Neon News & Links

• Ladies and gentlemen, we give you: Vintage Signs of America! For years, I've posted links to the extraordinary work of sign and roadside architecture documentarian Debra Jane Seltzer.  I'm happy to report that Debra Jane now has published a book featuring some of her work - check it out! 


 "Vintage Signs of America" by Debra Jane Seltzer. 

• 14th Street's seemingly indestructible DISCOUNT LIQUORS sign may be near the end, as an entire corner looks to be poised for bigtime redevelopment - via Jeremiah's Vanishing NY and the Ephemeral NY blog. 



14th Street's DISCOUNT LIQUORS sign in better days. (T.Rinaldi)

• "Neon is Back" - The Times on New York's neon revival.

• In Philadelphia - a great exhibit of old neon signs from the Len Davidson collection has been extended at least through October - check it out at Drexel University. 

• Not neon but still of note: on Manhattan's Lower East Side, JVNY reports that the empty husk of the late Cup and Saucer lunch counter has been stripped of its great old signs. 


The late lovely Cup & Saucer Luncheonette, formerly at 89 Canal Street in Manhattan. (T. Rinaldi)

• In Dalles, Oregon, the National Neon Sign Museum is set to open next year. 

• If you haven't yet - head over to the old Tekserve space on 23rd street and check out a great gallery of vintage NYC posters, remnants of vanished venues and businesses across the city. (The gallery can be visited by appointment only).

• Some vintage Vegas neon via the Shorpy blog. 

• After years laying in limbo, the west side's old Keller Hotel is finally staged for restoration, together with its fantastic old sign.


Poised for restoration: the Keller Hotel, at the foot of Barrow Street in Greenwich Village. (T. Rinaldi)

East Side, West Side: New Neon Walking Tours and Other Neon News

• New Neon Walking Tours scheduled! In association with PosterHouseNYC. 

    > West Village Tour, Oct 3, 2017. Click here for Tickets!
    > East Village Tour, Oct 10, 2017. Click here for Tickets!

Katz's Delicatessen on Houston Street, a stop on the East Village Tour. (T. Rinaldi)

    > Also - check out the super awesome PosterHouse exhibit in the ex-Tekserve space on West 23rd Street, featuring posters from vanished NY businesses.

• From the shameless self promotion department: if you're on Instagram, so am I:  Check out @nyneonbook on Insta.  

NYNeonBook on Instagram.

• A whole bunch of stuff from Debra Jane Seltzer - here's a few to get you started:

     > Southwest Neon 
     > Mostly Tuscon 
     > Tuscon to New Mexico 
     > Southern New Mexica to El Paso 
     > Texas 
     > Towards Fort Worth 
     > Abilene & Around 

• Via Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, the loss of Second Avenue's San Loco.  

• Savor the neon in the backdrop of these 1979 NYC street scenes by Dutch sailor Peter van Wijk (via Ephemeral NY)  - then enjoy these non-neon-but-still-cool vanished storefronts from the same collection. 

• Not neon, but from the typography department - check out these pretty pictures from the NY Times Magazine Typography Exhibition. 

• An homage to the Corner Bistro, from Ephemeral NY.  


Corner Bistro. (T. Rinaldi)

• In Roanoke, VA: "As Neon Fades, Roanoke Explores New Options for Iconic Star."  

• In Fall River, MA, the Al Mac's Diner sign has come down....  but there's a GoFundMe to save it.

• Not neon, but - from the disappearing old stores of NYC department, say goodbye to the Park Delicatessen in Greenpoint, Brooklyn (via JVNY)  

• Via SHORPY: Some scenes of vanished neon glory in Omaha and in the backdrop of a creepily-timely photo of a 1930s Nazi march in NYC.

• In Washington, DC, crisis averted: the near-demise of the classic Uptown Theatre neon.    

• Neon in the backdrop of these great 1960s-70s photos by Carole Teller, part of an archive recently digitized and made available online by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (via the JVNY blog).

• From the Le Sigh department .... In Syracuse, the supremely cool Hancock Airport sign has gone LED.  

• New York sign shop Let There Be Neon is helping out with a campaign to save Havana's historic neon (via Signs of the Times Magazine).

• Feast your eyes on the glorious vanished neon (and other) storefronts of Brooklyn in a collection of photos called "Great Store F(r)onts," from UrbanArchiveNY and the Brooklyn Historical Society.

Great Store F(r)onts, via UrbanArchiveNY.

• In Long Beach, CA, a plan to protect and save the fabulously historic "Fly DC Jets" sign.  

• In the Bronx, the old Potter's Men's Shop has gone and now so has its reliquary neon.


RIP: Potter's Men's Shop vanished a few years ago.  Now their ghost sign has too. (T. Rinaldi)

• Via Thrillist.... step inside the shop of LiteBrite Neon of Gowanus (video) 

• Learn or re-learn: "This is How Neon Signs Are Made" ~ a tutorial with Esteban Salazar of UrbanGlass in Brooklyn (also video).

• In Philadelphia: author and neon practitioner Len Davidson's dream of a neon museum is coming closer to reality. 

• Neon on the cover of the Atlantic.

The Atlantic at Oblong Books, Rhinebeck, NY

In Other Neon News

For want of a more substantive post, some neon news and links.

In New York, no neon news is good neon news these days:

• On the west side, the West 57th Street Garage (along with its gorgeous, three-story high sign) is no more. 

 
The once resplendent West 57th Street Garage has been demolished. (T. Rinaldi)

• On the east side, the veteran Japanese restaurant East has closed.

• Uptown, the picked-over husk of the Lenox Lounge has been put out of its misery, to make way for unspecified chain retail.  Give me strength.   

• Downtown, Pearl Paint's vanished neon has resurfaced as luxury tsotschke.  

• All over town, American Apparel has left New York, dimming some of the city's best new neon.   

• In Queens, Astoria's Broadway Liquors has LEDed what was one of New York's best neon storefronts.


Broadway Wines & Liquors in Astoria boasted one of New York's best neon storefronts. (T. Rinaldi)

Goodbye to all that.  Meanwhile, elsewhere . . . 

• For your listening pleasure: my interview on the Stark Truth podcast with Robert Stark. 

• Out west, sign chronicler Debra Jane Seltzer has been out and about - warning, there are some grizzly before-and-afters here:  

    > Cali to AZ
    > In-n-around LA
    > More In-n-around LA
    > A little here, a little there

• Via Weather.com, "Creepy Abandoned Ghost Signs"  

• From down south: "Meet Todd Sanders, the Man Who Keeps the Texas Neon Burning" 

• Some windows into a neon-lit past over at Shorpy:  

    > Chicago's great Pabst spectacular by day and by night.
    > And a bonus of Indianapolis neon 

• Look for neon in the backdrop of these photos by Marvin E Newman in a new Taschen monolog of his work.  

• A glorious gallery of vanished Albany storefronts, from AllOverAlbany.   

• From the not-neon-but-still-cool file: Ephemeral New York pays homage to Canal Plastics.  

• And finally ~ nationwide neon: Las Vegas' neon museum on CBS Sunday Morning.  


Metropolitan Life.  ("Public Speaking")