Day 4 - Westcliff Optometry

I guess I never noticed this one, either!  I used to live two blocks away from this business about 30 years ago.  The business was probably there, and it may have even had the neon sign.  What caught my eye this time, though, in the darkness, was the purple design, which really stands out brightly at night.  It forms an eye and eyebrow, which I discovered is the business logo when I Googled the business for any interesting tidbits.  http://www.westcliffoptometry.com/

The script is white, and stands out against the black outline of the words painted on the stucco of the building. You can see that quite a bit of the paint has deteriorated behind the letter W and to a lesser degree behind some of the others.

Someone mentioned yesterday that they hoped to see some of the neon signs in more context.  It probably won't happen during this challenge.  I'm really trying to show only the neon structure, design and lighting.  Personally I find the letter formation and connections sort of interesting, and as some of my outtake images show, the signage loses some of its distinction and detail if I try for a more contextual shot.  Also, the lighting is tricky when I try to expose for the neon at night.  What I may try to do is include links to the signs, so you can, if you want, see them in their natural environment, which I've done today.  (Click on the Contact Us of their webpage if you want to see their sign.)  Hope this helps!

Day 3 - A is for Arches

This letter A was part of the signage for a locally renowned restaurant, The Arches, that used to be located at this site.  It was a longtime landmark in the city of Newport Beach, built in 1925, and the restaurant and its bar were for decades the favorites of Old Hollywood celebrities such as Shirley Temple, Gary Cooper, Howard Hughes, Humphrey Bogart, and of course John Wayne, who lived nearby. When The Arches recently lost its lease and moved to a nearby location, the site was taken over and reopened as A Restaurant (yep, that's the name), keeping the iconic and easily recognizable A from the original restaurant.  Upon close inspection, I found it interesting to note how the signmaker connected the main illuminated part of the letter A with the interior triangles. 

Day 1 - Pacifico Beer

Leading up to this Challenge, I was worried that I might have difficulty finding illuminated neon signs in the few hours of darkness I'd realistically have available to me at night to shoot, since I do plan on sleeping during normal nighttime hours. I'm in the Pacific Time Zone, 3 hours behind Worth time, so I'm using 9 p.m to 9 p.m. as my twenty-four hour period. I didn't go out of my way to check in advance where there might be neon lights turned on at night either, but figured there had to be lots of them within a few miles of my house.

Tonight, I went out about 10 p.m. and drove down a major thoroughfare in my area, looking. Traffic was light. Lo and behold, I didn't have to go very far at all before finding a liquor store with this vibrant neon sign in the window! I have lived in this neighborhood for over twenty years, travel this street at least once a day, often several times, and have even been to this liquor store a few times, yet I can honestly say I have never noticed this sign before. Of course, it's far more visible at night, but still...

The store was closed, and fairly dark, except for a few small lights within, which I cloned out to eliminate the distraction. I guess that in honor of this first find I should actually go there and buy some Pacifico Beer, since I've never even heard of it, but it saved the day and got my blog off to an easy, and colorful, start!

This is great! Now I'm eagerly looking forward to my nightly junkets in quest of neon!