FONTS IN PARADISE
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"FONTS IN PARADISE: SIGNS OF MID-CENTURY HAWAII - 2024 EXPANDED EDITION"
by Mark Jonathan Davis (originally released in 2019; expanded edition released in 2024) A photography book by Mark Jonathan Davis, featuring more than 275 color photographs of vintage mid-century modern motel & apartment building signs in Honolulu. See photo gallery below! The 2019 hardcover book is sold out. The new 2024 Expanded Edition, featuring more stories and dozens of new images, is available as a softcover paperback book and an eBook on Amazon/Kindle and AppleBooks. |
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During a Hawaiian vacation in 2011, I began photographing 1960s apartment building signs in Waikiki. Many of these mid-century buildings had once been motels, with idyllic names and leisurely fonts designed to entice vacationing tourists.
Oceanside Manor. The Tradewinds. Tropic Surf. These swanky typefaces were also used around Honolulu for restaurants, businesses, and local attractions. Some were torn down, some were painted over, but many of these signs still endure and beckon beneath palm trees and tropical sky. Today, more than 50 years later, they recall for us the breezy optimism of post-war Hawaii. Their weathered letters linger on as loyal, noble monuments to the idea of paradise. --MJD |
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“I spent the first eight years of my life in Waikiki — this book reminds me of all the things from childhood that inspired my own art!”
— SHAG, artist & author “Behold the glory of these spectacular space age signs!” — Charles Phoenix, author & cultural historian “Often overlooked as something utilitarian, signs and fonts on buildings are a specific ‘sign’ of the times. They easily fall victim to the modernization and ‘updating’ of a place, robbing it of its character and making it generic. Who knows how many of them might be gone by the time you hold this book? So it is a comfort to find them documented here for good, and in such a visually meditative manner. Thank You Mark Jonathan Davis!” — Sven Kirsten, urban archaeologist & author of “The Book Of Tiki” |
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BUY THE BOOK/EBOOK
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The "Fonts In Paradise" 2024 Expanded Edition eBook was released on December 9, 2024, and is available for $9.99 on Kindle/Amazon and Apple Books.
The original 2019 "Fonts In Paradise" hardcover book is out-of-print, but a few rare copies are available from our Bandcamp webstore: (U.S. customers only)
https://markjonathandavis.bandcamp.com/merch/fonts-in-paradise-signs-of-mid-century-hawaii-2019-hardcover-book-by-mark-jonathan-davis The hardcover book is also available from MORI retail store in Honolulu: (international shipping available) https://morihawaii.com/collections/books/products/fonts-in-paradise?variant=31063382065233 "Fonts In Paradise" is also available at most Hawaii State Public Library branches. |
REVIEWS
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"A heartfelt celebration of historic island art."
— Honolulu Star-Advertiser, August 18, 2019 Mark Jonathan Davis had been better known until now as his alter ego, faux lounge singer/comedian Richard Cheese, whose repertoire consists of traditional Las Vegas lounge-style arrangements of songs such as “Baby Got Back” and “Down With The Sickness.” Davis’ newly published book “Fonts in Paradise” shows a completely different side of the man in the tiger-stripe tuxedo. It turns out Davis lived in Honolulu for a while several years ago. While here he took an instant interest in photographing the vintage motel and apartment signs that proliferated in Honolulu in the 1950s and 1960s. He shares his finds with this book. Davis enhances his photos with a concise social history of the era that produced them. He also relates his experiences in putting himself in the right place at the right time to get the 250 photos featured in the book. One of the most interesting stories reveals the history of a sign that was almost completely hidden for many years by a building that had been put up almost directly in front of it. Davis’ account of the last-minute efforts to save the sign when the entire block was scheduled for demolition adds an unexpected element of suspense to his heartfelt celebration of historic island art. The book costs $24.95 at amazon.com. — John Berger
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"A welcome look at a slice of the mid-century modern era in Hawaii’s history."
— Honolulu Star-Advertiser, October 27, 2019 Hawaii first encountered Mark Jonathan Davis as his alter ego, Vegas-style lounge singer/comedian Richard Cheese, singing lounge music arrangements of rock and hip-hop hits like “Baby Got Back” and “Down With the Sickness,” at the Wave Waikiki in 2004. Davis/Cheese and his band, Lounge Against the Machine, played several successful return engagements here while the group’s national career included a series of full-length parody albums with tongue-in-cheek titles like “Tuxicity” and “Aperitif for Destruction.”
