Neon Walking Tour (Plus Neon News & Links)

I'm happy to announce that I will lead two Neon Neighborhood walking tours this summer for the Municipal Art Society!  Our East Village tour will take place next Sunday, June 14, 2015.  The West Village tour is scheduled Sunday, August 2, 2015.  Book your spot through the MAS at this link (scroll down to the "Neon Neighborhood" listings) - tickets are $20 per person ($15 for MAS members) and tours proceed rain or shine.  

Greenwich Village Neon Montage. (T. Rinaldi)

Each tour lasts about two hours, during which we will make stops to admire some of the oldest neon signs in the city, discussing their origins, technical development, design history and their place in the city today.  Participants get to take part in a lively Q&A on all things neon throughout the tour, so please come along and bring your questions too!

IN OTHER NEON NEWS: 

• Belated bad tidings on the closure of Reynold's Bar up in Washington Heights.

Quietly vanished: Reynold's Bar on Broadway and 180th St. has bit the dust.  (T. Rinaldi)

• New York Neon Noir: Times Square in 1947, spectacularly depicted at Shorpy.
• Debra Jane's Roadside Architecture Blog hits the Bay Area.
• A scene from the heyday of Bay Area neon, via Shorpy.
• For the typophile: "Alphabets of Wood," a cool new book on 19th century woodcut lettering. 

"Alphabets of Wood" (ILoveTypography.com)

• Via Jeremiah's Vanishing NY, sad news on some great old signage recently trashed in Greenwich Village.

RIP Yormark Shoes. (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)
  
• More typographic love: check out the "Lettering Library," a "Comprehensive Catalog of Lettering Books."
• "Written in Neon" - a luminous tube tribute a Slate.com. 
• When in Poznan, Poland, be sure to stop by this very cool looking exhibit of preserved neon signs at the National Museum of Poznan. Now if we could just do this in New York…

(RadioPoland)

• And finally, from the WTF department: the Federal Government recently ordered the removal of all illuminated signage in Times Square, by accident, sort of.  The Federal mandate actually contradicts city ordinances that require illuminated signs in Times Square.  Local, state and federal officials are now hard at work untangling a web of bureaucratic red tape that I imagine looks something like the giant pile of wires behind my desk at work.