Serving motorists and transients
It's not every day you see the word "transients" in bright neon lights. Does this garage offer a place to park cars and house transients? Is it a garage that has been converted into an SRO?
This is hardly a seedy relic of the old Times Square. Quite the opposite, it can be found on a quiet Upper East Side street. This fantastic sign, worthy of mention alone for its form and bold neon, offers a window into an odd use of the word "transient." To be sure, most of us think of 
"transient" as having a very specific connotation -- a vagabond, a drifter of probably questionable character. But here, the word "transient" is promoting the services of the lot for motorists wishing to park their cars temporarily. A quick Google search finds "transient" still in reasonably common use on parking-lot Web sites. But how often do you see it lit up on a massive garage sign?
We know of another lot that serves "transients," shown at left. It's on East 60th Street near the Queensboro Bridge, so perhaps these signs were quite common at one point.
-- Rolando Pujol
