It's the old Columbia Theater in Columbia, North Carolina.
(53:13):
And the old son I can really remember growing up
was a place called Golden Skillet, big plastic signed with
fluorescent bulbs in it, but you remembered it because it
was a big old golden skillet. W are they serve chicken?
And so for me, just talking with Lisa, Michelle has
(53:37):
just my oldest daughter told me asking where we go
to our next road trip. I'm like, I haven't a
clue right now, and maybe this will bite me in
the butt to you know, get out and go west
again and searching for signs as such. You know, I
gotta let the family do their thing every so often.
(53:58):
But now let's get into your bucket list of places
now growing up in you know, like California, going across Nevada, Utah,
You've already got seen a litany of some of the
most amazing signs ever made in the country's history, throwing Albutquerque, Denver, TUSA, Tucson.
(54:21):
I need to get to Tucson and apparently they have
a great sun guide as well there in Tucson, which
I need to order. But worst places that you would
love to go to to take pictures of signs, and
it doesn't have to be to the US. It could
be you know, Mexico City's got some really cool ones. Poland,
London's got a few, Japan, Hong Kong. So where's some
(54:46):
places that you'd like to go to?
Speaker 2 (54:48):
Yeah, Well, as far as International. I was really shocked
about Italy. I felt like Italy when I went there
a few years ago, had so many neon signs, and
it was really surprising, and like, just walk around Rome
and you know, obviously not on the main thoroughfares, but
just go down the side streets and you'd just be
shocked at every restaurant and has this all neon sign
(55:11):
And so I did a lot of that. I didn't
post them because I've been trying to focus on Utah
on my Instagram, but that was a pretty fascinating thing
just to see old world neon, not exactly like American style.
A lot of the sign styles are different. But as
far as if I can go anywhere and do signs,
(55:31):
I always go to the same three places. I always
go to New York, always go to San Francisco, and
go to Chicago, because I think you could walk those
streets for years and still not see everything. One of
the most magical experiences was I was up on the
Upper West Side in Manhattan. It's been three or four
years ago, I think, and I was, you know, just
(55:54):
I was always photographing signs, even not for my book,
just because they're so beautiful, but I came upon the
Dublin House tap room, and it was before it was restored.
It's a big, huge Irish harp in Neon Green. I mean,
sure you've seen it because a lot of people post it. Now.
It's been restored now, But when I came on it,
(56:14):
it was one of those magical moments where you just
stand there on the sidewalk for twenty minutes and stare
at it because it's so beautiful but it's so in disrepair,
and I just had that helpless feeling like, oh, is
someone going to save this sign or is this just
the last time I'm ever going to see it? And
so going back a couple years later and walking there
(56:37):
and seeing it restored, and just again standing there for
twenty minutes in a trance looking at how beautiful it
is restored, I siphine, Yeah it is. And you can't
really replace that with photographs. You almost have to see
it in real life. And I've just found that New York,
San Francisco and Chicago they give me that. You know,
(56:59):
all I have to do it was just come out
of my hotel room and walk one direction for two
or three hours, and you just see every single kind
of sign you could ever want to see. So that's
the kind of stuff I do. I do a lot
in California because that's the land of my you know,
ancestors kind of. I was raised in both northern and
(57:19):
southern So like a few years ago, I went back
to Livermore, California, where I went to elementary school, and
I was shocked how much they'd preserved of their main street.
And that was really fun to see. So, you know,
it's just the kind of thing where a mid century
girl has to go back to see what happened to
that town?
Speaker 1 (57:38):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (57:38):
Like I remember it?
Speaker 1 (57:40):
That's awesome. One place, you know, hours till people Pukateillo.
You know, we you know, living in Idaho for a while,
we kind of Pokatillo's kind of the joke in a way,
and I wish I had never taken that attitude, especially
with the restoration projects they'd done there. Put Patello Arco, Arco, Idaho.
(58:02):
I've been to Arco. It's you have to get lost
to get to Arks.
Speaker 2 (58:07):
You can't. You can't dive her from there.
Speaker 1 (58:10):
I know, yeah, And you're like, I don't falls. I
didn't realize until I went back to Idaho. Falls about
twenty twenty one, how much neon or maybe not working neon,
but old shells of neon are still the remnants are
still all around the town.
Speaker 2 (58:30):
And it's like you saw it her new eyes though.
Speaker 1 (58:33):
Right, exactly correct. And also I tell people Oklahoma City
don't sleep on Oh Okay so much.
Speaker 2 (58:44):
I'll put that on the list.
Speaker 1 (58:46):
Yeah, and uh, there's was the Automobile Alley. Uh there
in downtown's downtown Oklahoma City. They've restored one of those
huge like billboards size you with neon signs, put it
up on top of the building. And they also have
(59:07):
some new signs able Pontiac. Oh, it's an old it's
going to come to me as soon as we stopped talking.
Hudson they have a Hudson sign and just I could
talk about automobile allley all day long. And it's not
very long, but it's a pretty cool place. But the
(59:29):
one place I want to get to internationally, I want
to get to Calhoun Waald City in Hong Kong before
the mainland Chinese take out all the neon them force
them to put led in. Yeah, I want to get there.
Speaker 2 (59:46):
You better hurry.
Speaker 1 (59:47):
I know they're doing it fast too. But this will
bring us to the end of our show. I know
this is a short segment because Creatures hit the hour mark.
I'm still trying to figure out how to pace the
show since I've gone away from Zoom. But are there
any websites people that severed you want to plug before
(01:00:10):
we take off?
Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
Oh, there's a bunch in Utah that are really great
part of our sign community. There's a House Daneology. She
does a lot of work on historic buildings. And Jacob
Barlow dot Com. He does amazing work. Whenever I googled
a business to figure out what mom and pop he
always had beat me to it and it was on
his website. Obviously, I love Debra Jane Seltzer Roadside Architecture.
(01:00:37):
She's like the bible of everything. Neon Lover eight oh one,
he's been great to help me with all the Utah
stuff I couldn't get. And Lori Bray Photography. She doct
him on all the Sugarhouse signs and she's incredible. And
then I will give Yesco a plug. Brimley, Neon, Rainbow,
(01:01:00):
me On. Those guys are just like they are. The
work courses of everything we enjoy is because they did
their jobs and they do it so well and so
those would be my pugs.
Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
And also you got to give credit to you know,
there's there's a lot of history that is written down
in the you know, especially in Utah, people were taught
you write down your history, and uh, you know, faithful
for them. You can. It's not one hundred percent perfect,
but at least somebody's written down something about some like
(01:01:33):
a sign or like you know, you're talking about the
napkin where they made start steering. Yeah, you know, kudos
to them. Well, that'll bring us to the end of
this podcast. I know, we could probably go another two hours.
Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
It was fun. It was great fun. And I help
people google the book and check it out. They'll enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
And if you need help get in there. I'll help
you get there. I will hold your hand and get
you over to the bookshop. But go and visit her
stuff Relentless History on Instagram and until next time, get
out there, hit the pavement. Take those pictures. We don't
care you have one follower or one hundred thousand, Tay
(01:02:20):
those photos afloat us to Instagram and share with us
all because whether we've seen it once or a hundred times,
it's still a part of history and until next time,
have you sign Finding
Welcome everybody to another episode of International Signfinders. Sorry, it's
been a while since I've gotten back on the mic.
A lot of school the election, working with the radio
last week. I just think it was just the hangover
from all the crazy that's been happening. And now we're
finally back on the air. I'm your host, Drew Abernathew
(00:40):
glad that you're with us, and tonight we have a
special guest coming to us from the Beehive State. And
you know there's a lot I've interviewed quite a few
people over the past few weeks to have done books.
We had all Heavy Pages Press last week talking about
the hand painted signs of Chicago going there putting out
(01:00):
a book about the stock car racing, handpainted numerals on
those cars and stuff like that out of the Chicago area.
We had Heather David on a few weeks ago. She's
done some stuff with San Jose and the restoration projects
of San Jose. She's also done Motel California. She's got
(01:22):
another book out as well. I think it's out of
print right now. And also can't forget Retroroside Photography, who
has a great website and it would not surprise me.
She puts out a book within the next little while
as well, And tonight you're going to learn why not
just Salt Lake City, but the whole state of Utah
(01:46):
should be on your bucket list, because there's some amazing
signs and restoration projects and just areas of Utah that
really you should pay attention to. And a writer, if
not just one volume, but two volumes of relentless history
(02:07):
is our guest tonight, Lisa Michelle Church. Welcome to the show.
Lisa Michelle Thanks, it's great to be here. Yeah, glad
to have you here. And ever since I saw that
you did a book one, oh what was it, back
in twenty one or twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Two, Yeah, twenty twenty two, I did Vintage Signs of
Utah Volume one, and then just this month is Vintage
Signs of Utah Volume two.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
It's coming out weird. I mean, we're lucky just to
be on the front end of this of the second
project here at International Sign Finders. And before we get
to anything else, before we get to the books, what
have you? Won't you introduce yourself to the sign community
if they don't know you already.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Sure, so I'm Lisa Michelle. I have been posting on
Instagram for about six and I've been active in photographing
signs for probably fifteen years. Oh wow, I'm a road
trip kid. I was raised in California in the sixties,
at the height of the mid century, when there were
(03:16):
millions and millions of beautiful signs in the West. And
my dad was a truck driver, a long haul truck driver,
so we were always on the road and just really
saw signs as art, really as beauty on the road.
My dad was originally from southern Utah. My parents were
(03:38):
from southern Utah, so there was all kinds of road
trips from northern California and southern California across Nevada into
Utah as a kid, which was the height of like
going across the desert at night because of the heat,
waiting for the neon to, you know, come up on
the horizon, and then me and my brother and sister
(04:00):
are like, oh, come on, dad, it's got a pool.
Let's stop there. You know, you just have It's just
a formative time of my life when I just romanticized
the American Highway and fell in love with signs and
little motels. And cafes and theaters and all the things
that had me on signs. So then I, you know,
(04:23):
I grew up, went to college in Salt Lake City,
lived on the East Coast for a while, became a lawyer,
raised my family, but I always kept up on the
road trips, and I raised my kids on road trips.
And so when my law career started to wind down
fifteen years ago, I decided, Hey, I just want to
devote myself to this. I always was a photographer, and
(04:47):
I thought, I'm just gonna get on the road and
take pictures and document these things before they're all gone.
And that was kind of my journey.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Yeah, and it's you know, just following you or the
amount of time I have, You've really kind of put
into my consciousness all these signs that have both been
you know gone the way of you know, the earth,
whatever that phrase is, or the ones that been like
(05:18):
not well, some of them they repurposed, like the Bowling Alley,
uh there in south south State Street that's now apartment complex. Yeah, classic, Yeah,
I give them a lot of credit for doing that. Well,
you mentioned Nevada. I don't think people outside of the
(05:40):
people who don't go outside of Las Vegas. Let's just
put it that way, Vegas that is ADHD Neon all
in one, you know, amalgamation or whatever you want to
call it. But you know, little towns like Wells and Elie,
win amuck A, Battle Mountain, Sparks, heck, Reno, the world's
(06:02):
biggest little city, has a lot of really cool neon.
What direction would you go through Nevada? Would you come
up through uh, if you don't want to tell me,
that's fine. Would you come up through like Las Vegas?
Or would you go across where you know I eighty
is over? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I think I think you'd have to do I eighty.
I mean, Nevada is pretty desolate. So you got to
mind your p's and q's if you're going to go
across the middle of Nevada. But if you go across
southern Nevada on I fifteen, you know, you do get
a lot of cool remnants of the old Highway ninety one,
which was originally called the Arrowhead Highway from LA to
(06:42):
Salt Lake, and then it became Highway ninety one and
today it's known as Interstate fifteen. But they you know,
you just get off the road at any exit you
guys have all heard of the roy sign, you know,
in those kind of places, and so you just find
those little pockets all long, either I fifteen or I eighty,
(07:03):
which goes from Salt Lake to San Francisco. And when Laca,
as you know, is a really great place for old signs.
And then there's wind Over Will you know. He's a
big kind of like Vegas, vic except he's at the
northern end of the intersection between Utah and Nevada. And
(07:24):
so there's a lot in Nevada. But you got to
be a pretty hardcore road trip person because they are
a few and far between, and then when you hit them,
they're really exciting.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Now the way advantage I have when it comes to
Nevada and we'll get to Utah. Don't don't get me wrong,
we're going to get into the Utah stuff here. If
you're listening, you every want to get into that more.
