A painted ghost sign for Tom Tucker “That dirty mother … lover” Southern-style Mint Ginger Ale, probably from the 1950s-60s, faded and worn but still holding on. Brighton Road, Perry South.
Blocked by a freestanding billboard for decades, the advertisement for Tom Tucker Southern-style Mint Ginger Ale may as well have been unearthed by archaeologists when it arrived out-of-the-blue a few years ago.
A person can still purchase Tom Tucker, but it won’t come in a 32-ounce green glass bottle anymore. Looking every bit the champagne of Southern-style mint ginger ales it is, the big bottle was painted directly onto a two-story brick wall of a row house along Brighton Road probably 60 or 70 years ago.
A solid investment. Coca-Cola ad still working today, Tarentum
Ghost signs, though—the original “ghosts”! Advertising, from a time before billboards were as ubiquitous as they are now, was created by sign painters directly on the brick walls of buildings in prominent places. We’re lucky so many of them survive and—for the companies that persist, at least—one has to believe it was a solid investment to pay for one wall in 1960 and still have it working for them today.
We’ve got so many ghost sign photos in the backlog that we’re going to break up the collection into some themes. This week: food & drink edition. We’ll get to the other stuff soon.
Soda-Pop … and other beverages
(unknown) giant pop bottles with a family rightfully in awe, Uptown
Coca-Cola, Sharpsburg
Duquesne Pharmacy / Coca-Cola, Duquesne
Kempler’s Deli Market / Squirt, Weirton, WV
Royal Crown Cola, Duquesne
Snee Bros. Dairy, Clairton
Cold Beer, Monongahela [1]
Cut Rate Liquor Store, Cumberland, MD
(unknown) Whiskey, Ambridge
Junk Food Junkies
Yetter’s Chocolates, et al. Millvale
Clark Bar, Hill District [2]
DeMiller’s Potato Chips, Larimer [3]
Flour Power
Bill’s Bakery, East Vandergrift
Henry Wer(?)’s Wholesale Liquor / Gold Medal Flour, Carrick
Gold Medal Flour, McKees Rocks
(unknown—LaPollo?) Grocer / Mother’s Best Flour, Lawrenceville
Kuhn’s Quality Foods, Perry Hilltop [4]
Kellar’s Groceries and Meats / Mail Pouch Tobacco, Lyndora
Mowad’s Mill City Inn, Lebanese Foods …, Aliquippa
E. Sterling Groceries / “The Real Kind,” Sharpsburg
Fiore’s Home Dressed Meats, Larimer [5]
(unknown) meats, Lawrenceville
W. Boehm Co. Grocer, Bloomfield [6]
Notes:
[1] Cox Distributing still sells cold beer from this location, but the style of sign painting and subsequent meter placement suggest this may be from an older business.
[2] While this Clark Bar ghost sign looks like some holy grail of the genre, Orbit readers informed us it was created for the film Fences which filmed in the Hill District in 2016.
[3] No, you can’t read the name DeMiller’s in this sign, but somehow astute Orbit reader Maggie Ess identified the building as home to the Keystone Potato Chip Co., 6635 Kelly Street, maker of DeMiller’s chips.
[4] Kuhn’s Quality Foods is still very much a going concern with eight stores in the region, but this brick building on Perrysville Ave. no longer hosts one of them.
Sunny city. A mural featuring the skyline of downtown Pittsburgh on the side wall of the Starlite Lounge, Blawnox
One would think … well, this one would think a lot of things that don’t turn out to be anywhere close to reality. One would think we would have run out of babies by now—no one knows where they come from! And you’d think every square inch of human flesh would be tattoo’d by now, what with the prevalence of retail storefronts that administer ink.
As much as we’d like to ask the hard questions around chicken fingers and vaping, political candidates and exactly who thinks Fred Armisen needs to keep appearing on television screens, this post is about that most evergreen of Orbit topics—how, despite what one might think, we never run out of new renditions of the Pittsburgh skyline. They’re littered throughout the metro area with a frequency so dense most take them for granted. But what about the vigilant eyes of the Orbit? Don’t worry—we’re still looking out for you.
