Yes, wish there was more journalism like this. So many interesting queries, like How are the physical and informational domains synchronized? Does scrap signage get a higher or lower price in recycling? Is there software to make a cut list from all possible signs in the backlog in order to minimize waste from each aluminum blank?
The signs they make seem to cross jurisdictional boundaries, like city streets and state administered interstate highways. How is billing or cost-capture peformed?
Very cool and pretty amazing it requires only 46 people. My software team is about that size and I feel like 70k street signs a year is a lot more work than what we accomplish in a year...
>"The sign shop, which is part of the New York City Department of Transportation, has a staff of 46 workers, including seven letterers who lay out signs by hand and a blacksmith who makes custom brackets to securely attach signs to traffic poles."
This is one of the things I truly love about NYC. Any other city would have outsourced this operation to some third world sweatshop or massive corporation. Instead you have a whole crew of local tenured high quality jobs with good benefits run by citizens of the city.
I know our very small city (60k ish) has a dedicated sign shop. A lot of small communities use local or regional sign shops. Prison labor creates a lot of signs too. I don't see these things being outsourced to developing countries though I imagine corps like YESCO do have a fair amount of city/county sign work. I haven't been in the sign game for a bit though.
He's the mayor regardless of your feelings on the matter, and the Nicks are the sportsball team for the city he's mayor of. This isn't partisan thing just because he exists and is doing what mayors do. If he tried to gatekeep something for only his party, or ideology then it'd be partisan. But he didn't because it's a NY thing, not a partisan thing. See the difference?
> He's the mayor regardless of your feelings on the matter
...which didn't come into my comment in the slightest? It's stupid no matter who the mayor is.
Your response is indicative of exactly the problem [1]: you're leaping to a partisan conclusion, because I dared to criticize something related to politics. I remember when New Yorkers made fun of crap like this.
[1] to be specific: the reflexive political toxicity that is melting everything into a morass of partisan goo.
Mentioning the presence of a city mayor in an article about that city is not inherently partisan.
If your political feelings about the mayor are so strong you cannot see their name without degenerating into accusations of partisanship, that's a you problem.
Right, because it's a reasonable inclusion by any journalistic standard.
That you can't see a politician's name in a contextually appropriate context without screaming partisanship means your views about the mayor are the beginning and end of the issue here.
The comment has been appropriately flagged to death, I won't be replying further.
Nope. Premise is backwards. Why does the mayor belong in a story about the intricacies of printing road signs? Is the mayor a road sign enthusiast? Did he create the road-sign printing system? No? No relation at all, other than seeing an opportunity to inject himself into a story?
Yeah, maybe don't include it, then.
> showing up as a mascot for a random human interest story is the primary function of a mayor.
That's certainly what politicians try to do. You, as a journalist, are not required to take the bait. Sometimes it's just cool to have a nice little story about the people at the sign factory.
This is very standard and innocuous. This instance only stands to you because it makes you uncomfortable. Own up to the specific reason for that instead of acting like the existence of "politics" in a general sense is somehow evil.
It is indeed, sadly, "standard". That doesn't make it good.
> This instance only stands to you because it makes you uncomfortable.
It doesn't make me "uncomfortable". I think it's stupid.
> Own up to the specific reason for that instead of acting like the existence of "politics" in a general sense is somehow evil.
Politics are not evil. Including them in everything, when they don't need to be included, is just bad journalism. And by the way...I would say this if the mayor in question was on any side of the ideoligical spectrum. Would you?
Imagine if instead of NYC this was a small town, and a paper mentioned that even the mayor of the town stops in a certain store to get bagels every morning or whatever. Is that a partisan message?
At least to me that's just a human interest element. The mayor is a notable person, it suggests something about popularity and ties it to a name the reader already might know. It's the same as saying a celebrity shops there or whatever.
