Wednesday, January 9, 2019

Neon News & Links / January 2019 Edition



(Tudor City Confidential)

• Via the Tudor City Confidential blog, everything you ever wanted to know about Tudor City's giant ghost sign over East 42nd Street. 


(NY1)

• Talkin' neon on TV!  In this short piece with NY1's Michael Scotto featuring sign shop Let There Be Neon.  


(Laumeier Scuplture Park)

• In St. Louis, an exhibit of preserved neon signs will light up Laumeier Scuplture Park - hurry, it's only up through January 13, 2019.  More here.    



(Steve Fitch via AtlasObscura)

• At AtlasObscura, a photographic tribute to neon motel signs by Steve Fitch, and an interview with the photographer.  

• From the Ephemeral NY blog, a remembrance of Manhattan's Lascoff Pharmacy, an Upper East Side institution for more than a century until it closed a few years ago.   



(Daniel Weeks via the West Side Rag)

• In case you missed it (as I did), a wayback machine story from 2011: photographer Daniel Weeks' 1982 survey of Upper West Side storefronts (via the WestSideRag). 


(Rob Yasinsac)

• Upstate in Albany, it's lights-out for one of New York State's greatest storefront signs as Lombardo's Italian Restaurant, a south-side landmark for more than 100 years, closed at the end of 2018.  

• From Curbed: "There may be no designer who’s left so deep an imprint on downtown Austin as the antiques dealer turned neon restorer turned neon artist Evan Voyles."   


(Hiroko Masuike / NY Times)

• Around the five boroughs, a mystery snitch has been anonymously ratting-out code-violating signs - some of them decades old - prompting a hellfire of steep fines for mom-and-pops all over town, many of whom have forfeited their old storefront signs in the process.   


(It's Nice That)

• "Jane Dickson in Times Square" - a new book featuring the work of artist Jane Dickson, whose photographs and paintings capture Times Square's glory days of grit perhaps more vividly than anything else you can fit on a coffee table.   


(NY Post)

• On the subject of Times Square neon, restaurateur Shelly Fireman’s revived Bond 45 offers a tangible tribute to one of New York’s best neon storefronts.  


(Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

• McHale’s hide and seek: a chunk of a much-lamented neon storefront sign surfaced briefly on eBay, only to vanish again into the ether. 

• Via AtlasObscura, a panorama of marquee neon nationwide.  

• Check out these wild neon-like gifs from Japanese graphic designer Okuyama Taiki.  


(Ephemeral NY)

• At the Ephemeral NY blog, an homage to Brooklyn’s Ghostmobile neon

 
(Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

• Hold onto your horn rims:  at long last, the NYC Municipal Archives has posted the city's 1940s tax photos online, unleashing a veritable street view of the city as it looked at what was probably its neon heyday. 



• If you missed it, you missed it - last year's "Signs of Life" photo exhibit at the Perfect Exposure Gallery in Alhambra, CA. 


(Russell Lee / Library of Congress, via Shorpy)

• Some Shorpy Specials: 

     > New Bedford Noir, 1940  

     > Cascade neon, 1941   

     > Arizona neon, 1940  

     > Twin Falls neon, 1941  

     > Texas hotel neon, 1939 

     > Big (Neon) City, 1941 


(thehighline.org)

• Highline neon:  if you haven't yet, check out “Agora,” an outdoor exhbition of neon and other illuminated installations on the High Line through March.  More here at the New Yorker.