Minneapolis celebrated President Obama’s inauguration today with new signs ranging from an exuberant “Hooray!” in a front yard to a more formal greeting above the downtown Hooters restaurant.

The “Hooray/Way To Go” banner in the yard of artist Doug Padilla is the work of Chank, the well-known Minneapolis artist and font designer. Padilla, who founded Art Jones Gallery, considers his front yard a temporary exhibition space. In an e-mail to the Minnesota Independent, Chank says the yard, in Padilla’s St. Anthony West neighborhood, will feature other artists once his piece comes down:

He had an “IRAQ-NAM” sign out there for many moons and it always bummed me out, so I was happy to jump at the chance to do a new piece for his yard when he asked. He had a smaller “OBAMA” sign out there before the election, but people kept knocking it over and vandalizing it. So he kept building it back stronger and bigger. I used the footings he laid down to hold up the new commemorative inaugural art.

Meanwhile, within an hour of Obama’s swearing-in (if not sooner) the electronic billboards perched atop the Block E building in downtown Minneapolis were flashing this homage to Obama. On the First Avenue North side, “Barack Obama: 44th President of the United States” smiled down from above the Hooters restaurant in the city-subsidized development.

Billboards were put into political service (both paid and unpaid) during the (never-ending) campaign season, especially for the Republican National Convention. It’s not the first time Block E’s signs have served an arguably political purpose, nor is it a first for the new-fangled electronic billboards sprouting up around town to feature the face of an African-American man.

Even as signs of the new Obama era proliferate, reminders of the era that just ended remain. Here’s one that’s posted high enough on a Minneapolis utility pole that it’s lasted nearly as long as (and may yet outlast) the war in Iraq: