Sayulita can be an eyeball blitz: for such a small town there is an amazing amount of visual energy. At times you can’t see the trees for the forest, as it were. The details disappear into the kaleidoscopic swirl of movement, color, people, cars, carts, dogs, birds, sky, sea, all of it humming along in your eyes and ears so boisterously, beautifully and busily, you miss things, or take really cool-looking stuff for granted, and stop noticing.
Or maybe your eye was caught by a man hoisting a tray of steaming hot banana muffins, or a Huichol man’s soul-searching yarn paintings, or the girl from Sayulita walking by, tall and tan and young and lovely…and you missed that other brilliant thing going on. No worries. There is always something else to see. You sit in the plaza or on the beach and watch, and it is far, far better than TV, and cheaper.
One thing I’ve witnessed over the years is the wonderful and constantly evolving variety of retail signage around Sayulita. With our dozens and dozens of businesses of all kinds, ranging in scale from tiny taco stand to multi-room palatial hotel, there are signs of all kinds as well. This is attention-getting advertising of a sort, but something more.
Most of it is handmade folk art, and intoxicatingly colorful. I asked our photographer, Donna Day, to shoot some of the colorful signs around town, so people could have a look at them in a calmer visual space, as it were.
Ranging from crudely energetic to elegantly sophisticated, Sayulita’s retail signs are an art form unto themselves.