But I have a buddy who is a regional manager
for NAPA for West Idaho and I want to say
(07:55):
northern Nevada. He also gets part of northern Utah and
every so often he'll sit be pictures from like Elee
from Battle Mountain. He knows I love Battle Mountain. I
want to get there. Have a friend who works at
a gold mine in Battle Mountain. But it's just one
of those little because they were they were listed as
(08:17):
the Armpit of America at one point and we wanted
to go on a road trip there and we never
got to it. But you know, you have the Owl Club,
which is probably one of my bucket list places, and
we'll get into bucket list later on. If you're a
fan of the show, you know we'll do that. But
the Owl, he just every time he's a Battle Mountain,
(08:38):
it senits me a photo of the Owl and I
love it, absolutely do. And I'll share some of his
stuff on Instagram. But have you have you got to
document any of the like that I know there's the
Nevada Neon Project. Have you gone back into Nevada and
got some photos over there recently.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Or not recently? I mean I've definitely because I go
back and forth to California on those roads. But when
I set out to do my books, I had to
really focus on one particular geography, and so I just
decided I'm going to do the state of Utah. Make
sure I document every single thing. Anyone tips me off
to because my focus was still existing signs that people
(09:21):
could take my book in their car, they'd beat wherever
they were in the state, they'd look it up, and
then there'd be this whole history of the sign that
they were looking at right that minute.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Oh that's amazing, and that's a great place to stop.
For the first segment of this week's episode of International
Sign Finders. When we get back, we're going to get
into that. We're going to talk about not just the
Sign of History Volume one, but we'll also get into
volume two, which just came out fresh off the press.
As you can smell the four color you know, printing
(09:53):
press right now as we speak, and you're listening to
International sign Finders. Welcome back to International Signed Finders. Glad
you're with us. We have Relentless History Lisa Michelle on
(10:15):
with us. You can go and I'll have how you
can get in contact with her and find her where
you can buy her book and stuff like that in
the show notes Relentless History on Instagram. But tonight we're
gonna be talking about her books. We're gonna kick off
starting off talking about her books, and she has just
(10:36):
said that her books if you're looking to do a
tour of Utah by signed Tour of Utah. These are
great resources for that, just like Heather David made the
It's a little painful type of book. It's a cool
little book though, but you can use that book as
kind of a guy to start a starting point for
the signs of San Jose. This is a great resource
(10:59):
for signs of Utah. Boom Utah. Right then you Wan's
surprised with jackieo Photo does one of Wyoming. So she
took a whole month and just went across Wyoming and
that needs to be done as well.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
So let's down.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Into the books. So volume one, what does that entail?
And then we'll get to volume two and what that's
all about.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Okay, So Volume one, which came out in twenty twenty two,
was a compilation of about two hundred a little over
two hundred signs in Utah that are from the period.
Really I start with nineteen hundred and I go to
about nineteen seventy. I stick pretty much in that time period.
(11:43):
I have all kinds of signs. I have billboards, I
have neon obviously most of them are neon. I have
a lot of ghost signs painted on buildings, and I
have some bulb signs. And then one of my quirky
things is signs that are in weird shape, like bowling
pins or gigantic keys, or we have an amazing sign
(12:06):
in Utah that's a double ice cream cone, scoop double
scoop of ice cream cone that rotates. So to me,
that was kind of the categories. And then the book
has sections based on the type of business. So it
has a whole chapter on motels, a whole chapter on cafes,
chapter on theaters, chapter on stores and markets, and then
(12:32):
a chapter on just various things that don't fit one
of those categories. And then I finished with the ghost signs.
So for me, it's pretty uh, carefully curated, because I
wanted people to be able to stop in their tracks
when they're on a road trip and just be like, Wow,
that's sign. I wonder where that's from, what's that about?
(12:54):
And so then they can just pick up my book,
flip to the index, get right to the picture, and
then and every single picture has a little paragraph that
talks about who started the business. If I know who
designed the sign, what year it was built, who restored it,
you know, just all the details that you would want
to know if you were sitting right in front of
(13:15):
the sign.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
I mean, it's basically a database in your hands. I
was like, and for me, I'm not very organized. I
will just be making a list of size to get
take pictures up. I'm ahead of the curve get away.
But it's for the first book. Was it just like uh,
(13:40):
you know, like the you know, like Solid Valley, Utah Valley,
or was it all of Utah?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
All of Utah? I had my entire sign photo archive.
I divided exactly in half. I didn't put all the
good ones in volume one and leave the not good
ones for volume two. I divided it in half on
perse because I wanted both books to be equally stunning
as far as the cool signs that are in them.
(14:07):
And then in the first book, I did a history
of the sign artists in Utah. So who are the
artists behind these amazing signs. I look at science first
as art pieces, then I look at them as mom
and pop businesses, Then I look at them as community history,
and then finally I look at him as what gives
(14:29):
me my sense of place in the world. You know,
the map that gets built in your head when you're
a kid, like oh, we're almost to the bowling Pin signs,
so we're almost to Grandma's house, or you know those
kind of memories that get pegged as a little kid.
You don't realize it, but that map is in your head.
And I really did my books so I could go
(14:51):
speak to people about signs. So I speak almost every
month somewhere and they always yeah, they always start out
by telling me that story, like oh, do you have
a picture of the of the tree Sombres sign? Because
those three guys would just wave back and forth up
on Highland Drive and I would see them every day
when my mom drove me to school, and you know
(15:12):
what I mean, there's always a pig like that. So
I wanted to know who the sign artists were, and
I researched them. The original ones premon that painted all
the signs. They were hand painted. Those guys were actual
oil painters, like famous artists. They had won prizes at
the Territorial Fair for their landscape artistry, but they couldn't
(15:37):
make a living at it, so they ended up being
commercial artists just to make a living. And it was
really fun to develop their stories. And then when Neon
came in. There was some really amazing artists. Thomas Young
who started Young Electric Sign Company, which is now known
as Yesco and it's an internationally famous sign company. But
(16:00):
Thomas Young was an immigrant to Utah in the nineteen
hundreds and he actually got his start painting names on caskets.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Oh he did.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Yeah, they pinstriped and did decorative painting on caskets and
he got all of his experience on the hand painted
signs in that business. But in nineteen.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
He sorry, in my mind, now I get like, you know,
you're talking about pinch stripes on caskets. I'm thinking of
like the pinch stripes of the Low Riders. Yeah. Yeah,
so they're Telefornia and you have like some amazing pinch
striping and you know, you go out of this world
to the next.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Right what not? A lot of people see the work
so after it's done. But anyway, he was a big one.
But he's still you know, their company's still around. They're
the ones that did all the Vegas strip in the
nineteen thirty these and forties. They moved to Vegas and
opened a branch office and they are responsible for every
(17:06):
famous sign you associate with and they just barely did
like Allegiance Stadium in Las Vegas, all the signage there.
