Hand-painted street signs like this one were very common in South Bend during my 1970s kidhood there. I remember the school-zone signs in my neighborhood as being hand painted, for example. I took it for granted until I moved away and found that other cities didn’t do it that way.
I’m sure that increasing standards for sign reflectivity at night forced South Bend to move away from hand-painted signs. But some still lurk about, like this one in front of the Century Center downtown. I took this in 2009 with my Kodak EasyShare Z730. You’ll know you’re looking at one of South Bend’s hand-painted signs when you see brush marks in faded paint.