There’s a billboard you can spot from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, not too far from the sprawling grounds of the Calvary Cemetery, that’s mystified me for quite a little while, now. Ostensibly, it’s designed to catch the eyes of commuters coming and going towards the city on what becomes the Long Island Expressway, a little further along. I first caught a glimpse of it a year or two ago while on a crowed Hampton Jitney bound for my mom’s place out in Quogue, and did something of a double-take, but we passed it so quickly that I couldn’t tell if I’d imagined it or not. Ever since, I’ve continually tried to take a closer look at it to verify my suspicions. Yesterday, on our way back from visiting my mother, I managed to whip my camera out at the right moment and take a picture of it.
Here’s that billboard now. Click on it to enlarge.
...and here's an even clearer shot I found online...
Based out of Deer Park, Long Island, the North Shore Neon Sign Co. is evidently one of the region’s busiest suppliers of neon signage, and their handiwork can be seen all over Times Square. That’s all well and good, but that doesn’t explain the sign. Were their slogan — “We Hang to Live” — not odd enough, take a look at that accompanying graphic. I’m not quite sure what it’s supposed to be, but it looks a little like an inverted Christmas ornament. But look closer and folks of a certain sensibility might see something familiar. Am I wrong, or isn’t that the signature logo of The Screamers?
For the non-music nerds, the Screamers were one of the original bands to emerge on the Los Angeles punk scene in the late `70s, alongside iconic names like The Weirdos, X, FEAR and The Germs. Sort of the West Coast’s answer to New York’s Suicide, the Screamers completely eschewed guitars in favor of drums, electric piano, synthesizers and the voice and disarming stage presence of lead …er… screamer Tomato du Plenty. While the band has since garnered a reputation as a formidable influence, marked by their confrontational performances and stylized presentation, they never released a proper album. They’d made plans to release a video-only collection of music, but the finished product never came to fruition. Here in 2025, there are bootleg live recordings, demos and a few of those video performance clips floating around, but they never signed a record deal and never released a proper record. The band broke up, and Tomata moved around a lot, but passed away in San Francisco of cancer at the age of 52.
None of that explains why the band’s logo — designed by one Gary Panter, and modeled after the face and head of spiky haired Tomata — now adorns this North Shore Neon billboard.
This is not the first time the Screamers logo has been appropriated, though. Billy Idol approximated it in the animation for his video for …aptly enough.. “Scream” in 2005, but this is a little further flung than that.
Anyone know?
One clue: the artist responsible for the logo, Gary Panter, according to his website, lives in Brooklyn.
Here's what remains of the Screamers...
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