Neon Boneyard!

I love signage - vintage, retro and neon!  I've only been in the Las Vegas airport, but I would go to Vegas just to go to the Neon Boneyard - which at one time was just that - a junkyard for discarded neon signs. But people found out about and traveled out there and in 2012, it opened as The Neon Museum, and now has a collection of restored signs, to be 'viewed as public art'.   Many of these signs used bulbs rather than the tubes most associated  with neon [which is the gas that makes the color and the glow] and I don't know if the bulbs had neon in them.   In any event, photos of these treasures just float my boat and speak to my love of retro imagery.

I've actually been fortunate enough to have owned some neon, but alas can't find any photos.  I once had a huge outline of a chinese pagoda in yellow.  We installed it at the top of the windows in our studio.  We lived on a rural road, but several times people came up our driveway at night, looking for the restaurant.

When I owned Synchronicity Bookshop in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC., we had a neon piece made of our symbol for synchronicity.  It was quite large and fuschia, like the image, but of course, neon!

I was also given as a gift my very own neon letter E!  And right now I have in my yard a leftover metal E that once had bulbs in it.

So my recent happy collage inspired by the Neon Boneyard is Last Call at the Chinese Garden Cafe. The Cafe sign is in the Boneyard.  The Eat sign and neon A and & are my additions to the collage. 

Last Call at the Chinese Garden Cafe