June 18, 2026
Paint, pride, and panic
NOLA 'Nacular: One man's crusade to preserve New Orleans's vernacular signage
As one local saves New Orleans’s painted soul, commenters swing between doom and art-nerd delight
TLDR: Anthony DelRosario is racing to preserve New Orleans’s hand-painted neighborhood signs before they disappear to modern printing and time. Commenters split between admiring the art and dropping bleak jokes that the city itself may vanish first, turning a local preservation story into a larger argument about loss.
This story could have been a quiet love letter to old storefront signs, but the comment section immediately turned it into a mini culture war with extra feelings. At the center is Anthony DelRosario, a New Orleans local who spent years biking the city after Katrina and obsessively documenting the hand-painted signs on shops, churches, corner stores, and daiquiri spots. To him, these quirky signs — misspellings, odd spacing, all-caps food lists and all — aren’t just ads. They’re the neighborhood’s voice. And as cheap printed signs and AI-made designs creep in, he fears that voice is being flattened into something generic and forgettable.
The strongest reaction? A big, gloomy splash of climate dread. One commenter basically said, love the mission, but what’s the point if the whole city could be underwater soon? That hot take gave the whole thread a dark, fatalistic twist, as if this sweet preservation project had wandered into an apocalypse movie. On the other side, art lovers jumped in with a more romantic energy, connecting DelRosario’s work to painter Margaret Kilgallen and cheering the idea that everyday lettering counts as real culture, not just background clutter.
And yes, there’s humor baked right into the signs themselves. Phrases like “KILLER FREE Jukebox” and “Cell Phone—Modern Ear Ache?” had the same energy as an accidental meme from a cooler, funkier universe. The vibe of the thread was basically: save the signs, save the soul — if the sea doesn’t get there first.
Key Points
- •Anthony DelRosario started Nola ‘Nacular after Hurricane Katrina to document and preserve New Orleans hand-painted vernacular signage.
- •The project focuses on signs for neighborhood businesses and institutions, which the article describes as part of the city’s cultural fabric.
- •DelRosario says he can distinguish individual sign painters by their lettering styles and artistic flourishes.
- •Lester Carey is highlighted as a prominent New Orleans sign artist whose work included storefronts, sandwich boards, logos, and church signs, especially in Central City.
- •The article states that digital and AI-generated signage may be cheaper or easier, but DelRosario believes replacing hand-painted signs causes neighborhoods to lose part of their voice.