This past summer in my uptown New Orleans neighborhood I noticed some funky stuff going on in the shop windows. In a city in which local and neighborhood identity means everything to folks, certain shop owners had taken the step to support a local artist in the most surprising way. Instead of the standard issue open/closed signs that most places use, a number of shops in the area had hand-painted signs — all of them painted and dated by the same guy: Simon.

I never got the story on Simon. Later I saw that he owns an antique shop and calls himself a “Louisiana habitat endangered artist.” Likewise, it is the wit and personality of his signs that calls out. Many of his “closed” signs, for example, omit the final letter “d” thus presenting the visitor with a pun, “store close.” His closed sign for the women’s shoe store Bella is cut in the shape of a foot, and a separate sign of his in the window announces, “girls love shoes.”

The oval-shaped brand at the bottom of his signs make Simon the Ford of hand-painted open/closed signs in Uptown New Orleans. But even he has competitors. Still, as a shopper, it was with a small smile that I crossed the threshold into shops signed by him. If there is as unique a visual culture to another commercial strip in America, I haven’t seen it. But I’ll be looking.

and ring the alarm, cause today is Raafmonster’s birthday. Tonight there will be much making merry and galavanting around New York Town. Give a shout to join our hijinks.

22 Monday eve at the Hudson Hotel, come grind to the Basement Bhangra sound of DJ Rekha.
The doormen are serious, so indeed do RSVP!

Our NPR friend Matt now lives in Kathmandu, a city of infamous congestion. But like all systems of seeming chaos, he notes that:

…another way to look at traffic here is that it depends on generosity and an understanding of some very subtle self-enforced rules. The fundamental approach to driving requires quick reaction, distance perception to the millimitre, and lots of horn honking. If you’re a motorcycle or a car, you honk your horn on average three times per block. But unlike back home, honking isn’t used as a form of aggression, it’s more a courtesy. Like the way waitstaff in a fancy restaurant would lightly touch your elbow and say “pardon me.” In fact pedestrians here get angry if a driver doesn’t honk, because it’s seen as wreckless. Luckily, not honking is rare.