Bubble city. No Names Pub, Lawrenceville
Here then is our latest collection—the eleventh in this series—of murals and store signage, handmade and professionally executed, all featuring downtown Pittsburgh’s familiar peaks: PPG Place, the Highmark Hypodermic, USX tower and the rest.
Until next year—and it will probably be pretty much exactly a year from now—keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the skyline.
Wooden city. Winthrop Community Garden, Oakland
Gray city. The Brookline Pub, Brookline
Pretty city. Riverview Antiques, Cheswick
Liquid city. Bloomfield
Gator city. Garfield
Black & gold & dog & cat city. Tails of the Burgh, Verona
Song poems wanted! Your original lyrics turned into guaranteed hit records!
On this cusp of a brand new year, we’re going where we’ve never been before—to the world of crowd-sourced collaborative songwriting! Your original words + Orbit‘s crack team of music industry has-beens = guaranteed hit records! *
Song poems started as low-rent, back-of-the-comic book scams—and maybe they still are!—but at least this one doesn’t cost you anything. Your original ideas put into words coupled with OrbitSound Laboratories veteran song stylists’ studio wizardry can make your dreams come true and turn you into music royalty—though it probably won’t generate any royalties from music.
It was dark outside, but 2023 started off with a warm glowing light in the early hours of morning. Blue hour window, Strip District (Jan. 9)
If a person’s eyes are the windows to their soul, then actual windows must be the eyes … to the outside world? redecorating options? exciting retail opportunities?
As we approach the end of another calendar year, some of us may reflect with the windows to our souls, but the looking back is probably more metaphorical. Today, though, we consider a year’s worth of very literal windows. It was shocking the number of glass-paned pictures that piled up in the ol’ photo log for 2023—so many that we could have filled multiple blog posts worth, but we decided to stick to the greatest hits.
The windows of homes are here—specifically row houses, for which sidewalk-facing windows have always served as tiny sets for dramas and expression—but also retail storefronts, industrial buildings, and one cemetery crypt.
Here’s looking at you, 2024!
Distressed/modern art window, Lawrenceville (Jan. 12)
Winter scene window, Lawrenceville (Feb. 9)
Dog Training window, Tarentum (Feb. 18)
Double stork window, Tarentum (Feb. 18)
Ice Box window, New Kensington (Feb. 25)
(Easter) bunny window, Bloomfield (March 7)
St. Patrick’s Day window, Lawrenceville (March 12)
Electrified and psychedlicized. One of many time-weathered ceramic photographs set into grave markers at Economy Cemetery
The cemetery outliers are all here. Silver gelatin flaking with weathered age. Sun-soaked and disappearing to time. Cracked by a century’s worth of freeze-thaw cycles. Behatted with a gaping wound across the brow as if struck by a vandal’s hammer. In one case, marvelous indigo Lucite glowing brightly in the afternoon sun but no longer protecting any recognizable image within.
Such is the fate of an early technology meant to immortalize not only the name of the departed, but also their visage.
In our last venture to Economy Cemetery, we focused on a particular subset of ceramic photographic discs inset to the cemetery’s grave markers. Those pictured appear to have left the earth’s bounds and gone straight into the aether. This week, we’re looking at another grouping of damaged portraits from the same hallowed ground. These are the crook’d and crack’d, the maimed and disappeared. They’re equally beautiful, magical, and tragic, but by a whole different measure.
For every portrait, there is a profound revelation in recognizing the exact moment in time when we experience these strangers’ final posthumous interaction with our own. Nothing lasts forever and any attempt to contradict that basic truth is doomed to its own cruel fate.
Enjoy me now, each of these disappearing portraits seems to say, we won’t be here forever.
Here’s where the strings come in. One of many ghostly images inset to grave markers at Economy Cemetery, Harmony Township
The woman is still recognizable, but just barely. The pale white complexion of her face and forehead is clear and intact as is her uncharacteristically short, slightly disheveled brown hair. She’s dressed in a Victorian-style formal high-necked gown, but in the photograph the dress looks full-on psychedelicized. One side of the woman’s head is disintegrating right before our eyes.
