What Do You Think of the New (to me) NoMa Banners?

by Prince Of Petworth April 25, 2012 at 4:00 pm 39 Comments

We previously judged neighborhood banners back in March 2009. I think the NoMa ones came out pretty well. Do you like the way they turned out?

Anonymous

Very cool!
dat

When is Petworth getting banners?
- Ladylike
  
  +1!!
- absolutjam
  
  +1!
- rayfuledmond
  
  When Petworth gets a BID, or never.
- djdc
  
  Weren’t there some green Petworth banners on New Hampshire just north of the metro? Are they all gone?
ledroittiger

meh – generic.
- ledroittiger
  
  so maybe they are actually appropriate…
classic_six

They are fine – neither here nor there for me.
Anonymous

Since it’s NoMa, I can only assume the silhouetted biker is riding on a sidewalk.
- Anonymous
  
  LOL! I was WAITING for this comment
Charles

That’s some fine-looking clip-art they picked out there.
Anon

The banners are fine. The term NoMa is still the Stupidest Thing Going.
- Anonymous
  
  +one million. the worst part about it is that it’s actually catching on. do i need to start a campaign for this not to catch on before it’s too late? don’t get me wrong, i love noma. ack. i just typed it.
  - anon
    
    totally agree with this comment. I moved up here from Atlanta couple years ago and they were doing the same thing… calling areas of the city “SoNo”… just stupid. BTW… did you see that metro is going to rename the NY Ave stop “NoMa”? Wonder how many millions they had to spend to lobby for that change? Kinda solidifies the “brand” that they were going for huh?
    
    http://www.wmata.com/about_metro/news/RushPlus_map.pdf
- Anonymous
  
  i think CoHi is far more annoying that NoMa
  - monkeyrotica
    
    AdMo is the worst fake neighborhood name in the DMV. Worse than FloRhIde and SoWWat put together.
  - JPG
    
    I agree completely. “NoMa” at least fits within the naming convention that created “SoHo”. By contrast, “CoHi” already has a actual neighborhood name: Columbia Heights. In any event, were we to follow the “SoHo” and” NoMa” naming convention, Columbia Heights would be called something like “NoFla” since Florida Avenue forms most of its southern boundary. I die a little inside whenever I hear people say “CoHi” or “AdMo”.
- Anonymous
  
  It sounds to me like someone yelling, “No, Ma!” to their mother.
Anonymous

Hmm, kinda 90s, can’t read them, and they don’t say anything about the neighborhood. but heck, I like the size/shape of them.
Anonymous

Agreed – I have no idea *where* this is located. When I see Noma I either think: A) Oh, they meant NOVA or B) Northern Maryland? not C)Northern Massachusetts – it is northern Massachusetts right?
- Anon
  
  Think more local :) –North of Massachusetts Ave.
  - Snood
    
    Massachusetts ave runs across almost the entire city, so where exactly is this place? Maybe we can rebrand the city as NoPot, for north of the Potomac.
    - Anonymous
      
      Why would anyone want to go there?
Craig

As a NoMA resident, I like them. They only got put in over the last week. They give a sense of where the neighborhood is and add cohesion to the area. I think they’re nice.
- anon
  
  As someone who lives in a neighborhood adjacent to NoMa, I like them, too. :)
MSt.NE

I agree with the last post. It gives a great sense of cohesiveness to the place. This area is really about to to start jumping! It seems that a new crane is erected every week, and I’m excited to see what it’ll look like in a year or two.
emmaleigh504

I don’t like them, but then I never like banners like this. I find them ugly.
Anonymous

stop trying DC… this whole Soho thing is OLD…. NOMA is the National Organziation of Black Architects…. Please, let’s just call this Northwest
- Identified
  
  Sorry dude – this is on a blog where people say CoHi… because they want to rebrand columbia heights. Or AdMo… because the history of Adams Morgan (or Adams-Morgan) is too much to learn and love.
  
  Keep on fighting the fight… but anything vaguely NYC-like will be a hit with this crowd.
  - only NY?
    
    Why does NYC get all the credit with shortened neighborhood names? Were they the first? There’s LoDo in Denver (which, I get it, is newer than SoHo/TriBeCa). NYers roll their eyes at this too though; sure, DUMBO’s cute, but NoLita and BoCoCa???
    - Identified
      
      I can’t say for certain (I am not researching this), but AFAIK, NYC was the first to use this naming convention in the 1970’s, first with SoHo and then with TriBeCa.
      
      It is a NY thing.
theheights

Nondescript banners are a perfect symbol for a made-up neighborhood.
Chewbacca

Nice, but nothing as cool as everything in the great upper nw.
Anon X

This is such a dumb argument. You know, Washington DC wasn’t ALWAYS called Washington DC, it used to be called “that guys farm land” and a “swamp”. Until those white gentrifiers came in and started building their houses and their government buildings and started attaching a name to everything.

If you don’t like made up neighborhood names, please call anything south of Constitution and West of the Capitol the Swamp, anything north of Constitution “the Farm” and anything north of Florida “the suburbs”.
- Anonymous
  
  “The city of Washington was built on a stagnant swamp some 200 years ago, and very little has changed. It stank then, and it stinks now. Only today, it is the fetid stench of corruption that hangs in the air.”
  
  -Lisa Simpson
NativeSon

Oh come on, didn’t this ship sail a long long time ago? It’s too late, it’s done, it’s NoMa and that’s that – once it’s a subway station, it exists (like Gallery Place).
And don’t worry about NYC either, since their SoHo was a tortured attempt to connect to its big sister, London.
Can’t we all just save our energy for arguments that matter – Like Reagan National Airport?
- JPG
  
  Hahaha, good point. You mean “National Airport,” right?
me

On a purely aesthetic standpoint (with no comment about the neighborhood) I like the shape and the colors, and the typeface they chose, but the images and patterns are iffy

Subscribe to our mailing list