Monkeypete.com is the work of Eric Junker, creative director and founding partner at WJ Agency in Los Angeles, California. My passion for hand-made signs causes me to frequently pull the car over in bad neighborhoods and remote towns to take photos. My wife is very patient
Here’s an excellent example of existential questions asked in hand-painted signage. Confusion Hill is located on Highway 101 in Piercy-Leggett, California nestled amongst the Humbolt Redwoods.
It’s an incredible, thrilling, twisty lonely 250 mile motorcycle ride on old Highway 3 from Ferndale on the Humbolt Coast to Yreka in Siskiyou County. Halfway between Weaverville and Yreka is the dying lumber, mining and ranching town of Callahan. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it. It’s not a ghost town yet because the little general store is still opened sometimes. Farrington’s Store (since 1860) was open, so I stopped for a soda and chatted with an old-timer who told some good stories. The Callahan Ranch Hotel was opened in 1854. He said it has been abandoned pretty much forever, although every once in a while somebody passing through says they want to buy it and fix it up, but “why the hell would anybody want to come and stay in a hotel in Callahan?” The dimensional lettering on the facade is remarkably well preserved considering the condition of the rest of the building. The dimensional lettering is really unusual: it’s painted with an above-looking-down perspective although the viewer sees the sign from below looking up. It’s a bit disorienting… kind of like the town itself.
Monkeypete wishes he were on vacation in tropical Sayulita, Mexico. Instead he is working in Los Angeles on a gray day and feeling a bit gloomy. This morning I was feeding my escapist daydreams with photos from last year’s trip, and I came across these pics of some lovely hand painted signs. Sayulita has an exceptional sign painter, who’s lively and skillful work evokes the spirit of the great carnival sideshow banner painter Snap Wyatt. Next time I’m there I’ll track him down and do an interview. If you find yourself in Sayulita, be sure and have dinner at the Sayulita Cafe : the service is great, the margaritas are strong, and the molcajete is exceptional.
The hand-painted signage on the food trucks around the Washington Monument in Washington DC are culture clash of stylistic non-sequiturs. They advertise food from the USA, Asia, Germany and Italy with lettering that combines elements of Roman and Indonesian alphabets.
Here’s another treasure from last weekend’s trip to the desert. This faded pink trailer sits about 6 miles west of Desert Hot Springs on Pierson Boulevard. The Flamingo Hotel and Spa is now defunct, and I could find out little about its history other than there was a small fire there in 2008. I love signs where the sign maker uses as many alphabets has he can. Look closely, and you can see the sign painter was quite skillful, and much of the lettering has been rendered with single strokes. I’m not sure, however, if a pink semi-trailer in a bleak landscape surrounded by razor wire is the best advertising vehicle for a relaxing spa experience.
The desert climate is interesting because it simultaneously destroys and preserves. This beautiful mid-century neon sign for the now abandoned Hacienda Riviera is located on Hacienda Avenue in Desert Hot Springs, California. The wind and sand have stripped away much of the paint subduing the original colors and revealing the artists brush strokes in the lettering. The neon tubing has been destroyed by vandals or the elements. However, because of the dry air, the structure is not rusting, so there’s a lovely sad sense of arrested decay. Remarkably the sign is completely graffiti free.
When in San Francisco, meat lover’s and sign aficionados should stop by Little City Meats on 1400 Stockton Street in North Beach. The third generation owners run this butcher shop true to the spirit of their Italian ancestor who settled the area. It reminds me of the shops my Italian grandmother would drag me to in New York where she’d haggle with the butchers for hours to get the best cut for her bistecca fiorentina at the lowest price. The butcher would keep us fidgety kids quiet during the negotiations by giving us thick slabs of balogna on pieces of waxy white butcher paper. The signs in the window have been skillfully painted using a variety of lively old-school show-card alphabets and precise speed-ball style hand lettering.
Here, a sign painter in Northern Mexico worked this funky freehand cursive with a handful of sweet design tricks: chrome highlights, key lines, drop shadows. It’s slick and awkward at the same time, which makes it especially appealing. So appealing, in fact, that I was compelled to go in and buy something. I walked away with a plaster buddha the size of a deflated basketball that must weigh thirty pounds.
From Tijuana in the north to Cancun in the south, Mexico’s fantastic hand-painted signage is a national pop-cultural treasure. It would be fascinating to explore the regional variations in colors, typography and imagery. I discovered some great signs in the town of Sayulita, about an hour north of Puerto Vallarta. Here’s a great painting of a can of Cerveza Modelo that looks like it’s launching on a refreshing trajectory into outer space.