The whole scene looks like a pixelated digital effect created for low-rent science fiction, but this one’s falling apart the old-fashioned way. A hundred years of living outside in harsh Pennsylvania winters with toxic heavy industry air have started to corrode and dismantle this relic. That fact is both tragic—if you wish to see the woman’s image preserved—and beautiful in the haphazard way the photograph is dissolving. She’s not alone.
It was just about seven years ago to the day when The Orbit first tripped across the early-last-century ceramic photo insets at Loretto Cemetery. It was our first exposure to the phenomena and entrée to the fever. Along with the majorly disproportionate number of these at the little cemetery in Arlington Heights—and the near complete absence of them at much larger cemeteries—the experience totally flipped our collective wig.
Since that time, every trip to the boneyard comes with some amount of spying for these “posthumous portraits” both as historical record and the fascinating aesthetic of the completely random ways they weather and age. We dug deep. Not just at Loretto, but also Workmen’s Circle Branch 45 and Beaver Cemetery, where pre-war photo graves are similarly in great supply.
Nothing, though, had us prepared for the overwhelming volume of portraits available at Economy Cemetery in Harmony Township, just outside of Ambridge. The number was so great, the occurrence so common, that we abandoned any hope of a true cataloging of the form and stuck to the wild ones—the ghosts, disappearing acts, invisible figures, full blown possession.
There were plenty in just this minority of the total number that we’re splitting the subject into a two-parter. This week, the apparitions; next time, the crook’d and crack’d.
A note on the photos: You’ll notice there are no attributions to the people photographed as we’ve tried to do in the past. That’s in part because there are just so many to deal with and the task quickly became untenable. More than that, though, at least a third of the photos are from grave markers where the text is no longer legible and probably another third are in a variety of non-Roman alphabets—Greek, Cyrillic—that your author wouldn’t know how to represent accurately.
Wu-Shuryu-Do The Flowing Way / Strike Force Karate Academy, Mt. Washington
Your author won’t pretend to know what Wu-Shuryu-Do—The Flowing Way is, but it sure sounds cool. That said, a picture is worth a thousand words and what we don’t know by name, we sure get with the accompanying artwork.
The scene: two buff fighters are flexing and straining in combat. On the right is a warrior dressed like so many kung fu movie villains—shirtless, but with arm braces, wearing tight black trousers with the legs wrapped in some type of binding fabric. A thick red sash is worn about the waist with the end dangling for jaunty effect.
Wu-Shuryu-Do The Flowing Way, Mt. Washington
His foe is literally flying through the air with a leg extended in a kick that could surely split stone. This one didn’t skimp on the wardrobe on the way to the fight, though. He’s in a Tom Jones-style combat singlet accented with a necklace of oversized beads or baubles. A decorative toque literally tops the outfit in a style that would look equally smart on the ski slopes or the runway.
And can we say, what a location for mano a mano! We hope these guys can pause for a minute between bone-crackings to take in the view. Right behind their sweaty hindsides lies a breathtaking waterfall pooling into a misty river running between rocky peaks and twisting trees. If you’re looking for an Instaworthy place to have your neck snapped, The Flowing Way has got the place.
Wu-Shuryu-Do The Flowing Way, (since replaced) Mt. Washington
Not all martial academies (are these dojos?) are as invested in the arts as Wu-Shuryu-Do. The Mt. Washington storefront studio has extended the custom window art to other panes of its Southern Ave. location.
Enough of them are, though, that original art decorating—and dramatizing—karate schools and Tang Soo Do meeting spots is a legitimate thing. Sure, it’s a little bit frightening and you’ve going to need expert timing, but we hope the trend continues as long as the river flows and the grasshopper learns from the cobra.
unknown, Wilkinsburg
unknown, Wilkinsburg
Nam’s Korean Karate School, Mt. Lebanon
Nam’s Korean Karate School, Mt. Lebanon
World Tang Soo Do Assoc., Tyrone
Aikido of Pittsburgh, Etna
Battleground Training Center, where “iron sharpens iron.” Vandergrift
This one’s got it all: quotation marks, underlining, arrows attacking from both sides. “Experienced” “Pizza Maker” “Needed” Lawrenceville
You know the gesture: the index and middle fingers of both hands, curled and twitching, are held aloft to either side of the speaker’s head. She or he is mid-rant, raving about one indignity or another—or possibly neck-deep in a story whose punchline is yet to be revealed.