So I talk about Thomas Young, but I also talk
about the little shops, like in nineteen thirty two, brothers
Harvey and Leonard Brimley, they just jumped in the car
and drove to Chicago and found a neon bender shop
(17:29):
and just said, teach us how to bend neon. We
want to do signs, And they bought all the equipment,
drove back to Salt Lake and they did hundreds and
hundreds of our Neon signs throughout the rest of the
twentieth century and they're in still in business, the fifth
generation Brimley Neon. And then I did a lot on
(17:50):
Rainbow Neon, which is another multi generation Neon vendor company
that is still in business with Vin Sky Coley, who's
on Instagram you can find him. But anyway, it was
just really important to me to document the artists in
that first book. I really wanted people to understand this
was not just a commercial enterprise, it was an art enterprise.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
And I've you know, just seen some of those signs.
The one that comes to mind first is the Salt
Late Costume company, right when I took the picture. There's
a church across the street from the apartment complex that
has the sign there, and then you have fins right
across the street from that church as well, and some
(18:36):
other things. I just remember getting strange looks from the
folks who were setting up for the Christmas dinner, and
I was like, eh, yeah, so I tried to walk
across get my pictures a get at fixed. Oh I didn't,
you know, have the cops called on me? But uh,
it's just the the the character. I mean, yeah, there's
(19:02):
I mean the painting sign, you know, the artistry. Wait,
that's that sign is a character as well, because yeah,
you today, this is medieval. This is a you know,
we're we got some cowboy. We're just strapping some armor
on him. History book, it's true. But here's the cool
(19:26):
thing you can look at. Okay, So, Lloyd Coley is
Vince's dad, and Lloyd Colly is the one that did
the Solid Costume Company sign. He's passed away, but his
work lives on. He sat and drew that up and
when you look at it on the internet, you'll be
stunned at how how detailed it is. And and so
(19:48):
two really great things about that. So years and years later,
after his dad had passed away, Vince got the call
and the people that owned the building, and they said,
can you come restore the sign because we're closing the
costume company, but we're gonna save the sign and we're
going to make it into apartments and call it salt
like costume apartments. So isn't that amazing that.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Vince got to restore his dad's sign And it's still
super gorgeous, But just a couple blocks away there's a
totally different, contrasting vintage sign. It's called Stark Steering Yes,
and it is just Lloyd Coley and the and girls
start sitting there on a napkin, drawing it up in
(20:31):
their own little handwriting and making and making me on.
When you look at it, you will see the evidence
that this is just some guy's handwriting. It's it's beautiful
in itself. It's not solid costume, but it's still a
really amazing art piece.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
And just reminds me like the El Cortes for some reason,
because that still is handwriting as well. And when you
sit in it's a real estate company that's there that
has the start a steering Now is that right.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
It's actually an art gallery now, but it's been through
a couple of things, but they all have kept the sign,
which I'm so so happy about. But Vince told me
when I was first interviewing him, I was looking at
the archive of the name of Rainbow's neon signs and
he was showing me, Oh, my dad did this one, Oh,
(21:23):
my dad did this one. And he kept saying, this
is my dad's handwriting like this, you know, And it
was really evocative for him because his dad was an
art student. He had an art degree from Weaver State College.
He wasn't you know, a casual person about this. He
really before they had computer fonts, imagine he could do
(21:46):
some art as handwriting and then make it into a sign.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
It just reminds me of the old Dan ex Solo
font books. You know, probably one of the biggest influencers
of like the nineteen twentieth century for fonts is Dan
Solo and just seeing some of the the artistry behind
those fonts. Even like a big grotesque or brutalist font,
(22:14):
there's art behind it.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Mm hmm. That's right. And Brimley's story was kind of
the same. I mean, his dad, Kirk Brimley carried on
the tradition and they did lots of signs with their
own designs. And David Brimley has this great quote. He says,
but the design is everything. You know, you can be
the greatest neon vendor in the world, but if you
(22:37):
don't have a good design, you're not really an artist
to begin with. The rest of it kind of fails.
And I just respect that so much.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah, I get in it. Oh man. So I'm in
our class right now, and there's a whole bunch of
beginning guys. And I've taught myself, had to draw and such.
But it's interesting to see my fellow classmates grow. And
I couldn't imagine being there in the nineteen thirties secteen forties,
(23:10):
where you're creating this, Like you said, this is whole cloth.
You're just you just have an idea in your head.
You're going with it free hand, freehand. Oh my gosh. Yes, yeah,
that's how I draw normally. It's freehand. But that is
beyond amazing. And that's a great place to end our
(23:31):
second segment. When we come back, we'll get it to
a volume. We should we get into volume two. In
the next sect y yeah. Okay, we'll get into volume
two and this will get us some places of interest
for me, a couple of bucket list places. You're listening
to International sign Finders. Welcome back to International Signfinders. Glad
(24:06):
you're with us. I'm your host, Drabernathy, And tonight we
have the amazing Lisa Michelle on with us, relentless history,
author of Bitious Signs of Utah Volumes one and two.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (24:19):
That's correct? Volume two just barely came out.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Man, congratulations on that. That's it's a labor of love.
If you do not come away, just even if you're
just looking at like the highlights, you don't view it
as a labor of love. I don't know what to
tell you, honestly, uh, to be honest with you. But
(24:42):
for some reason, oh what is that? There's a niche
clothing shop in Salt Lake City is gonna skip my mind.
It's a new it's a new place with new neon,
but they have a very much mid century modern feel
to the sign. He's gonna do you know who created
that one?
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Or are you are you thinking of retro Betty?
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yeah, retro Betty?
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Yeah, yep, yep, that's a David Brimley sign. Amazing new
neon but very cool.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Yeah, and I just love that they kept they kept
the motif going. You know, with then mid century, it's
gaining new life in a new century. And maybe it'll
it'll evoke a future signed makers and neon benders and
stuff like that within the Salt Lake Provo, you know,
(25:35):
the Wasatch Front. Maybe it'll inspire them. Hey, let's let's
get to you on the tradition. Uh yeah, So buying
two you get in some pretty cool little areas. You know, Helper, Utah.
You don't hear many people outside of pro Utah and
the Inner Mountain West talk about Helper, but there's something
(25:57):
magical about that little town with its neon.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yeah, it's definitely a coming on, big, huge center for
neon restorations. So the tiny little town in central Utah,
it used to have twenty thousand miners in it because
it's in coal mining country, but now it's very very small.
Coal mining went away, but at that time they have
(26:22):
thirty three bars in the mid twentieth century and some
houses of prostitution and things like that that come along
with communities. And so then it just got abandoned when
the coal mining went away, and for twenty or so
years sat vacant, and then these guys that have restored it,
(26:43):
they all just kind of came together in a magical
moment about ten or fifteen years ago. One of them
is called Gary Vincent, Gary de Vincent, and he was
a Harley Davidson guy who had a shop up in
northern Utah and place where he kind of restored old cars.
