Saw a wall of old print ads in a diner in Scranton

It was a place called Mel's on Main, and they had this whole back wall covered in framed ads from the 70s and 80s. All local stuff, like car dealerships and furniture stores. It hit me how much work went into those layouts and copy, just for one town's paper. Now it's all digital and gone in a day. Anyone else miss the physical craft of it sometimes?

4 comments

4 Comments

jake_torres681mo ago

Mel's on Main is a classic spot. I saw that same wall last year and spent twenty minutes just looking at the ads for a carpet cleaning company that used a cartoon mole as their mascot. The crazy part is someone actually drew that mole by hand, probably for fifty bucks, and now it's just decoration for our pancakes. We put more permanent effort into selling shag carpet than we do into most things online now. It's kind of sad when you think about it, all that work just to become background noise in a diner.

victor_jones991mo ago

My uncle kept his old barbershop ad framed.

john6501mo ago

That's awesome, my grandpa did the same thing with his old hardware store sign lol.

carter.gavin1mo ago

Honestly, that framed ad is probably the only thing left that remembers his hands at work.