Interesting Link: COVID-19 Signage Archive
The COVID-19 Signage Archive created and maintained by Eli Fessler was one of the many nervous little pasttimes that kept me sane in 2021. I highly recommend checking it out.
I uploaded a shit ton of images here back then... I eventually stopped, but I used to very carefully photograph every covid sign I could see and upload them all here every once in a while. Every time I see a surviving social distancing sign, I still think of photographing it and uploading it here. I really should get back to doing that!
The archive is an incredible record containing over four and a half thousand photographs of transcribed covid signs from around the world. You can browse them by keyword or by map location. You can see some of the local messaging that was current in your town in, say, 2021, and check to see if it's still there.
A lot of the messaging is still there. I am always impressed by how much of these signs are still around and how good everyone is at pretending that they are not.
I have always been grateful that Eli made this site and I'm grateful that I had a chance to contribute. If you have some old or new photos to upload, maybe you should give it a shot. It's important that we don't let those ephemeral markers of this extremely rare and unusual moment in our lives completely disappear. Most of the signs I see now are, like, highly eroded floor stickers, or stained and torn paper signs, or signs that are extremely dirty.
There's a guy living under a bridge on the 10 freeway whose shelter is half made out of a gigantic "thank you to our first responders" banner from 2020. That's something else I should be photographing the next chance I get.
If we don't try to keep a record of this shit, I think we'll regret it.