66Quality Clothing at Affordable Prices

A broad windowless brick flank painted deep oxblood, and on it, in cream, a complete advertisement executed entirely by hand. M·N·M in serif capitals with dots between the letters. Family Fashions underneath in a big confident connected script with swashes on the capitals. SINCE 2003. Then the promise, in quotation marks because the painter understood that a promise in quotation marks is a promise somebody said out loud: "QUALITY CLOTHING AT AFFORDABLE PRICES". Then, because this is a shop and not a monument, the hours: OPEN MON.–SAT. 10 AM – 6 PM. CLOSED SUNDAY.

The whole block of text sits inside a painted trompe-l'oeil frame — two dark scrolls at either end, rolled like parchment, with highlights and shadows and little round finials top and bottom, so that the sign appears to be an unrolled banner pinned to the wall. Somebody spent real time on scrollwork nobody was ever going to comment on.

Every other wall on this walk is art that happens to be on a business. This is a business that happens to be art, and the difference is mostly one of intention. The paint does not know the difference.