Ghost indicators are the fading painted ads that you simply typically see on previous brick partitions and buildings. They are a window right into a metropolis’s historical past, hinting at companies which have lengthy since disappeared. You will discover these indicators on the edges of buildings, above doorways, and in alleys – silent reminders of a previous that also peeks by means of into our trendy lives.
The HK Ghost Indicators map is an historic archive of Hong Kong’s ghost indicators. The map itself has a placing visible type, with a black-and-white base map hinting at a classic aesthetic – punctuated by vivid pink markers highlighting the town’s surviving ghost indicators. Clicking on a marker on the map reveals {a photograph} and sometimes some background details about the chosen ghost signal’s origins.
Most of the mapped indicators on HK Ghost Indicators as soon as belonged to outlets and companies that closed many years in the past – their painted names and slogans surviving solely as faint traces on stucco and brick. Collectively, these factors type another tour of the town, one which winds not alongside the principle vacationer routes, however by means of backstreets and forgotten facades. The map even contains ‘star’ and ‘check-in’ choices for every mapped ghost signal, that make it very simple to create an itinery of indicators you may need to go to and likewise the means to tick-off the indicators as soon as visited.
On the different finish of the stylistic spectrum is the San Francisco Ghost Signal Mapping Challenge, which makes use of a simple Google My Map to plot almost a thousand ghost indicators throughout the Californian metropolis.
Whereas its visible presentation is much less polished than HK Ghost Indicators, the undertaking makes up for it with performance. A useful menu permits you to filter the map to point out solely sure sorts of indicators, corresponding to Constructing/Enterprise indicators or Advert/Model indicators. This makes it simple to give attention to only one specific slice of the town’s painted historical past at a time.
Unrelated to ghost indicators (however beautiful nonetheless) – M+, Hong Kong’s museum for visible tradition, has an interactive map of Neon Indicators which are additionally dotted across the Chinese language metropolis. Bookmark each Hong Kong maps, and also you might be able to discover pale ghost indicators sharing the identical partitions with neon – offering a placing conflict of previous and current in the identical metropolis house.
