Note the incon­gruity of the two mes­sages being com­mu­ni­cated here.

First, there is the explicit mes­sage of the words them­selves, iden­ti­fy­ing this estab­lish­ment as both (A) a laun­dro­mat and (B) more specif­i­cally, the laun­dro­mat being owned and oper­ated by, or named in honor of, Bing Wong.

Second, there is the the mes­sage implicit in the let­ter­ing: Old, blackletter-style forms nor­mally com­mu­ni­cate his­tory, sta­bil­ity, and an estab­lished, here-for-many-years-to-come qual­ity. But in this case, the forms are phys­i­cal­ized in faded, brit­tle plas­tic that directly negates any truth to that claim. Judged by its let­ters alone, the place looks like it’s falling apart.

It’s hard to inter­pret the signmaker’s intent, and this con­fu­sion is what makes it inter­est­ing. You have to won­der, was this let­ter­ing choice delib­er­ate, and if so, what was the intended mes­sage? Or, did these red plas­tic let­ters just hap­pen to be on sale when Bing Wong was set­ting up shop?

On top of that, who would asso­ciate a Chinese name with a black­let­ter form that descended from Western Europe? When those let­ter­forms evolved, the two cul­tures were hardly aware of each other’s exis­tence (not to men­tion the fact that elec­tric­ity and indoor plumbing---essential com­po­nents of laundromats---wouldn’t be devel­oped until cen­turies later).

How po-mo is that?