Second Round

Today I went down the Country Club and Speedway area.

This sign, right on Country Club, was for a small convenience/ liquor store. To me, the sign looks like it's from the early 80's and could very well have been standing there for 30 years. The store it self was covered in a non-homogeneous paint job which was a combination of faded yellow and white and looked like it was applied as regularly as the need for it arouse.

This sign was right in Speedway for a closed down gas station completely vacant and surrounded by chain link fence. The surrounding area was covered in graffiti; a cab driver, who was smoking, sitting in his taxi on the lot, told me was just tagged a few days ago.

First Signs

Today I went down Broadway to snap a few photos of the signs there. It was mostly abandoned stores from the economic slump in 2009-2010.

This is the abandoned Mervyn's shopping center that shutdown a few years ago. You can see the letters slowly decaying.

This is the old Circuit City that closed two years ago, although it hasn't aged as much as the Mervyn's store, you can notice decay along the edges.

This is the store front for Lucky Wishbone, a restaurant with food with so fatty, you could quench your thirst with the grease. The sign is the defining feature of this lot, and it's very distinct at night.

Why

As I'm in Tucson over the summer i've decided to make the most of it. I've noticed that Tucson has varying and alluring signs distributed all over the city. They're there to give identity to shopping plazas, give stores a distinct impression and they function to add character to a very hot and rapidly expanding city.

Many of these signs are old relics from the past. A few are from the 50's the 60's the 70's, perhaps even earlier. Some are falling down, decaying as the decades press on, yet they manage to maintain an existence. For some reason, no one has bothered to take these signs down, update or replace them. That might change in the future. I'm not going to wait until it's too late though.

I'm taking it upon my self to document them this summer.