J & D Liquors. This is the faded, sunny side of the street.
J & D Liquors. On the darker, not so sunny part of the street.
S & B Liquors. There are quite a few liquor stores in my neighborhood.
Neon ampersand behind a very dirty window. I really love this photo.
R &. A nice molded plastic sign. There seems to have been a time in mid-century America where very stretched/extended Helvetica clones were very popular.
Not neon. Backlit plastic. These cheap signs are killing the traditional craft of neon sign art.
My friend Diana has hand-crafted some ampersand buttons that are affordable enough to be purchased with the money floating around in your pocket and/or couch.
This unusual looking ampersand comes from a shoe & bag repair shop near the Stockton tunnel in San Francisco. Note the bottle of Jack Daniels wedged into that pipe.
Hugh Laurie (of TV’s ‘House’) and Stephen Fry had a fantastic sketch show in the UK in the 90’s. See this review, which mentions a sketch where they celebrated the ampersand in the show’s title, ‘A Bit Of Fry & Laurie’.
I wished those videos worked, because I would love to see Hugh Laurie sing about ampersands, but you have to be in one of the “registered UK schools, colleges, universities and libraries” to view the videos.
From The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems (1947):
A slopeshouldered shape from scurrying burdens
Backward and forth, or perhaps a lyre
Or a clef wrung wry in tuning untunable tones
Or a knot for tugging an out-of-hand.
Vine to the trellis in clerical gardens:
Sweetness & light, ice & fire,
Nature & art have dissocketed all your bones,
Porter, poor pander ampersand.
