Free On Looking: Eleven Walks With Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz Page B

missteps noted, the NYC and TAXI are set in two separate typefaces, the kerning (spacing) on the former is so tight as to make the letters almost illegible, and the word TAXI, which features a circle around the contrast-colored T, really reads “T-Axi.” There was an art—a lack of art—in those letters. There was a political or personal choice, an anachronism, a misapplication of type font to signage, a readability study gone awry. There was a history in the letters, and Shaw knew it. 2
    We met on a sunless day in February. As I approached him, grinning and waving, Shaw’s shoulders slumped and his hands dove into his pockets. His hair was dramatically unkempt. Although he glanced at me in greeting, his eyes were scouring the surfaces around us: the walls, the fire escapes, the streets, the lampposts and telephone boxes. He was, as always, looking for letters. Shaw himself was linguistically neutral: his jacket and bag had no visible letters on them.
    We had decided to walk down a series of blocks across town from where we both lived, down streets unknown to us. Yet I sensed that these streets already had familiar elements to Shaw. Just as architectural styles identify a city, so too is a city recognizable by the type of lettering that predominates. Putting aside the rashof newer, computer-font signs now topping identical cell-phone stores and delis, the lettering that exists and remains on buildings represents when a city was built, how it has evolved, and whether that evolution involved destruction or restoration. New York City’s style is hodgepodge, but with a distinctive early-twentieth-century twang. The regularity of Art Deco and Art Moderne lettering tells us that the 1920s and ’30s saw a lot of construction in the city—construction of a scale and of a quality that has largely survived. Sans-serif Gothic from the late nineteenth century also appears around town, in raised stone letters on the face of a building, for instance. Like building styles, lettering goes through fads, trends: what looks modern now will look antiquated soon enough; what is brash may soon be ordinary.
    The block on which we began was chock-full of letters. I tended to see them as words, though, not just strings of letters: I read them. GALLERY HOURS, AUTO SERVICE, WHOLESALE LIGHTING, 24-HOUR DRIVEWAY, the always-perplexing HOT DOGS PIZZA combination. We stood in front of a gallery named “Storefront for Art & Architecture.” It has a locally famous facade, with irregularly shaped wall panels that pivot on hinges opening over the sidewalk. Exhibits bleed out into pedestrian space, and passersby are swept into the art merely by the act of choosing to walk on the north side of the street. Less famous is the lengthy signage spelling out the gallery’s name, which runs along the forty or so feet of storefront. Standing directly in front of it, Shaw noted that the lettering appeared unnaturally broad and tightly squeezed between two horizontal planes. The legs of the A s and R s were widely splayed; the ampersand had become a squat croissant. Then he realized, they were not meant to be read by us. At least, not by us standing where we were. We took five steps backward toward the street corner: yes, that was more like it. The letters were designed to be read in approach : they were stretched anddistorted so that from an angled approach, they all looked to be the same size. From this vantage, the gallery name was perfectly legible.
    As I loitered, admiring the gallery’s way of luring people closer, I mumbled something to Shaw. But Shaw was gone. Indeed, Shaw was continually going missing from my side, pursuing some new letter, as we walked together. He darted to the curb to take in a second-story shop sign from a proper distance; he stopped cold to add to his collection of photos of NO PARKING signs, an unglamorous but very common sign in this city of more-cars-than-parking-spots.
    “I look at everything,” he said in response to my