2023 Decatur Downtown Postcard Signs
Ramen Junkie Every year the city has around 20 or so giant postcards laid out downtown around a little park. Every year I try to take a walk down there and take some photos of the ones I find interesting for one reason or another. They are numbered, I think maybe there is some voting involved. I have never voted. They are created by local businesses and groups.
I just thought this one looked nice. It’s from the Staley Museum. Named for A.E. Staley, who was the founder of A.E. Staley Manufacturing. There are several things named for him in the city here, the large Staley Building down of Eldorado, the museum, Stayley Credit union, probably others. Decatur is very big on Agriculture and the Stayley business was making corn starch.
One of the local animal shelters put this one out. I thought the animals were cute. I am not sure I’ve ever been there, we do kitten fostering sometimes, but we do it through the County Animal Shelter.
I have no idea who sponsored this one, but hey, who doesn’t love dragons.
This one is from the Children’s Museum of Illinois, which is here in town. With its Nutcracker themed art that’s pretty nice. Nice aside from the almost unfortunately placement of that rat tail. I thought at first the dancer had a weird tentacle leg.
Not a lot of them have 3D elements, and I thought the stained glass effect was nice. It is from Holy Family Parish & Schools, which I assume is a church.
Theater 7 is a local theater group. I’ve been to a few of their shows and one of their members used to be a coworker when I worked at the TV station. This one is advertising their upcoming A Christmas Story Musical. Which we’re going to see in a week or so.
I’m not sure who sponsored this one but that old bus terminal pictured there is the centerpiece of the central park and appears in a lot of Decatur themed iconography.
Another mystery sponsor, but I like penguins a lot, so it’s secretly my favorite.
File this one under, “It’s kind of jankey looking but it’s clear that someone put some effort into it and thought they were doing pretty good so I guess it’s alright.” I’m kind of a sucker for that sort of thing.
I don’t know what Dennis Lab School is, but I thought this one was nice.
This one is a little basic, but that centerpiece is a proper fancy 3D piece which makes it look pretty cool.
The last one that I took a photo of, there were a few others that I did not photograph. I actually skipped this one until I realize that it had the “Bikini Tree” in it. When I do my walking in the park, I walk by this tree. I have no idea who keeps painting it but it has new colors all the time (it has Ukraine colors though for over year I think). I imagine it’s someone from the nearby college.
Josh Miller aka “Ramen Junkie”. I write about my various hobbies here. Mostly coding, photography, and music. Sometimes I just write about life in general. I also post sometimes about toy collecting and video games at Lameazoid.com.