Outrigger-Beachcomber Apartments, Montclair, CA (apartments)

Name:Outrigger-Beachcomber Apartments
Type:apartments
Street:Evart
City:Montclair
State:CA
Zip:
country:USA
Phone:
Status:operational

Description:

I spotted a photo online of the Outrigger-Beachcomber Apartments in Montclair that showed glimpse of a nice sign so I decided to take a look with Sven on my way to the Rumpus Room on Wednesday.

The complex has two buildings, one with an Outrigger sign and one with a Beachcomber sign.

The signs are very large for apartment signs.

The building had a short little A-Frame entrance.

And some nice iron-work and lava rock planters.

No other signs of Tiki or Poly Pop to report but still a worthwhile expedition to document the cool fonts on the signs that still remain. Always fun to find a new one.

DC

On 2011-11-03 18:03, Dustycajun wrote:
The signs are very large for apartment signs.

And how are we gonna be able to tell HOW large the signs are? By doing the same thing that is sometimes recommended in large Tiki specimen photography: Provide human scale!

Luckily DC had me around to do that :)

Nice discovery! I like the font used for the Outrigger sign. Very unique style I think. Bigbro can you comment on this font? DC have you seen this before?

Well, it ain't one of the three classical Tiki fonts: Asian (as seen in the Beachcomber sign above), Bamboo, and Beachcomber/Driftwood

I would call this one "artistic", or maybe Beatnik, just a great example of how in the olden days fonts were done free hand, from scratch, individualistic. It's an extinct art form that the good folks of House Industries have helped to revive: http://www.houseind.com/

I believe the reason that these two signs have survived so well is that they are metal cans. Most of the time these evocative signatures were just cut out of wood, which at this point in time has rotted if not taken care of and replaced. When a letter falls off, the manager usually takes the whole sign down, it's outdated anyway, and easier maintenance.

Here are some examples form the BOT, I have a bunch more:

Thanks Bigbro. House Industries, wow, great company and website.