An Ampersand Confluence

The ampersand is a symbol evolved from the Latin “et,” meaning “and.” It is one of the oldest alphabetic abbreviations, and it has assumed over the centuries a wonderful variety of forms.

I have come to the conclusion that New York City is an Ampersand Confluence. The focus on space saving and advertising one's worth are so concentrated on Manhattan that it's hard to walk around a block without seeing an ampersand. It is a city contractions; tall buildings that seem truncated from street level that each need to have their say.

Contrary to some people's opinions of us, we are not so ego-centric to think that only what we have experienced first hand represents the entire universe. We imagine cities like Tokyo would be even more likely to embrace the ampersand. We would love to know if it has a hiragana or kanji representation of the ampersand. This is a blog of found ampersands and welcome submission from anywhere. Never the less, we know very few people who might share any they have found on their travels. We are resigned to most of them representing the printed English language photographically represented from the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States of America.

On our last trip into New York City we didn't walk but a few blocks from the intersection of E. 89th St. and 3RD Ave. During those walks we found hundreds of ampersands. At that very intersection there are probably more than a dozen different ones. In my heart, the center of the ampersand universe will always be that upper east side intersection. It will take me some time to post all the photos we took that day. I will take even longer for me to ID them.