And as usual, you know, the city made it tough
on him where he lived, and so he got on
(27:06):
his bike and drove around and came upon Helper and
he thought, this is a place I could call home.
And at the same time, there were a lot of
people that were artists looking for places off the Los
Ate Front, and so they all came there as art galleries.
And luckily all the old signs were still in place.
They were just resting in the buildings, and so people
(27:29):
like Gary, he went on like he's walks up to
this shed that's old wooden shed, and he just looks
at the proportions of it and he goes, you know
what that looks like an old service station. And he
peeks in the window and he can see that the
shed was built around a nineteen thirty's chronicle station that's
pretty much in place. The original Neon sign is still
(27:54):
sitting there with the original Neon and you know not
he knocks down the shed and just makes the station
come to life. And David Bramley of Bramley Neon was
hired by de Vincent to come in and redo the
sign and then they just made this great partnership where
they've gone into this place like called the Lincoln Hotel
(28:16):
on Main Street in Helper, and they've redone that whole
vertical blade sign that goes up the building. De Vincent
and his friends have all worked on painting the old
ghost signs that are on almost every building there. They're
repainted so you can read the Piggly Wiggly market sign
or the automotive services signs. There's an original J. C.
(28:40):
Penny's metal yellow and black sign on a building that
is now an art gallery. Yeah, it's Helper is incredible
and they have just taken off. They have car shows there,
they have you know, markets there every weekend. The main
street is now completely lit. Me On Brimley redid the
(29:02):
Strand Theater sign, which is an enormous rainbow it's just
really breathtaking and fun to see a community rally around
something like restoring signs and streets, gate and buildings and storefronts.
You know, it really takes your breath away and helpers kind.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Of the of what is the is it Highway two
or six?
Speaker 2 (29:28):
It's Highway six in Highway forty. It's a hard place
to get to. It's not by any interstates, which is
why it remained in that amazing preserved condition. You know,
nobody wanted to come and redevelop it until they did,
and it took artists to do it. And I give
them a lot of credit those artists that have really
(29:50):
stuck with keeping it authentic. It's more than nostalgia. It's
not corny. It's like really gritty and it still has
its minor it's ability to it, but it's but it's
got the signs and I just love it. It's been
fun to feature them. I featured Helper really prominently in
my second book, as well as Ogden. Ogden in northern Utah,
(30:14):
they have a historic twenty fifth Street and they've restored
all their Neon signs along twenty fifth Street and it's
just wonderful because it's right next to the old rail depot,
so it was all kinds of people, all kinds of
hotels again, bars, restaurants. One of the most famous signs
(30:35):
on Ogden's twenty fifth Street is called the Star Noodle Dragon.
Is it really famous? Yeah, And it was actually featured
in the movie Blade Runner because it's got this dragon
head where he he because of the neon is animated.
(30:55):
He sticks out his tongue, he blinks his eyes. He's
a pretty Fairs dragon. And I was able to interview
the guy that restored it just recently, is named Steve White.
He works for Yesco. And in my book, I have
pictures of all the different models that he had to
build just to give him self a sense of, you know,
the lines of the sign and the surfaces and how
(31:18):
to recreate different parts of it that had rotted. But
it's in beautiful shape now and so it's featured in
the book. And then the third place I feature in
the book is Sugar House, which is an area of
Salt Lake City that has one of the last rotospear
signs still in existence. If you know what that is?
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Cool? Yeah? Is it a sign an object or it's
a sign?
Speaker 2 (31:44):
I mean it's a sign. It has the word Granite
Furniture used to be on it because it was the
granite Furniture store that bought it in nineteen sixty one.
But you know, there were only two hundred and something
signs in the whole country that were designed by that
guy in Milk and the rotosphere rotated and it was
completely illuminated and you could see it for miles and
(32:07):
miles and yeah, ours was restored again a few years
ago because of community efforts, and it still spins above
the city, but it doesn't have the granite furniture anymore.
It's just the sign because people loved it and it
was such a landmark.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
I've also seen from Neo Lover eight one's feed. It
was a Springville very south of Probo. There's a guy
who has kind of like a old bar type thing
and he's got a lot of restored neon.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah, right, yeah, there is there. He's mostly got petroleum signs.
It's mostly old service station signs, but yeah, he's got
hundreds and hundreds of them. It's right there in Utah County,
just about twenty miles south of Salt Lake City. It's
a fun place to go. Me I really like him,
and they're now natural habitat. So I'm not quite as
(33:03):
excited about the museums. Although I'm totally happy that they
preserve neon signs anywhere. I'm very happy. But to me,
there's just something so magical about seeing them in the wild,
you know, where they were originally built and where they've
been repurposed. I think that's that's my preference. But but yeah,
I mean, I love the guy Petrolinia. He's got a
(33:26):
lot of really cool signs. And same with the Neon
Museum in Vegas. You know, it was started by Jesco
where they put all their boneyard signs and it's super
fun to walk around and there's a lot of old
Utah signs that got boneyard there, and so I'm glad
that they're there, and I'm not criticizing them. I'm just saying,
can't we find a way to keep them in our communities?
Speaker 1 (33:50):
And like, well, I was talking to Oh, who was
it from Chicago recently? Oh? It was heavy pages pressed.
I was talking to Day and like Chicago has some
weird laws that yeah, you can have neon, but you
can't have animated or blinking Neon. So a lot of
(34:11):
those old blinking arrow signs, like the big bulbs are
gone now because of the dumb city ordinances. And guess
I said, dumb mom, you can. You can wash my
mouth out later. But like in uh Denver and some
other places, you have to fix the sign on the spot.
(34:34):
You can't I think San Francisco. Parts of San Francisco,
you have to do this in order to restore it.
You have to do it there on the spot, or
you have to take it down completely. You can't put
it back up.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
You know, Saltlate Orance, they did have that ordnance. But
when the Salt Lake costume sign came up, and that's
been like ten or fifteen years ago, when that came
up for restoration, the whole community need lobbied the Solid
City Council to change the ordinance and they got it change,
so we don't have to do the restorations in place anymore,
(35:08):
which is such a great thing for all of us
sign lovers.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
No, is it just solid like or is like the
surrounding towns like West Valley City, Taylorsville.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Most of them have followed suits. That was you know,
the sign ordinance was anachronism back in the days, like
you said, where the city beautification would just say, you know,
if it's an old sign and you're not taking care
of it, you have to take it down. But there's
a lot more respect for old signage now in Utah,
and I'm really proud of the communities that have rallied
(35:41):
around And that's why I featured him in the book
because I want other communities to say, hey, we could
do that with our signs too. One thing I want
to mention about Utah in particular, because we were on
the way to somewhere, like you were saying about Nevada.
