Wednesday, August 26, 2009

In the Kut


a lot barber shops have the kind of hand made signs I look for. Here are a few I visited this summer.
The Purr-fect Cut, Winston-Salem,NC









Across the street from the Purr-fect cut









Southeast Barber and Style, East Atlanta.





In The Kut Bouldercrest Rd, ATL






Hey I'm having a really hard time editing this . I'm finding it really hard to work with.

The pink pictures of combs and brushes are across the street from the perfect cut in Winston - Salem as well as the lincoln barbershop with the scratchy sign.


I'm gonna try to fix this later . ugh.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Friday, March 27, 2009

HIll On Wheels






















About 3 years ago I attended the very first scooter rally held in Chattanooga, Tennessee,
the Hill on Wheels rally hosted by the Hill City United Scooter club. On e of the rides was up Look out mountain to Rock City.




















Rock City is a major tourist attraction and obviously made much of by the Chamber of Commerce and tourist bureau. But on the way to Rock City you can catch views of some true local color.














As well as some delicious decay.














You have to drive by all this stuff to get top the top.















These old motor lodeges have been..as they say these days..repurposed..for use as housing for the immigrant labor pool


































Another view















And back down in the valley..

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

To and Around St. Augustine - and Back


Here I come to the present for a trip I took to St. Augustine, FL for a scooter rally a week and a half ago. The first stop was McCrae, Ga to get snaps of the world ugliest Statue of Liberty.
















The next day I found myself leaving the scooter rally behind and riding my scooter out through one of those low parts of town when I came across Vic's House of Crabs.























































This church shares a parking lot with Vic's. And I don't knw why this is in a different font.












The next day I saw this place, The Show Boat Car Wash.

YOu drive your car into the back of the place and it comes out the front CLEAN!
You can kind of see the workings inside in this picture.

On a ride up the beach I found the Elks lodge.













After a mechanical delay with my truck I was on my way home. But I needed to make one last stop. Somewhere north of Nahunta and south of Trudie.
















The place.
















The Entrepenuer.


















The artist Albert P. Stephens.





Inside more of Albert's work.









Albert was a real character. He was proud of the guitars he had made and he even told me that he had done art work for television. He said he'd done the original drawings on which this mule was based.
This mule introduced the,"HEE HAW" show and would pop up in between jokes and say things like,"I don't b'lieve I'd a said that."
Albert also claimed to have done the character voice for the mule which he demonstrated for me. then he told me a joke.:
A little kid goes up to the counter in a store and says he wants to buy a pack of cigarettes.
The clerk says ,"YOu don't look old enough to smoke. How old are you?
the kid says, "Eleven but I can smoke. shit I went on my first date when I was 7"
clerk says, "Well damn who did you go out on a date with at that age"
kids says, "Hell, I was drunk I don't remember"

If you click on these pictures they will expand and you can get a better look. Especially at the car wash.
And there maybe a large gap before the Alices place pictures that I can't figure out how to get rid of.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Welcome to Signs/Wanders














Over the past view years it dawned on me that I had a strong attraction to the kind of signs you often see hand painted on the windows of seedy low rent businesses in the low parts of towns.














This idea really hit home when my wife and I rode our bicycles into Anniston, Alabama. We were celebrating out 20th wedding anniversary by taking an exotic trip to a town that by all appearances reached its peak about the time the state of Israel was founded and had mostly been on the skids ever since.

















We rode in on the Chief Ladiga bike trail-the same trail that in Georgia is called the Silver Comet.














When we got to Anniston I was struck by how many hand painted signs and empty storefronts there were.
































I realized that this was a very ephemeral phenomenon. These paintings represented marginal businesses and marginal buildings. They could be here today and gone tomorrow.














But mostly they were just really cool paintings made for a specialized purpose under sub-optimal conditions. Whimsical, surreal, and by necessity done quickly with a lot of energy.


















I have a lot of catching up to do to get everything I've already photographed into this blog so I'm gonna be going kind of forward and backwards at the same time.














Also I'm just figuring out how this blog works so check back as often as you can stand, leave a note and I'll try to bang this into shape. Thanx, Terry