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Arthur Loeb said he remembers visiting a laundromat when he was younger and admiring how its sign, featuring a giant ball, was illuminated and spinning. He said he was fixated on how it looked like the inside of the washing machine turning with the “bubbles” on the outside.
“Even back then, it was very, very unique, and it was just fun to look at and something very strange,” said Loeb, who owns the property at 320 Lisgar St. where the ball used to reside and which was formerly home to the sex shop Venus Envy.
Loeb said while he has seen several moving signs before, “I, quite frankly, haven’t seen anything quite like it in my travels.”
The ball was once a part of the corporate signage for Norge Village Cleaners, a laundromat chain based out of Chicago that had a few locations sprinkled around Ottawa. Each sign featured a white, plastic, polka-dotted ball, and collectively they became known as “Norge balls.”
Of the roughly 3,000 original signs made, fewer than 100 are known to still exist. One of them is being stored away in a packaging warehouse on Star Top Road, where it is expected to remain until Loeb can find it a new home.
Loeb, who inherited the sign after the property was purchased in the ’60s, said the Norge ball needed to be taken down recently so it wouldn’t be damaged during demolition of the building to make way for condo units.
“You just can’t have just have that type of thing in the way — it would be destroyed,” Loeb said. He understands that the Norge ball was a fixture on Lisgar Street and he was sad to have to take it down.
While most signs are square or rectangle-shaped, Loeb said the sign’s unusual sphere captured the attention of onlookers on Bank Street, and “seeing it turn was quite dramatic.”
“It’s like the Drummond Gas sign on Bronson, it has emotion, it’s not just flashing lights,” Loeb said. The sign is about two metres in diameter, with a plastic covering, and the ball sits on a motor that makes it spin.
Loeb said he understands that there are very few in North America like this. He admits that while his history on the sign is a little hazy, he knows it’s “very retro, very unique,” and worth preserving.
He added that while the look of the Norge ball might clash will the new project, he is adamant about finding the sign a new home “because it’s unique, it’s motorized and it hasn’t spun in a long time.”
He said he received a call a couple of months ago from a person interested in purchasing it. “We hope that even though it’s not there anymore we are going to keep that legacy going somewhere.”
查看原文...
“Even back then, it was very, very unique, and it was just fun to look at and something very strange,” said Loeb, who owns the property at 320 Lisgar St. where the ball used to reside and which was formerly home to the sex shop Venus Envy.
Loeb said while he has seen several moving signs before, “I, quite frankly, haven’t seen anything quite like it in my travels.”
The ball was once a part of the corporate signage for Norge Village Cleaners, a laundromat chain based out of Chicago that had a few locations sprinkled around Ottawa. Each sign featured a white, plastic, polka-dotted ball, and collectively they became known as “Norge balls.”
Of the roughly 3,000 original signs made, fewer than 100 are known to still exist. One of them is being stored away in a packaging warehouse on Star Top Road, where it is expected to remain until Loeb can find it a new home.
Loeb, who inherited the sign after the property was purchased in the ’60s, said the Norge ball needed to be taken down recently so it wouldn’t be damaged during demolition of the building to make way for condo units.
“You just can’t have just have that type of thing in the way — it would be destroyed,” Loeb said. He understands that the Norge ball was a fixture on Lisgar Street and he was sad to have to take it down.
While most signs are square or rectangle-shaped, Loeb said the sign’s unusual sphere captured the attention of onlookers on Bank Street, and “seeing it turn was quite dramatic.”
“It’s like the Drummond Gas sign on Bronson, it has emotion, it’s not just flashing lights,” Loeb said. The sign is about two metres in diameter, with a plastic covering, and the ball sits on a motor that makes it spin.
Loeb said he understands that there are very few in North America like this. He admits that while his history on the sign is a little hazy, he knows it’s “very retro, very unique,” and worth preserving.
He added that while the look of the Norge ball might clash will the new project, he is adamant about finding the sign a new home “because it’s unique, it’s motorized and it hasn’t spun in a long time.”
He said he received a call a couple of months ago from a person interested in purchasing it. “We hope that even though it’s not there anymore we are going to keep that legacy going somewhere.”
查看原文...
