The streets of Taiwan's cities are chock full of these vertical signs. Since they are all lit up at night, it makes every city seem like Las Vegas....errr....Reno. It can be quite pretty in it's own right, to look down a street and see a wonderland of different colors along the road.
Hong Kong has similar set up on it's street. With the difference being that their signs are horizontal instead of vertical. On a trip to Hong Kong with a Taiwanese friend many moons ago, she famously stated "Ugh! I hate how all their signs stick out." To which my foreigner friend pointed out that Taiwan does the same thing. But she replied that Hong Kong's were offensive because they were horizontal.
You can choose to view that as my friend being a lunatic, but I choose to look at it as my friend being very patriotic.
Anyway, the good thing about Hong Kong signs is that they could have them at different heights, so you could actually see what shops were down the street. In Taiwan, the vertical signs all cover each other so there is no way to find the shop you are looking for, unless you are right in front of it.
The picture was taken from when i was looking for a restaurant that I wasn't quite sure was still there or not. So while walking down the street I was trying to look ahead to see if I could see it. But of course I couldn't because it's sign is completely blocked by the red sign in the picture.