This case is a little different because NYC is a big city, but what's partisan about it? They don't mention his politics or views at all. He likes a sports team and he likes this shop. It's being mentioned as a human interest detail, because he's a minor celebrity with some readers. This is why it seems like you have some kind of political opinion about him - if you didn't, why would it be notably political at all?
I don’t know. It’s a counterfactual, and you can make up any series of imaginary facts to present your counterfactual in a way sympathetic to your argument. The principle is the same: the mayor has zero relation to the content of this article. If you removed the line in question, nothing of substance would change.
Over here in our current universe, we’re talking about one of the largest cities on earth, and one of the most divisive political figures in the nation.
So yes, it’s both unnecessary and partisan. It’s an article about road signs. Exactly how unrelated does the article need to be before
you’d accept this kind of thing as crass?
Of all of the issues in this world, and you choose to focus on a single boring line about a boring detail in a light and whimsical article about, let me check... street signs.
Oooga booga! Mamdani! Oh no! The politics of it! Help!
Write a letter to the fucking editor if it ruffles your feathers that much. I'm sure they'll be waiting with bated breath to hear your objection.
> Oooga booga! Mamdani! Oh no! The politics of it! Help!
Mature. I'm sure you'd react similarly if the article talked about a politician you don't like.
The fact that it's a light and whimsical article about street signs is exactly the point. The political content is completely unnecessary to the story, and exists only because the mayor had a PR event.
https://wallhop.io/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/15/nyregi...
Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/15/nyregion/nyc-street-sign-...
Even the gift link puts up a login page these days.
:-( The link works for me when open it in an incognito/private window w/o and login page. Wonder how NYT decides that.
Were gonna need you to add us to your tailscale network.
Behind the scenes infrastructure articles like this are so interesting to me.
Complex systems that are based in physicality rather than software.
Yes, wish there was more journalism like this. So many interesting queries, like How are the physical and informational domains synchronized? Does scrap signage get a higher or lower price in recycling? Is there software to make a cut list from all possible signs in the backlog in order to minimize waste from each aluminum blank?
The signs they make seem to cross jurisdictional boundaries, like city streets and state administered interstate highways. How is billing or cost-capture peformed?
Very cool and pretty amazing it requires only 46 people. My software team is about that size and I feel like 70k street signs a year is a lot more work than what we accomplish in a year...
>"The sign shop, which is part of the New York City Department of Transportation, has a staff of 46 workers, including seven letterers who lay out signs by hand and a blacksmith who makes custom brackets to securely attach signs to traffic poles."
This is one of the things I truly love about NYC. Any other city would have outsourced this operation to some third world sweatshop or massive corporation. Instead you have a whole crew of local tenured high quality jobs with good benefits run by citizens of the city.
I know our very small city (60k ish) has a dedicated sign shop. A lot of small communities use local or regional sign shops. Prison labor creates a lot of signs too. I don't see these things being outsourced to developing countries though I imagine corps like YESCO do have a fair amount of city/county sign work. I haven't been in the sign game for a bit though.
[flagged]
He's the mayor regardless of your feelings on the matter, and the Nicks are the sportsball team for the city he's mayor of. This isn't partisan thing just because he exists and is doing what mayors do. If he tried to gatekeep something for only his party, or ideology then it'd be partisan. But he didn't because it's a NY thing, not a partisan thing. See the difference?
> He's the mayor regardless of your feelings on the matter
...which didn't come into my comment in the slightest? It's stupid no matter who the mayor is.
Your response is indicative of exactly the problem [1]: you're leaping to a partisan conclusion, because I dared to criticize something related to politics. I remember when New Yorkers made fun of crap like this.
[1] to be specific: the reflexive political toxicity that is melting everything into a morass of partisan goo.
[flagged]
This is not hard. Including the content in the article is partisan, no matter who the politician happens to be.
It would be the same if the paper did a drop-in about Trump.
Mentioning the presence of a city mayor in an article about that city is not inherently partisan.