Air quotes may be used in a variety of scenarios. For anyone who has ever deployed or received them in (hopefully-joking) sarcasm, the quote gesticulation can only be read as an opposite, a negation of the word being quoted.
Did you really “write” all these “songs?” or He says he’s the “voice”of a “generation.” or I’d “love” to see your “band,” but I have … anything else to do.
My kid could make that. Antique “Art Work.” Canonsburg
In this context, it’s impossible to read a hand-written sign warning Antique “art work” keep out! or advertising “Breakfast” served all day without seeing the humor in it. How bad could this art work be? If it’s not breakfast, what are they serving all day?
Who’s your daddy? “Parents of.” St. Nicholas Cemetery, Reserve Twp.
As the son of English professor and an avid reader, I’m well familiar with the “correct” use of English grammar. Misused quotes (or apostrophes, there/their/they’re, etc.) pop out immediately as jarring pot holes on the road to smooth reading. I know they’re technically wrong.
But as someone who loves the fluidity of ever-evolving language, it’s fascinating that so many English speakers—at least, English writers and readers—think of quotation marks as symbols of emphasis.
Like other after-market language tweaks derived to fill a void, I think it’s because we don’t really have a great way to express emphasis in handwriting. Sure you can underline and if you’ve got a design bent, maybe you’ll make the important words larger or double the ink to make it read heavier, but most of the computer-assisted tools to achieve this in text—italics and bold type—are a lot harder to execute with pen and paper.
The Sounds That Blair At Night. “Let Us Honor” Our Fire Fighters. Lawrenceville
There are two kinds of people… maxims are painfully reductive, but it feels like quotation marks really do exist in one of two completely separate grammatical lives, depending on the writer/reader. To treat quotes as emphasis is a language hack that looks goofy to some of us and reads as completely normal to others. I’m “O.K.” with that.
To the or not to the. “To The” Army, Navy, Marines, Coastguard, Air Force. Lawrenceville
The postman always rings twice. “Delivery Person.” Lawrenceville
No food or drink or on cell phones “permitted” in this store. Ambridge
South Side Flamingo Sentries standing at googly-eyed guard, Wrights Way, South Side
Flo Flamingo has gone missing. Flavius Flamingo had nothing to do with it. Don’t worry, the South Side Sentries have it all under control.
Often the most vibrant and interesting public art exists undetected by the established art world or wider community. Instead, this is public art known and loved by a few neighbors and makers participating in its magic and upkeep.
“I didn’t know I was yarn bombing.” On Wrights Way, utility poles, street signs, downspouts, and at least one gas meter have gotten dressed-up.
You, Orbit Reader, have visited many of these places virtually with us—semi-hidden treasures like Pittsburgh’s Central Park and Remly Way. These special places aren’t exactly a secret, but they’re neither tourist destination nor commissioned public art.
Instead, these are environments created by dreamers who took the initiative to physically manifest their imaginations and insert them directly into their communities. Moving past the cultural gatekeepers, these artists forged ahead with their vision. These are art installations seeking community input, changing and evolving with the neighborhood around them.
My face is down here. Delli Speers’ art/planter/sweater (summer, 2022)
Such a place is Delli Speers’ Fiber Art Fence on the South Side. Located along Wrights Way, a residential alley not far from the South Side Carnegie Library, this 80-foot-long chain link fence lies between a UPMC parking lot and a quiet row of 19th century brick row houses. Speers, a fiber artist who recently turned 87, has been yarn bombing this fence since 2007.
The fence is bedecked with all manner of fiber artifacts, many knitted by Speers, her neighbors, friends, and family members. A giant pink knitted face with yellow hair looks questioningly at the viewer, eyebrows raised. Knitted flowers in reds, oranges, and yellows dot the fence, as do large kaleidoscopic hula hoops from fiber artist Cheryl Hopper.
