Abdominal Belt or Artificial Leg? Brooklyn's Got You Covered

New Yorkers (and affiliated borough dwellers) are often accused of never looking up. They look straight ahead, boring holes into oncoming foot traffic with a gaze that says "Make way. Or else." Or, if they're of the more hipper-than-thou persuasion, they might actually be starting at the ground -- as positively counterintuitive to hipper-than-thou'dom as that might be. But rarely do we, towered over by skyscrapers and lorded over by clock towers and majestic spires, take the time to look up.

So it was that while walking home from work last Friday afternoon I decided to give my neck a workout and take a gander at the world above me. And what did I see?

Well, to begin with, there was sunshine. It wasn't warm, per se, but the damn thing had been a recluse for so long that I was beginning to think our eight minutes had expired and, because of a rip in the space-time continuum, we just hadn't caught up yet. It's an apocalyptic bit of thinking, to be sure, but I can't tell you how much this Southern girl reveled in the mere sight of it.

There was also lots of brick, as there is in Brooklyn. And there were disturbingly large amounts of glass of the shiny-and-new-but-cheaply-made-and-put-up-overnight-apartment-building variety. Interspersed here and there, though, were the signs painted directly onto the older brick buildings advertising the goods and services once offered within the building itself. Our forefathers were obviously much more prone to look skyward. And god bless 'em for it. Though many have faded, been whitewashed over or power-washed off, these signs are just part and parcel of what gives Brooklyn -- and downtown Brooklyn, in particular -- its incomparable charm and allure.

Until I saw this one.

Now, at first glance, there's nothing particularly notable about this sign. The sun was casting a glare off a nearby building and the letters had faded just enough to make reading the sign a bit of a chore. I'm not certain what made me stop and squint, but stop and squint I did.

And what did I find? Here, let me give you a closer look.

Trusses and Elastic Stockings. Ok. So far so good. This was, after all, a different era. When ladies purchased such items with enough regularity that entire stores could be and were devoted to them. Keep reading.

Abdominal belts. Well, ok. A different time, remember? Go on.

And artificial legs. All in one place! Now that's one-stop shopping for...

For whom, exactly? I have any number of politically incorrect images conjured up in my head at the moment, but I'll use a little of the southern gentility I have left and refrain from mentioning crude unmentionables.

And I suppose it makes sense, in a way. I couldn't get across the 5 o'clock-on-a-Friday-before-a-holiday traffic to get an actual reading, but the sign most likely dated back to Depression-era Brooklyn. I hesitate to declare such a thing as "on trend," but returned WWI vets could have likely been in need of just that thing and it was just as easy for their wives to pick one up while out picking up their other underthings. And the Pomeroy company still exists, and still produces orthopedic products. I just...

I dunno. That was the last thing I expected to find when I looked up.

Anyone got other great/weird/odd signage sightings from the city or abroad?