Utah wasn't always a destination state. It is now more
with the National parks, but in the early days, it
(36:04):
was just on the way to somewhere, and so we
had so much neon on that old Highway ninety one,
with motels and cafes especially, and all of that until
the sixties and seventies was completely in place, and then
the interstate passed it all by and none of those
cities got you know, very good exit ramps. So it
(36:26):
was cool for us signed lovers because all that just
stayed in place, and the people built new motels over
on the on ramps and all the downtowns. Get off
Interstate fifteen. If you're driving through Utah, just get off
every single town and drive through it and you will
see some cool signs every single town and.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Even like out of the way town you showed Bryce Canyon. Yeah,
this will be a quick we'll do a brief break
we come back. I kick myself for not taking pictures
of signs in Penguich, Utah. I oh yeah, so it's
(37:08):
a treasure trove. Yeah, and we'll talk about that when
we come back. And this, this segment of regret is
brought to you by me and I just oh yeah. Anyway,
you're listening to International sign Finders. Welcome back to International
(37:34):
sign Finders. I'm your host, Drew Abernathy. We have the amazing,
wonderful Lisa Michelle with us tonight, relentless history, author of Bitches.
Signs of Utah, Bolumes one and two. Get them both.
I need to get them. Maybe it'll be an early
Christmas present or something like that if my wife loves me.
But uh, the question that comes to mind when you're
(37:57):
talking about all the little towns like Pinguich, I've seen
the Bryce Canyon Motel. I think there's a few more there.
In Pinguich. What are you got? Moab which has a
lot of cool signs and stuff like that there, Bryce
kind of does from memory. They have that custard shop
(38:20):
on the south side of town, which is that paint
me on is just amazing. It's right across from the McDonald's.
I remember because we stopped there honorary back to Houston
because my wife's family has a place in Park City. Yeah,
I trust man, I don't have that money. That's a
family thing.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
But if you go to Park City, just about ten
miles away as Coleville peenial Ottle Town, and they have
so many ghost signs. Oh my gosh, they've done an
amazing job of keeping all their ghost signs. Every single
building has a beautiful hand painted sign from like Levi's
or a chocolate come. It's really amazing. You wouldn't even
(39:02):
know it because it's just like a few a few
miles off the interstate.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
And I need to get to Kimmera or Wyoming. I
know that's Wyoming, not Utah, but you know you go
through Diamond Coachville, Uh, Diamondville, I think, and Kimera's a
little bit off the beaten path if I remember, right,
you know, that's the first JC Penny was There's right,
that's right. So yeah, so like hidden gin little towns
(39:27):
like you know, we City. Cedar City is a bigger town.
But like Penguich and Beaver and places like that.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Yep, every one of them in my book, every one
of them has two or three incredible signs. You probably
have seen the Sleepy Lagoon Motel which burned down a
long time ago, with the sign is still up that one.
Google it. It's right outside Beaver. Like I said, just
get off the interstate. There's a town every hour in Utah.
(39:58):
That's how Brigham Young planned it that way in the
old days with the pioneers. There needed to be a
town every hour an hour wagon right away. And so
you just get off the interstate at Saint George. When
you first come into the state on the south end,
there used to be twenty seven motels in a town
of five thousand people. There were twenty seven motels because
(40:20):
of the traffic thesion.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
And also it's on the way to Las Vegas, right
and you know, you know California, you get scoot over
to Arizona from there too.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Right, so there's only a few left. But the Sands
Motel in Saint George is a definite bucket list. Most
of my Instagram people will will say that, then you
go up an hour to Cedar, you'll see cool signs
on the main street. Then you go up an hour
to Beaver, you see the sleepy lagoon. Then you go
over an hour east and you get to Penguiche. Well,
(40:57):
no interstate ever came to Pengui, so it's just Christine,
Christine and Church's Blue Pine Hotel has their original nineteen
fifties neon. That's my husband's family. Oh cool, And yeah,
Penguich is so cool. And then it's right next to
Bryce Canyons. You can have a little outing, and then
you go north from Panguich up through Richfield, and then
(41:20):
you can go to Price and help her like we
just talked about, and then circle back into the big
Wassat's front urban area, go through Springville and Provo, and
then you get the Salt Lake Valley and you'll see
in my book hundreds of signs in the Salt Lake
Valley that you can enjoy. And then keep going to
Ogden another hour up the road, you'll see historic twenty
(41:44):
fifth Street, and all this stuff in Ogden keep going
up farther you get to Logan, Logan, Utah's college town,
and they have a bunch of amazing neon still. And
you know the old Bluebird Cafe, which is from nineteen
fifteen East have neon bluebirds lining up the whole building.
But there's there's still one neon blue bird. If you
(42:07):
go get out of your car and stand in front
of the cafe which is closed, and look up, there's
a there's still a neon bluebird that lights up.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Now Brigham City. Does Brigham City have a big neon
welcome sign?
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, they do. Ogden and Brigham City have the two
remaining welcome signs that span the whole highway, and their neon.
One of them's led. Now actually they've changed the part.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Darn them. And I can understand, you know, the price
of neon price that's redundant.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
It's it's it's also heavy neon, super heavy. So like
that Rhoto spear sign, they had to take the neon
off and put led because it really saved on the
energy costs. And it made me sad, but we were
better to have the sign and not have it at all.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
And Brew Canyon, Uh, Bring Canyon loved that little town,
you know, pass through you know, several times, going you know,
from Moab up to I seventy I think it is.
And then we've always just not stopping Green Canyon there. Finally,
back in twenty twenty two, I convinced my wife, let's
(43:24):
stop at Green Canyon. And you like Sleepy Hollow, the
rob Robbers.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Robbers Roost, yep, they're all in my book and the Cult,
and you can read in the back of the book.
It'll tell you who started the Robbers Roost, who you know,
who designed a Sleepy Hollow? All of those are documented.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Yeah, Now who came up with the one with the
homemade pies?
Speaker 2 (43:47):
And that's the Thunderbird Cafe sign down by Zaion National Park.
It's it's it's called Mount Carmel Junction. Well, the family
is proud of it. I mean, that's the same family
that's on it since the forties. And they they thought
it was a clever way to spell homemade. They you know,
(44:08):
they feign innocence, but it is. It is a double
on tundra and it's so colorful. Everyone loves that sign.