Hopper hoop. Crocheted hula hoop by Cheryl Hopper
Speers, who lives across the street from the fence, asked Goodwill, her previous neighbor, to replace the old one some 15 years ago. “It was broken down and rusty and I had two little granddaughters and I was concerned it would fall and hurt them,” said Speers. “So I wrote a letter to the president of Goodwill asking them to build a new fence. I told them I would maintain the fence and the grounds in front of it.”
Eighteen months later, a new fence was built and Speers got to work. After asking Goodwill permission to hang art, she began with knitted plant hangers, fastened to the fence with zip ties. Soon, a set of family afghans were hung on the fence, musty from years of mothballs. These were first installed to air out, but left up as a kind of experiment to see what time and the elements would do to them. In fact, this environmental impact is what interests Speers the most about her outdoor art venture.
Blue and gold tribute to Ukraine by Judy Manion.
“For me it’s a process,” she says. “I’m really not as interested in the objects themselves, I want to see what the weather does to them, what the sun does to certain colors [of acrylic yarn]. The paddy green becomes a beautiful teal green, sometimes the pink turns into an orange.”
Speers, a longtime artist and weaver who attended art school at Pratt Institute in 1950s Brooklyn, encouraged other artist friends to take part. Pittsburgh-based fiber artists Donna Kearns, Judy Manion, and Cheryl Hopper have all contributed knitted and crocheted artwork to the fence over the years. All are members of the Fiber Arts Guild of Pittsburgh, which Speers connected with in 2012, after attending a knitting workshop at Contemporary Craft.
Knitted tree by Delli Speers
“I didn’t know I was yarn bombing,” says Speers, but she soon met artist Amanda Gross who organized the Guild’s impressive Knit the Bridge installation in downtown Pittsburgh in 2013. “When she found out about my fence, Amanda told me ‘you’re a yarn bomber.’ I had never heard the term.”
Speers describes a fence collaboration she did with artist friend Judy Manion of a giant knitted American flag. Manion created the flag with falling bars and stars in response to 9/11 and installed it on the fence in 2014. “The wind, the rain, and temperature changes started to do funny things to the flag, so I took it off and laid it on the deck and rearranged it.” The deteriorated and rearranged flag was entered into a juried art show. Speers then returned the flag to the fence, letting it decompose further. This later iteration was also exhibited professionally.
American flag in three stages. The original, as created by Judy Manion (left) along with two more weathered versions rearranged by Speers and used in subsequent exhibitions. [photos courtesy of Delli Speers]
One of the major themes of the fiber fence is Speers’ sense of playfulness and humor, the sheer fun she has with this project. Fixtures of the fence have been Flo and Flavius Flamingo, two plastic pink flamingos that Speers knits outfits for, changing them with the seasons.
At one point Flo Flamingo was stolen, taken from the fence. Speers responded with a wry visual message. A coffin and knitted skeleton hand was tacked to the fence with the message Rest in Peace, Flo Flamingo, 2023. Someone Stole Her! A month later, Flo was back with the message Thank you for returning Flo! Now, a row of pod-shaped creatures with black hats and googly eyes stand guard over the flamingos. Above them a sign reads Presenting South Side Flamingo Sentries. Speers has expanded her reach to festoon the telephone poles and gas meters with whimsical knitted snakes and other creatures.
Delli Speers with Flo and Flavius Flamingo and the South Side Flamingo Sentries
Speers welcomes contributions to the fence from others, especially from fiber artists and neighbors, but prefers people to reach out to her first. “I’m all for it,” she says, “I’m willing to take my stuff down” [to make room for new art]. “I have a lot of tchotchkes up there but mainly to fill up the fence and make it colorful. People like to walk their dogs down the street.”
There is no wrong way to see Wrights Way. It is a constantly evolving environment of beautiful, fun, and wacky invention—some of it bright and new; some of it experiencing the passage of time with all the sun-bleached, rain-soaked, and ice-cracked weathering Pittsburgh’s seasons will throw at it. Visit soon, visit later, while the sun is shining and when there’s snow on the ground—you’ll be glad you did.
Getting there: Delli Speers fiber fence is on Wrights Way, between 24th and 25th Streets, on the South Side. You can visit any time and if you’re looking for an excuse, the fence will be featured for the Doors Open event in the South Side on September 23.
Pittsburgh Orbit 