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Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Everybody Smokes Old Chum

It's always interesting to see these old ghost signs and there are quite a few on the sides of buildings in the oldest parts of Victoria. The one above is on Fisgard and has obviously been painted over a few times. I can also make out the phrase "navy cut" which referred to tobacco cut a little coarser than normal for cigarettes. But the phrase appears to be painted under the words Old Chum. Above it I think I can see a faint "Players", the name of a brand of cigarettes that utilized navy cut tobacco. People still smoke but their numbers are decreasing every day. Today there are half as many smokers as there were 50 years ago, and soon, like this sign, smoking will just be a historical curiosity.

3 comments:

JoJo said...

There are lots of those fading painted brick signs in Tacoma too. I love them. I'm bummed that I missed this on my many trips to Victoria.

Mike Laplante said...

I've been periodically featuring local ghost signs over at Pale Blue Dot. Hard to find a history of many of them.
The one that intrigues me most is the 'Bar and grill' visible on Johnson St (south side) in the block above LoJo. It's most visible during the winter months at the corner of Government and Johnson. In the summer it disappears behind the trees that line the street.
If you learn anything about it, let us know...

William Kendall said...

We have ghost signs here as well. This one looks like it's been fading a long, long time.