Posted 3 years ago
Ted_Straub
(993 items)
This vestige of a bygone era still graces the outside wall of a bar in Kingston, PA in 2022. Not working, obviously, but still an interesting item from the past......
Vintage Neon Sign..... | ||
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Posted 3 years ago
Ted_Straub
(993 items)
This vestige of a bygone era still graces the outside wall of a bar in Kingston, PA in 2022. Not working, obviously, but still an interesting item from the past......
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Ted. that pic makes me wanna *rescue* it and *fix* it -- it's small, so would easily fit into my collection of neon and other 'light up toys' hanging around here...???!!!
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
Hi, AO....it is a beauty for sure!!!!
You guys break me up. So the history behind it suggests that there was a separate Ladies’ Bar ??? They did exist here in Oz did exist in the 50’s too.
I recall the first time I saw a separate entrance in a drinking establishment. It was in a Greta Garbo movie:
*snip*
In the famed, immortalized scene that was about sixteen minutes into the film, she made her grand entrance into a NY Battery waterfront saloon from a foggy street. The bar's waiter held open the door to the Ladies Entrance as Anna struggled in, lugging an old, weighty suitcase. She shuffled over to a wooden table across from where her father's gruff boozing companion Marthy Owens (Marie Dressler in a comeback role) sat, and dropped her suitcase onto the floor. Anna took a seat in a chair, crouched down, and finally delivered her famous opening lines.
In a deep and husky, heavily-accented voice, she ordered:
Anna: Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side. And don't be stingy, baby!
Waiter: (sarcastically) Well, shall I serve it in a pail?
Anna: (bluntly) Ah, that suits me down to the ground. (After the whiskey was served and downed) Gee, I needed that bad all right, all right.
*snip*
https://www.filmsite.org/anna.html
*snip*
“The only circumstance in which respectable women might legitimately linger unescorted” in saloons would be “in order to consume the saloon’s famous free lunch.” To access to this lunch, “free with the purchase of a five-cent drink,” women would bypass “the male-dominated ‘barroom proper’” by entering a side door marked “ladies’ entrance.”
This entrance, according to Powers, served a threefold purpose. “First, it permitted women to enter inconspicuously and minimize public scrutiny of their comings and goings… Second, women’s entry through the side door eliminated the necessity of their running the gauntlet through the establishment front room . . . undisputed male territory. . . . Finally, the side door afforded women quick and convenient access both to the far end of the bar, where they could purchase carry-out alcohol and to a second chamber known as the ‘back room,’ where they could feast on free lunches or attend social events hosted there.”
*snip*
https://blog.phillyhistory.org/index.php/2018/07/saloons-rise-and-fall-of-the-ladies-entrance/
*snip*
By means of the ladies’ entrance, the saloon trade both facilitated and circumscribed women’s participation in saloon culture.
*snip*
https://historymyths.wordpress.com/tag/ladies-entrance/
That is all absolutely *fascinating*, keramikos!! I wouldn't have had the slightest idea...I just love the little neon sign, and still wish I could rescue it?!! <lol>
AnythingObscure, It was fascinating to me as well.
By the time I'd attained my majority, separate entrances for women in drinking establishments had been abolished. I never had an experience like Lucy Komisar (from the phillyhistory link above).