Soylent Purple?

This is going to be a quick one.  I've been home sick from work, which means being both bored and not terribly motivated, which seemed like a good time to put up this sign.  It's not paint.  It's not technically a ghost. But I liked the combination of the aging painted metal sign and the aging metal alarm.

A Yahoo user says Global Surplus Machinery is a scientist's dream, filled with both good stuff and junk.  This is a pretty cool picture of the place from behind during twilight.  Otherwise, the place doesn't seem to have much of a footprint on the interwebs.

The alarm is from Viking.  I guess that's probably this one.  But maybe it's this one.  At least it isn't this one.

Less Cute Than A Baby Polar Bear

I'd seen this one on other blogs, but not been able to find it.  Then I decided that, as a good Minneapolitan (??), I needed to stop in and visit the Electric Fetus, our local iconic record store.  Of course, as soon as I walked in listening to a podcast on my iPhone, I realized that there really isn't anything I want to buy at a record store.  But if you're the type of person who buys music on discs (digital or vinyl), or you're interested in other gifts and funky merchandise, you should go.  I didn't buy anything.

But the trip wasn't wasted.  I got a little exercise, and on the way out, bam, there is the sign.  I'm so proud.  I rock.

So, Knudson's Department Store, as Mr. Lileks points out (link above), wasn't very big.  The building houses a good sized record store for today, but big box it is not.  I've not been able to find much the sign's retailer, although someone included it in their neighborhood scavenger hunt (pdf).  It's now right next to the freeway, so maybe its history disappeared under the concrete with the rest of the surrounding commercial district.

And, of course, it's another Scandinavian last name, so there is a lot of noise in the search results.  Obligatory Flickr link here.

Finally, as far as I know, this has nothing to do with the sign, but how could I not bring you a photo of someone named Knud Knudson?

Foreign Lands: Money Is A Ball

So my re-commitment to the mission didn't last long, but what can I say?  I went into my archive of backlogged Minneapolis signs and wasn't inspired, so it's back to strange and mysterious land of St. Paul.

Minnesotans of a certain age will remember Norwest, which was acquired by Wells Fargo in 1997.  Before there was a consolidated Norwest, Northwestern National Bank was the anchor of a multi-state bank affiliation that dated to the 1920s that helped its members survive the great depression.

I may be wrong, but in my memory Norwest was the first bank in the Twin Cities to offer free checking, which makes me remember it fondly (low bar for positive bank feelings, eh?).  The Norwest logo used to be a common site around town.

As to less common sites, Norwest's "weatherball" in downtown Minneapolis is too good not to include.  I don't have any memory of it, but apparently they had a 157 foot tower on the top of their headquarters, which was largest bank sign between Chicago and the west coast (do you think people stopped to see it after checking out the largest ball of twine?).  At the top was a color-changing ball that would give you a primitive weather forecast.  Minnesotans love a good weather prediction, so the ball grew in popularity until it became central to the bank's marketing (check him out lounging on the beach in the first link of this paragraph).  It was actually popular enough to prompt a local news report in 2007.

Alas, the ball went down with the rest of the bank's headquarters in a destructive fire on Thanksgiving day in 1982.

You can see another shot of the sign on Flickr.

Insert Ole & Lena Joke Here

I've been holding on to this one for awhile, because I've haven't been able to find much to say about it.  I rather like it, I guess because of the nice combination of fading and legibility.  I drove  by the other day and was reminded that I hadn't posted it yet.

For obvious reasons, "Erickson" isn't exactly an uncommon last name in Minnesota and there are any number of decorators out there with that name, so Google hasn't been that much help.  This person apparently worked there, calling it "prestigious," and apparently worked on the IDS tower while there.  If you're into that sort of thing, you can take a look at the building's environmental history here (I have no idea why you would want to).  It's already been on Flickr here.

It's on Nicollet Ave. between 27th & 28th Street, on the side of what is now Rainbow Chinese Restaurant & Bar.

Not That #2

I feel like I've been straying from the mission a bit too much lately (what's up with all those foreign signs, eh?), so let's get back to it.  We're in Minneapolis again, and we have an honest-to-goodness ghost sign.  And as an added bonus, we get to see a little glimmer of summertime blue sky and green leaves.

This building is veritably wrapped in signage on all sides (see below), but I put the best one up top.  It's on the southeast side of the building, and under the "for lease" sign you can see that it says "Cameron Transfer & Storage Co." who were agents of Allied Van Lines (a brand now owned by Sirva, which brings up professional memories I will keep to myself).

It turns out that I found much more than I expected about this building and about Cameron.  It seems that Schafer Richardson has (or had) plans to redevelop the site and claims that the building was built in the early 1900s and is eligible for the National Register of historic places.

The company name seems to come from Carlisle Cameron, a Canadian-born businessman who took over what sounds like a carting business in here in 1884 and was still at it 42 years later.  It seems the company was active in something called the Central Warehouseman's Club in the early 1920s. Now that sounds like an antitrust problem waiting to happen.

At least one other blog has shared the more generic signage on the opposite side of the building.  One has to wonder both how you make storage truly fire-proof, and just how rampant fires must have been at the time to make avoiding it such a popular point of advertising.

The business also shows up in a Minnesota Supreme Court decision from 1910.  It seems that someone made the foolish decision to remove their goods from the fire-safe premises of Mr. Cameron and lost them to a fire on a train.  Tsk, tsk.


