(Tudor City Confidential)
(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).
• 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.