If your political feelings about the mayor are so strong you cannot see their name without degenerating into accusations of partisanship, that's a you problem.
The only people bringing my views about the mayor into this discussion are those of you trying to defend the inclusion.
Right, because it's a reasonable inclusion by any journalistic standard.
That you can't see a politician's name in a contextually appropriate context without screaming partisanship means your views about the mayor are the beginning and end of the issue here.
The comment has been appropriately flagged to death, I won't be replying further.
[flagged]
how is that partisan politics? showing up as a mascot for a random human interest story is the primary function of a mayor.
> how is that partisan politics?
Nope. Premise is backwards. Why does the mayor belong in a story about the intricacies of printing road signs? Is the mayor a road sign enthusiast? Did he create the road-sign printing system? No? No relation at all, other than seeing an opportunity to inject himself into a story?
Yeah, maybe don't include it, then.
> showing up as a mascot for a random human interest story is the primary function of a mayor.
That's certainly what politicians try to do. You, as a journalist, are not required to take the bait. Sometimes it's just cool to have a nice little story about the people at the sign factory.
Here's an article + video from a while ago on the same topic, without mention of a mayor:
https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/nyc-dot-sign-shop
I wonder if anything has changed with how they make signs since 10 years ago. I can't access the NYT article.
https://wallhop.io/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/15/nyregi...
https://unwall.app/www.nytimes.com/2026/08/15/nyregion/nyc-s...
You are projecting your political feelings. He’s a popular mayor who loves the team.
This is very standard and innocuous. This instance only stands to you because it makes you uncomfortable. Own up to the specific reason for that instead of acting like the existence of "politics" in a general sense is somehow evil.
It is indeed, sadly, "standard". That doesn't make it good.
> This instance only stands to you because it makes you uncomfortable.
It doesn't make me "uncomfortable". I think it's stupid.
> Own up to the specific reason for that instead of acting like the existence of "politics" in a general sense is somehow evil.
Politics are not evil. Including them in everything, when they don't need to be included, is just bad journalism. And by the way...I would say this if the mayor in question was on any side of the ideoligical spectrum. Would you?
Imagine if instead of NYC this was a small town, and a paper mentioned that even the mayor of the town stops in a certain store to get bagels every morning or whatever. Is that a partisan message?
At least to me that's just a human interest element. The mayor is a notable person, it suggests something about popularity and ties it to a name the reader already might know. It's the same as saying a celebrity shops there or whatever.
This case is a little different because NYC is a big city, but what's partisan about it? They don't mention his politics or views at all. He likes a sports team and he likes this shop. It's being mentioned as a human interest detail, because he's a minor celebrity with some readers. This is why it seems like you have some kind of political opinion about him - if you didn't, why would it be notably political at all?
I don’t know. It’s a counterfactual, and you can make up any series of imaginary facts to present your counterfactual in a way sympathetic to your argument. The principle is the same: the mayor has zero relation to the content of this article. If you removed the line in question, nothing of substance would change.
Over here in our current universe, we’re talking about one of the largest cities on earth, and one of the most divisive political figures in the nation.
So yes, it’s both unnecessary and partisan. It’s an article about road signs. Exactly how unrelated does the article need to be before you’d accept this kind of thing as crass?
Of all of the issues in this world, and you choose to focus on a single boring line about a boring detail in a light and whimsical article about, let me check... street signs.
Oooga booga! Mamdani! Oh no! The politics of it! Help!
Write a letter to the fucking editor if it ruffles your feathers that much. I'm sure they'll be waiting with bated breath to hear your objection.
Give it up, man. Go touch some grass.
> Oooga booga! Mamdani! Oh no! The politics of it! Help!
Mature. I'm sure you'd react similarly if the article talked about a politician you don't like.
The fact that it's a light and whimsical article about street signs is exactly the point. The political content is completely unnecessary to the story, and exists only because the mayor had a PR event.