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Comment by wat10000 | Hacker News Reader

I always like the differences in the ads.

SFO: "Use our AI startup!"

DCA: "Buy our warship!"

"In New York, all the advertising on the streets and on the subway assumes that you, the person reading, are an ambiently depressed twenty-eight-year-old office worker whose main interests are listening to podcasts, ordering delivery, and voting for the Democrats. I thought I found that annoying, but in San Francisco they don’t bother advertising normal things at all. The city is temperate and brightly colored, with plenty of pleasant trees, but on every corner it speaks to you in an aggressively alien nonsense. Here the world automatically assumes that instead of wanting food or drinks or a new phone or car, what you want is some kind of arcane B2B service for your startup" - Sam Kriss

I haven’t lived in NYC for more than 20 years, but I still associate it with Dr Zizmor, a dermatologist. His ads were all over the subway.

He retired not too long ago. I know because it was notable enough to deserve a feature in the NY Times.

I remember those ads...

Here, the infamous one are these James Wang, Esq ads on the placemats for Chinese restaurants in the area. I suspect he placed the ad 20 years ago but they never bothered to change the design...

I grew up in NJ in the 80s, and his ads were all over network TV as well. Man, that's a name I haven't thought of in a long time.

I didn't grow up in New York but my wife did, and I think she's mentioned this name before. There's also this specific law practice that would advertise everywhere that I forget the name of that used to have two lawyers in the name but now only has one, which apparently is quite jarring a lot of people who grew up here and were used to the old ads.

Given how I grew up relatively close to here from a regional perspective (in the Boston area), I was not at all prepared for just how many specific cultural references there are in New York that I would not be familiar with. My in-laws were mildly scandalized by the fact that I had not heard of "Fudgie the Whale" when the topic came up in the first year my wife and I dated.

Late night TV in LA: "It's Cal Worthington and his dog Spot!" He'd buy up every commercial slot and just run the same ad over and over. He's long gone but his ads live on in my head.

Pussy cow, pussy cow, pussy cow!

Unfortunately, the B2B SaaS ads have started infecting the subway as well.

Ha. Last time I went through DCA the ads were all "Here's why TikTok isn't evil!"

But usually they are "here's why Palantir isn't evil". Actually, they are "Palantir is evil and that's awesome!"

Go to Louisville -- it's all BOURBON.

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