It's one of the most photographed.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
It's sorry, my my inner like twelve year old just
giggles at it. Every time he comes up with my feed.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
I'm like here, yeah, oh gosh, and we'll be like,
did you get out to like Hurricane and yeah, all
to that in place like that, and well you said,
yeah you did.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Uh well, I think there's there's probably a few I've missed,
but I really cooperate a lot with Neon lover. I
don't want Brandon Nev. He's amazing, and so if I
couldn't get somewhere, he would always let me use his
sign pick in my book. So he got out to Vernal,
which is very far east, and then the Vernal Theater
(44:59):
was restored that marquee. And he also gave me his
amazing picture of the Dinoville Hotel, which is a giant
pink dinosaur, a flexic class dinosaur. So yeah, the far
flung ones. He gave me some help on. There's another
town that was a railroad town west of Beaver, Utah.
(45:19):
It's in the middle of nowhere. It's called Milford, and
Milford has incredible Neon and it's all just like when
you walk up to this, I walk up to the
hotel Milford, and I say to the guy, Hey, I
just want to take a picture of your sign, and
he's like, well, I turn it on for you. But
last time the building caught fire, so it's like turn
(45:41):
it on. It's it's a hot bed. That's what I'm saying.
If you get off the beaten path, almost every town
in Utah will have two or three this.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
It just kind of reminds me also of Wyoming. Uh, Like,
you know, we're going through we just went past dow Boys.
You're in the you're like, you know, central European thick
forest type of area, and all of a sudden you're
(46:16):
probably forty minutes outside of dou Boys, maybe give or
take about ten minutes, and you have the Archer Resort
sending in the middle of the woods. It's almost like
you take like the Norman Bates Motel, they put it
in the middle of the woods. If you're like this
(46:37):
seemed great. This is a great plot point for a
horror story, right, But it's so And even on the
other side of Yellowstone, going through Island Park, there's a
little bit of Neon in Island Park and that's I
don't know how big Island Park is probably one hundred
and fifty people.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
Do you have to figure each one of these commune
unities thought they were going to be big before the Interstates.
The Interstates changed everything in the Western United States. But
if you think about the thirties, forties and fifties, there
were Neon salesmen from Esco and all the little sign
companies driving around all of those states Wyoming, Idaho. They
(47:18):
were going to every community talking to the cafe owner saying,
you're going to get a lot more business if you
let me put up a Neon sign. A lot of
times this sign company would actually pay to build it
and just charge the motel or cafe owner a lease.
So it wasn't that Yeah, it wasn't that much fun
and money for him. But they had this sense that
(47:40):
it was going to make them a sophisticated community. And
you know, if the interstate had chosen them to pass through,
it would have worked. But a lot of those places
were never never really put on the map, and so
the Neon seems overdone to us, but to them it
was just the next step in progress. It was just
part of the twentieth century drive to progress.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
That was your Instagram, that was your TikTok. That was
your social media marketing. In a way, it was your
six signs, especially like the Western Appliances signer San Jose,
which is when I want to get you fully cow,
it's first than it's enormous. And you know if you
(48:25):
have like a forty for sign, picture for sign and
it's above the trees, yeah, you're going to go to
Western Appliance at least once in your life. So it
just amazes me that all these little ranger towns, all
these little coal mining towns, still have a remnants of
(48:46):
the old mid Midstentry West.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Mm hmm. Well have you have you read any of
the Rudy Stern stuff that he writes about Neon. He's yeah,
he's from New York. He's gone, I think now, but
he's his company is still there. But he says Neon
signs and symbols were the light of the American dream.
Oh doesn't that just say it right there? He says
(49:13):
it was the he calls it the electric pen where
we signed our identity along the highway, And I love it.
I've viewed those quotes in my book because driving around
the West as a kid, that was the way it
imprinted on my vision and I just wanted to document
it for my kids and grandkids.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
And you did the board's work. Let me just tell you,
just making his books is a step into the dark
in a way, and will people buy them? And then
you're putting all that out there is amazing?
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Well it was. It was a labor of love, but
it was super fun and I had so much help.
It's a great sign love and community out there. And
when you go into the store and you say, hey,
you're in my book and you show them that their
sign is in the book, They're just all over it.
It's not a hard sell at all. And you know,
like I said, go I speak everywhere for free. People
(50:12):
are like why signs? Why did you get into signs?
And by the time we get done talking, they're like, Oh,
I'm going to buy this for so and so because
this is a perfect gift for them. And so I
wasn't worried about the interest. Mostly, I was just trying
to document it because we lose signs every day and
I got so sad about that, and I thought, well,
(50:34):
at least I can take them, take the photo, put
it in a book, put it on the internet. It'll
always be in the library. People want to look it up,
they'll still be able to see what it looked like.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
Awesome, And that's a great segue for our last segment.
We're talking with Lisa Marie reliless history. Go and find
her books at King's English.
Speaker 2 (50:59):
King English Bookshop in Salt Lake City.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
Kings was poshed off in Salt Lake City. They have
online presence. I'll have a link to how you can
get the books in the show notes when this goes live,
which is kind of redundant because if you're listening to it,
it's already live. We'll work out the details later, but
when we come back, we will ask Lisa Marie what
are some of her bucketless places to go to? I mean,
(51:24):
she's already if you don't want to break out, like
the suv, the four wheel drive, the uh, you know
the old International Scout with the you know, the slant
four wherever that engine was. I just go around the
hills the mountain sides of Utah, search for science. I
don't know what to tell you. She's painted an amazing picture.
Speaker 2 (51:46):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (51:47):
When we come back, let's get to the places she
wants to go to. It you're listening to International Signfinders.
Welcome back to International Signfinders. I'm your host, Graver Anthy.
(52:10):
Glad you're with us. You are listening to the show
where we're featuring the amazing Lisa Michelle. Sorry I had
to bring bark.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
That's okay, I answered to Lisa. Sorry too, I get
it all the time, right right.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
And so we've been talking about Utah. Southern Utah. You know,
was that front Northern Utah EBD little towns that you
probably would never have even heard of unless somebody just
mitches in passing, unless you're from that area. Now let's
(52:50):
get into some buckles places because for me, I'm jealous
of the Utah sign experience because I don't remember much
Neon growing up in eastern North Carolina like I can.
I can only find one Neon sign that I know of,
and I didn't know it existed until I looked on
Google mats. It's the old Columbia Theater in Columbia, North Carolina.
(53:13):
And the old son I can really remember growing up
was a place called Golden Skillet, big plastic signed with
fluorescent bulbs in it, but you remembered it because it
was a big old golden skillet. W are they serve chicken?
And so for me, just talking with Lisa, Michelle has
(53:37):
just my oldest daughter told me asking where we go
to our next road trip. I'm like, I haven't a
clue right now, and maybe this will bite me in
the butt to you know, get out and go west
again and searching for signs as such. You know, I
gotta let the family do their thing every so often.
