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Did These Cube Business Signs Spin?

Started by Brian556, April 08, 2019, 09:13:29 PM

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Brian556

Did These Square Business Signs Spin?
If so, what years were they installed between?

Coke Sign Marshall TX (no longer stands)https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth957438/m1/1/?q=marshall
This one looks like its spinning due to the fact that in the pic its now parallel to the street. Also it has a gap under it

Kroger Sign Marshall TX (Still Exists):https://www.google.com/maps/@32.5480531,-94.3489875,3a,47.1y,79.78h,92.37t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1suZihnd9Ki7eqyGF7aql02w!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DuZihnd9Ki7eqyGF7aql02w%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D337.9989%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656
This one is similar in design, except that there is no visible gap under it like on the coke sign. It doesn't look like it spun


US71

Our Coke distributor here has one and it spins (or used to)
https://goo.gl/maps/UKci4CHKd4y
Like Alice I Try To Believe Three Impossible Things Before Breakfast

abefroman329

I've seen a lot of Kroger signs like that one and never saw one that rotated.  That particular one sure looks stationary to me.

catch22

There were a few of these Kroger signs here in SE Michigan back in the day, and none to my knowledge ever rotated.

Brian556

Quote from: US71 on April 08, 2019, 10:24:41 PM
Our Coke distributor here has one and it spins (or used to)
https://goo.gl/maps/UKci4CHKd4y

Now that's cool!! Interesting that they modernized it with the LED display

US71

Quote from: Brian556 on April 09, 2019, 12:44:06 PM
Quote from: US71 on April 08, 2019, 10:24:41 PM
Our Coke distributor here has one and it spins (or used to)
https://goo.gl/maps/UKci4CHKd4y

Now that's cool!! Interesting that they modernized it with the LED display

2-3 years ago :)
Like Alice I Try To Believe Three Impossible Things Before Breakfast

GenExpwy

Quote from: US71 on April 08, 2019, 10:24:41 PM
Our Coke distributor here has one and it spins (or used to)
https://goo.gl/maps/UKci4CHKd4y

Evidently it was spinning as the Google camera drove past. Click forward or back and you see different sides facing the road.

Duke87

If you always take the same road, you will never see anything new.

US71

#8
Quote from: GenExpwy on April 10, 2019, 12:01:29 AM
Quote from: US71 on April 08, 2019, 10:24:41 PM
Our Coke distributor here has one and it spins (or used to)
https://goo.gl/maps/UKci4CHKd4y

Evidently it was spinning as the Google camera drove past. Click forward or back and you see different sides facing the road.
I didn't notice it spinning the other day. Then again, traffic is bad in this area so I may not have been looking
Like Alice I Try To Believe Three Impossible Things Before Breakfast

txstateends

There are still a couple of those cubed Kroger signs in north TX here and there.  Never saw them spin.  Didn't know that Marshall had/has a Kroger.  They are few and far between in east TX due to the dominance of the 2 Brookshire chains and Walmart.

IINM, I don't see many spinning signs because of the maintenance involved with the motor and moving parts.  The longtime (85 years now) red-neon Pegasus on top of the Magnolia building in downtown Dallas was a spinning sign for many of those years.  It fell into disrepair after Mobil (who acquired Magnolia Oil, which had the pegasus as a logo previously) gave the sign to the city of Dallas as a goodwill gesture.  Before 1999, it had quit spinning and no longer was lit.  For New Year's 2000, the sign was replaced with new panels, the machinery was retooled, and new red neon was placed on it.  At midnight, it was lit and spinning again for the first time in many years.  Over the years since, the building was converted from offices to a hotel.  In that time, the wind proved to be too much for the motor of the pegasus sign, so the spinning function was turned off.  The red neon still lights up every night though.

The original sign panels for that pegasus were put into storage and thought lost, but a new search turned them up somewhere, maybe a warehouse.  Executives with the downtown/convention-center Omni Hotel in Dallas were those wondering where the original pegasus sign went.  They were able to acquire the sign panels and put up a new short almost-oil-derrick-looking base on the grounds of the hotel for the sign structure, and had it put up there with motorized spinning and red neon.  So now downtown Dallas has 2 pegasuses that light up red.  The city has taken to having the pegasus to heart so much that it uses pegasus images/likenesses/silhouettes in many instances.  Some wayfinding signage downtown has pegasus silhouettes in metal cutout form.  For many years, the city's "bike routes" (basically good, flat streets that were bikeable, for the most part) used blue pegasuses with bike wheels at the end of its front/back legs, as a symbol on the route signs.

Another no-longer-spinning example, was a McDonald's sign in north Dallas, east of the Galleria.  It debuted in the early-2000s after a teardown/rebuild, that included a giant happy-meal-shaped play area in the front of the building.  In recent years, the restaurant was redone again, to the current dark-gray-box/yellow-arch-facade trend, which did away with the giant happy meal facade; this change, while keeping the spinning sign there, led to the restaurant no longer turning on the spinning motor.

There are several cube-shaped Jack in the Box signs around north TX as well, but none of them spin.
\/ \/ click for a bigger image \/ \/

ErmineNotyours

Quote from: txstateends on April 13, 2019, 07:32:44 AM

There are several cube-shaped Jack in the Box signs around north TX as well, but none of them spin.

I remember driver training in 1985 on a 16mm film of a road, but that film was so old it showed the old Jack In the Box on a spring on top of the cube sign, and the clown, not the sign, was s-l-o-w-l-y spinning as the camera car dove by.  I couldn't take my eyes off such historic signage.


kevinb1994


US71

Like Alice I Try To Believe Three Impossible Things Before Breakfast

thenetwork

Not quite a square box, but this is the only McDonalds sign that spins -- in Colorado Springs, CO.

I call that Mcdonalds (Just off of I-25 and US-24 West) The Exorcist McDonalds.   Went in there a few years ago and the dining area still looked like the early 80s with DANGER tape draped across the sagging ceiling tiles in the men's room.  WORST.  MCDONALDS. EVER. 

Not to mention all the homeless and druggies hanging out there as well.

lepidopteran

Quote from: thenetwork on March 28, 2020, 08:04:05 PM
Not quite a square box, but this is the only McDonalds sign that spins -- in Colorado Springs, CO.
Wow, I was in Colorado Springs back in '83, and I remember being intrigued by that rotating sign!

One other McD's sign that used to spin, was in the Bayside section of Queens, NY on Northern Blvd (Route 25A).  If you look at the dates from 2012 and earlier, there's a rotator box between the sign and the pylon.  But only the 2007 picture seems to have it in a rotated position.  Newer pictures have a fixed sign without the little box.  Note that this one is and was a smaller sign, with the Colorado sign the typical larger mounted size used in the 70's or 80's.



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