Robert Indiana kept a series of illustrated journals during the late 1950s and 1960s, in which he discusses the development of his work as well as his daily life on Coenties Slip.

Indana's journal entry for March 16, 1961, includes a sketch of Ballyhoo, and the comment that the work was brought to "its initial conception (light arrows against a black ground)." Indiana also records that his friends Norman Fisher and John Ardoin came down for three games of Monopoly, and that Stephen and Barbara Durkee stopped by briefly.