Davis came to Hawaii in 2011 with plans to introduce a new character, Johnny Aloha, who sings hapa haole/“tiki music” versions of songs like “Gangsta’s Paradise” and “Paradise City.” Waikiki had zero interest in Johnny Aloha, but Honolulu’s vintage building signage — dating from the 1950s and ’60s — caught Davis’ eye. He began photographing his finds, and found so many that the result was his first book, “Fonts in Paradise: Signs of Mid-Century Hawaii,” which was published in June. Davis, 53, returned to Hawaii for a book-signing earlier this month. Your book is a welcome look at a slice of the midcentury modern era in Hawaii’s history. When did you decide to publish it? It started as an effort to document and photographically preserve vintage signs that were on buildings that were likely to be demolished. Putting the photos together I started thinking about what I could do with 150 photos of signs. I had never written a book before, so that was an enormous undertaking, but it worked out. One of the stories in your book reveals the fate of a neon sign that had been on the front of a building on Kapiolani Boulevard that was half-hidden by a newer building. I’d seen that half-hidden sign for years and wondered about it. Where is the sign now? The sign was for Mid-Pacific Insurance. Then the Mid-Pacific Insurance company went out of business, the word “Mid” was removed, and then another building was built in front of it. I was doing all this research about the sign and its history, and then the people I had originally contacted about the sign called me and said the building was going to be demolished, and if I took the sign off the building I could have it. It’s on permanent loan to the Valley Relics Museum (in Los Angeles), but I’m hoping though that someone reads my book and lives in Honolulu who’s rich will want to bring it back and put it up here. Waikiki had no aloha for Johnny Aloha as a showroom entertainer. Will there be another Johnny Aloha album? We’re actually working on it, but it’s really hard to make an album these days. How does it feel to have a female group in England — the Lounge Kittens — say that Richard Cheese was their inspiration as entertainers? It’s weird. I don’t understand it, but it is very flattering and surreal. What’s next for Richard Cheese — and for Mark Jonathan Davis? I had decided I would retire in 2020. I would do my last show 20 years to the day of the very first show back in October 2000. Then a crazy thing happened — Kristen Wiig wrote Richard Cheese into her movie, “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar” and I got the call (to do the film) in April. The movie comes out in July of 2020 so my plans to retire have been postponed. |
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"Mark Davis, thank you for saving these images."
— The Conversation, Honolulu Public Radio, October 16, 2019 [audio clip coming soon]
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2019 PRESS RELEASE
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FONTS IN PARADISE: SIGNS OF MID-CENTURY HAWAII
a new book of photographs by Mark Jonathan Davis 96 pages, 249 color images, 10" x 8" hardcover MARK JONATHAN DAVIS is a writer, director, comedian, and photographer. Best known as the lead singer of Richard Cheese & Lounge Against The Machine, Davis has launched a variety of successful creative art and entertainment projects during his 30+ year career in show business. Davis has worked as a morning show air personality on KROQ, a jingle singer for NBC, CBS, and TVLand, a voice actor for Warner Brother cartoons, and a concept designer for Walt Disney Imagineering. He's also appeared as an animated singing Lego MiniFig in "The LEGO Batman Movie," performed a "Stupid Human Trick" on the Late Show with David Letterman, guest-starred on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" and "Newsradio," and written jokes for President Bill Clinton. Through his independent record label Coverage Records, Davis has recorded, designed, and produced more than 20 critically-acclaimed Richard Cheese CDs, including "Johnny Aloha: Lavapalooza," an album featuring Hawaiian-style "tiki music" covers of rock and rap hits. It was during production of this album in Honolulu that Davis began photographing mid-century apartment buildings around the islands. His love of Hawaii, and his lifelong study of art, design, and architecture history, coalesced into the "Fonts In Paradise" book project, which Davis self-published in June 2019. Davis's next book, a career retrospective autobiography titled "Atlas Lounged," will be released in 2020 by his Los Angeles production/publishing venture World Art Supply. |
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"FONTS IN PARADISE: SIGNS OF MID-CENTURY HAWAII"
by Mark Jonathan Davis Original hardcover book released June 17, 2019. 2024 Expanded Edition eBook released December 9, 2024. Published by World Art Supply. (C) Copyright 2019, 2024 Mark Jonathan Davis / World Art Supply Softcover book on Amazon:
ASIN B0DR56FZBF https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DR56FZBF Amazon/Kindle eBook: ASIN B0DPZVBWDD https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPZVBWDD Apple Books eBook: http://books.apple.com/us/book/id6739248907 |
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