(53:58):
But now let's get into your bucket list of places
now growing up in you know, like California, going across Nevada, Utah,
You've already got seen a litany of some of the
most amazing signs ever made in the country's history, throwing Albutquerque, Denver, TUSA, Tucson.
(54:21):
I need to get to Tucson and apparently they have
a great sun guide as well there in Tucson, which
I need to order. But worst places that you would
love to go to to take pictures of signs, and
it doesn't have to be to the US. It could
be you know, Mexico City's got some really cool ones. Poland,
London's got a few, Japan, Hong Kong. So where's some
(54:46):
places that you'd like to go to?
Speaker 2 (54:48):
Yeah, Well, as far as International. I was really shocked
about Italy. I felt like Italy when I went there
a few years ago, had so many neon signs, and
it was really surprising, and like, just walk around Rome
and you know, obviously not on the main thoroughfares, but
just go down the side streets and you'd just be
shocked at every restaurant and has this all neon sign
(55:11):
And so I did a lot of that. I didn't
post them because I've been trying to focus on Utah
on my Instagram, but that was a pretty fascinating thing
just to see old world neon, not exactly like American style.
A lot of the sign styles are different. But as
far as if I can go anywhere and do signs,
(55:31):
I always go to the same three places. I always
go to New York, always go to San Francisco, and
go to Chicago, because I think you could walk those
streets for years and still not see everything. One of
the most magical experiences was I was up on the
Upper West Side in Manhattan. It's been three or four
years ago, I think, and I was, you know, just
(55:54):
I was always photographing signs, even not for my book,
just because they're so beautiful, but I came upon the
Dublin House tap room, and it was before it was restored.
It's a big, huge Irish harp in Neon Green. I mean,
sure you've seen it because a lot of people post it. Now.
It's been restored now, But when I came on it,
(56:14):
it was one of those magical moments where you just
stand there on the sidewalk for twenty minutes and stare
at it because it's so beautiful but it's so in disrepair,
and I just had that helpless feeling like, oh, is
someone going to save this sign or is this just
the last time I'm ever going to see it? And
so going back a couple years later and walking there
(56:37):
and seeing it restored, and just again standing there for
twenty minutes in a trance looking at how beautiful it
is restored, I siphine, Yeah it is. And you can't
really replace that with photographs. You almost have to see
it in real life. And I've just found that New York,
San Francisco and Chicago they give me that. You know,
(56:59):
all I have to do it was just come out
of my hotel room and walk one direction for two
or three hours, and you just see every single kind
of sign you could ever want to see. So that's
the kind of stuff I do. I do a lot
in California because that's the land of my you know,
ancestors kind of. I was raised in both northern and
(57:19):
southern So like a few years ago, I went back
to Livermore, California, where I went to elementary school, and
I was shocked how much they'd preserved of their main street.
And that was really fun to see. So, you know,
it's just the kind of thing where a mid century
girl has to go back to see what happened to
that town?
Speaker 1 (57:38):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (57:38):
Like I remember it?
Speaker 1 (57:40):
That's awesome. One place, you know, hours till people Pukateillo.
You know, we you know, living in Idaho for a while,
we kind of Pokatillo's kind of the joke in a way,
and I wish I had never taken that attitude, especially
with the restoration projects they'd done there. Put Patello Arco, Arco, Idaho.
(58:02):
I've been to Arco. It's you have to get lost
to get to Arks.
Speaker 2 (58:07):
You can't. You can't dive her from there.
Speaker 1 (58:10):
I know, yeah, And you're like, I don't falls. I
didn't realize until I went back to Idaho. Falls about
twenty twenty one, how much neon or maybe not working neon,
but old shells of neon are still the remnants are
still all around the town.
Speaker 2 (58:30):
And it's like you saw it her new eyes though.
Speaker 1 (58:33):
Right, exactly correct. And also I tell people Oklahoma City
don't sleep on Oh Okay so much.
Speaker 2 (58:44):
I'll put that on the list.
Speaker 1 (58:46):
Yeah, and uh, there's was the Automobile Alley. Uh there
in downtown's downtown Oklahoma City. They've restored one of those
huge like billboards size you with neon signs, put it
up on top of the building. And they also have
(59:07):
some new signs able Pontiac. Oh, it's an old it's
going to come to me as soon as we stopped talking.
Hudson they have a Hudson sign and just I could
talk about automobile allley all day long. And it's not
very long, but it's a pretty cool place. But the
(59:29):
one place I want to get to internationally, I want
to get to Calhoun Waald City in Hong Kong before
the mainland Chinese take out all the neon them force
them to put led in. Yeah, I want to get there.
Speaker 2 (59:46):
You better hurry.
Speaker 1 (59:47):
I know they're doing it fast too. But this will
bring us to the end of our show. I know
this is a short segment because Creatures hit the hour mark.
I'm still trying to figure out how to pace the
show since I've gone away from Zoom. But are there
any websites people that severed you want to plug before
(01:00:10):
we take off?
Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
Oh, there's a bunch in Utah that are really great
part of our sign community. There's a House Daneology. She
does a lot of work on historic buildings. And Jacob
Barlow dot Com. He does amazing work. Whenever I googled
a business to figure out what mom and pop he
always had beat me to it and it was on
his website. Obviously, I love Debra Jane Seltzer Roadside Architecture.
(01:00:37):
She's like the bible of everything. Neon Lover eight oh one,
he's been great to help me with all the Utah
stuff I couldn't get. And Lori Bray Photography. She doct
him on all the Sugarhouse signs and she's incredible. And
then I will give Yesco a plug. Brimley, Neon, Rainbow,
(01:01:00):
me On. Those guys are just like they are. The
work courses of everything we enjoy is because they did
their jobs and they do it so well and so
those would be my pugs.
Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
And also you got to give credit to you know,
there's there's a lot of history that is written down
in the you know, especially in Utah, people were taught
you write down your history, and uh, you know, faithful
for them. You can. It's not one hundred percent perfect,
but at least somebody's written down something about some like
(01:01:33):
a sign or like you know, you're talking about the
napkin where they made start steering. Yeah, you know, kudos
to them. Well, that'll bring us to the end of
this podcast. I know, we could probably go another two hours.
Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
It was fun. It was great fun. And I help
people google the book and check it out. They'll enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
And if you need help get in there. I'll help
you get there. I will hold your hand and get
you over to the bookshop. But go and visit her
stuff Relentless History on Instagram and until next time, get
out there, hit the pavement. Take those pictures. We don't
care you have one follower or one hundred thousand, Tay
(01:02:20):
those photos afloat us to Instagram and share with us
all because whether we've seen it once or a hundred times,
it's still a part of history and until next time,
have you sign Finding
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The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!