Territories of Past
A Photo-essay of San Francisco Neon Signs
That good old neon, it just wraps itself in the night, holds steady, if not sincere, in the crust and decay of the city’s interior cavity, and almost seems to bemoan its current state, lost in the showy boring tide of more modern lighting schemes. Neon signage, long out of fashion, bucks no trends, as these relics reside in odd corners and among tiled shadows poking out from and hanging onto the sides of buildings or bound by tree branches — some decrepit and wiry and scabbed with scaly rust like a barnacled prow; some still jaunty and robust, well, if not for a few lost letters or unlit bulbs here and there. These neon signs stay hidden in plain sight somehow, as you’ve got to try and notice them for their splendid bodies to be revealed. It’s as if the city’s grown over them through the years, yet they stay tucked away, once harbingers of another era’s rise, now the crusty remains of its fall. Dappled with these little lights, tubes wrapped around letters of all fonts and sizes and colors, arrows and swirls that partly light pointing to a destination long-gone to the wrecking ball, the requisite cocktail glass with the effervescent swizzle stick, hours proclaimed, specials announced with an inimitable sizzle.