Others have posted this building to Flickr here and here.

Foreign Lands: Beaver Pelts During Typhoon?

Once again, this isn't technically a ghost, as the business is still in operation, but as I just got back from China, I thought I should try to bring you something from overseas, and this is as close as I got.

This sign is in Hong Kong, near the intersection of Des Voeux Central and Chiu Lung Street, or, more parochially, between the China-like part of Hong Kong and the New York-like part.  I was a little surprised that there would be much of a market for fur in Hong Kong's humid subtropical climate, and yet it's apparently one of the world's biggest exporters of fine fur.  Apparently status trumps common sense and morality.  I guess that shouldn't be a surprise.

See a product label here and a related sign here.

Can We Get Some Swiss Cake Rolls?

You probably wouldn't notice as it's not going to be a major change from the recent pace, but I'm going to be away for a bit, so you'll just have to wait awhile for the next post (which I think will be #90).  Hopefully this one will be sufficiently satisfying to hold you over.  If you really want to do it up first-class-prison-style, get yourself some water to enjoy while you read.

So, yeah, this is a sign a long abandoned Holsum Bakery Thrift Store on 5th Street North.  This is a pretty desolate bit of town these days, as the area is surrounded by a few major roadways and the county incinerator.  I have vague recollections of one of these stores from growing up, but I'm pretty sure it was somewhere in the north suburbs and not here in industrial downtown.

You can see this sign with a different set of tags here.  You can see in my shot that those tags were painted over some time before what now looks like "River Silk" came about.  Actually, as I look at that older shot more closely it says, "Riv" in large letters and "river" in smaller ones too.  I have no idea whether that's a gang thing or just a street artist thing, but this isn't the only tag in the Twin Cities with those words.  The Google streetview truck apparently came by in between tags. Check out some more shots here and here.

At some point, I think I read something about the role of a thrift shop like this, which sold discounted day old bread and bakery products, for the poor of the city.  Unfortunately, I can't find that source right now.  So I will leave you with a link to a less moving but still interesting (in a very different way) article about the history of the Holsum brand.

Now I'm Starving

This one's not really a ghost, as Kramarczuk's is a going concern, but I like the sign and it's a Nordeast institution.  If you live in the Twin Cities and have you haven't heard of it, well, you must be under a rock or something.  If you haven't been there, your taste buds, at least the ones that like things like Polish sausage and cabbage and potatoes and things, should be waging a silent war on your heathen soul.

What I didn't know is that Wasyl and Anna Kramarczuk were from Ukraine and came to America in the late 1940s.  Their "about" page is a bit vague on the details as to when they opened the deli, but let's just go with "a long time ago."  Here's Walter and Horace K., and a good amount of their fine product in 1998.

Somehow I didn't know that it was featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.  Guy Fieri says the sausage making started in 1954 with Anna and Wasyl, but the cafeteria was added in 1976 (a good year) by their son.  Hopefully none of the various generations of Kramarczuk's caused Guy to freak out on account teh gay.

I really should not have posted this just before lunch.

Foreign Lands: Tin In Your Pocket?

So this is another in my actually foreign, "foreign lands" series.  This one is in Denmark, and in Copenhagen to be specific (as you might be able to tell from the "Kobenhavns" in the leftward region of the sign).  This shot was taken while on the boat tour of the city's canals.  I tend to be pretty skeptical of that type of tour, but this one was actually fairly worthwhile, in that you could get a good sense of the city's layout from the water.

Unfortunately, I speak even less Danish than I do German, so I'm not going to have a lot to say about the sign itself.   My notes say "near the Royal Pavallion."  I've figured out where that is, but I don't know much about what.  If I recall, this may have been where the royals embarked and disembarked from their yachts, but that may not be right.

Anyway, please insert whatever lame chew joke you image I might have made here.  Meanwhile, "smokeless tobacco" kills, kids, don't do it!

Only Partly Spooky

 I was back on campus twice this week with the return of college basketball season, so let's head back to Dinkytown.  This building has paint-on-brick signs on three sides that are s snapshot of both the past and today.

Let's start with the present.  Annie's Parlour is a burger and malt institution that's been there since I don't know when.  Well, I say institution but I've only been there a few times and the last was at least twelve years ago, but hey, it's still there, so it's got that going for it.  It doesn't seem that to have its own webpage, but it shows up on a variety of user review sites.   This shot from Flickr gives a good perspective of the balcony that overlooks the space where the railroad tracks that may be the source of Dinkytown's name used to be.

 Next up is the partially ghost bit.  Ragstock still exists, but not at this location.  It's a second hand clothing company (started in 1954 to import and export used clothes) that operated at this location from 1979 to 2002 but closed due to declining sales and increasing rent.  I paid fifteen bucks there for a leather trench coat for a Halloween costume in college, but I moved away in 1999 and that clearly was the beginning of the end.  I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to the Dinkytown community.  It's all my fault.  It's the Kitty Kat Klub today.

The last sign, as you can see, is for Art Materials Inc.  I'm running short on time, and it's a pretty generic name, so I'll just leave you with a couple of old adds in the Minnesota Daily from Aug. of 1980 (pdf, pg. 12) and Nov. 1982 (pdf, pg. 13).