Saturday, August 20, 2011

Southeastern Minnesota Miscellany

I'm on the way to Omaha (more on that in the next several days, I imagine) but in the meantime, I've been wandering around southeastern Minnesota.

First, a small business sign from Rushford, one of the towns along the Root River bike trail:

Metal building with sign reading D&D Car Wash
The place where all the serious gamers take their grimy vehicles.

Then this unfortunate billboard:

Billboard missing its first panel so that it reads RUMPY'S LOUNGE

I know it's saying a lot, and some later art encounter may make me regret my hyperbole, but this struck me as the tackiest sculpture I have ever seen:

Bronze statue of a running girl with huge butterfly wings in rainbow stained glass
(Holiday Inn, Austin, Minnesota)

Unlike this liquor store sign, also from Austin, which is the height of humble understatement:

Cheers liquor store sign, promising A large selection of beer, wine and liquor

Finally, this logo, which I saw on a sign somewhere near Rochester:
Boat Angel logo, where the t in boat is an anchor below the other letters
I know I am an obstinate, oppositional reader when it comes to logos that try to use shapes as letters, but all I could think when I saw it was something like this:

Angel statue with a purple feather boa

2 comments:

Michael Leddy said...

I Googled "On & Off Sale" and just learned something -- thanks.

Daughter Number Three said...

I always forget about that Midwestern term, and how mystifying it used to be when I first arrived. It's pretty darned illogical -- a great example of how language is just a bunch of arbitrary signs that only make sense because of social arrangements.