In a neon night ride that spanned from Old Kern to Eye Street to the Kern County Museum, instructor and curator Dianne Hardisty, along with local historians and neon sign makers, took a sight-seeing tour of vintage signs still present above some of Bakersfield’s oldest local businesses on March 15.
The first stop of the night was the Center Neon, a local sign company located on East 21st street in old Kern. Inside, the workshop sparked and buzzed like a Frankensteinian laboratory. High-frequency electrical current bombardiers danced electric light between Tesla coils as David McNamee, who owns and operates the shop alongside his sister Nancy Carter, demonstrated and explained elements required to construct a neon sign.
“The two main gases that are used today are pure neon and argon with a small amount of mercury vapor,” said McNamee.
All along the workstation laid glass tubes of varying color, and McNamee explained that the color emitted from a sign, depends on the glass’s coating and what type of gas is in the tube.
“With tubes in different phosphors and combinations of the gases you can get different colors.”
When producing the curvature and lettering of the signs, McNamee exhibited the different types of concentrated roaring flame devices used in the process as well as the voltage required to purify and contain the noble gases.
“The tube is connected to the manifold. All the air is vacuumed out of it,” said McNamee as he explained the process for chemically purifying a neon tube and the purpose of the buzzing electrical bombardiers.
With newfound neon knowledge, the bus bounded for Narducci’s café on East 21st Street where McNamee and Carter enlightened the passengers on the construction of the sign and its history. One block east of Narducci’s, the bus took a small detour to pay interest to Lazo’s Pool Hall sign where McNamee talked about the signage laws and city ordinances.
“The city, when they passed the ordinances, made them mount it flat on the wall so they had to take the neon off one of the sides and mount it flat, but they were able to get an exception and mount it back the way it was,” said McNamee. “They don’t allow any signs to stick out over the sidewalk anymore.”
“Whenever they make an ordinance to change the signs and they want to restrict them, they have to leave the existing ones there, so they are grandfathered in. You can maintain them but you cannot change them,” said McNamee.
Further in the night as the tour reached Eye Street, it was noted that Gutherie’s Alley Cat played in the preservation of Bakersfield’s historic neon signs.
During a debate at city level over whether certain signs with historic significance should be immune to the new ordinances, the Alley Cat was the example given that helped secure the vintage signs from removal.
Like Lazo’s, the Alley Cat sign is animated, which is illegal due to current city ordinances, but because of its historical relevance the sign is preserved.
Carter, in regards to animated neon and city restrictions said, “signs are [no longer] allowed to be animated. We did the Green Frog [sign] on Oswell Street. We wanted him to be able to tip his hat, like he does on Bernard Street. All we were allowed to do was flash, so he could flash the ‘howdy folks,’ but he couldn’t tip his hat outside the store. That’s why he tips his hat inside the store.”
The bus made a stop at Cay Health Foods prior to heading down to Eye Street, then moved on to pay notice to the Padre Hotel, Guthrie’s Alley Cat, and made a final stop at the Fox Theater before moving on to the neon exhibit the Kern County Museum.
Located on in the back of Pioneer Village, the exhibit consisted of the Jim Baker Electrifier Sign, Tops Fine Food Market, Saba’s men’s Wear, Shafter Rexall Drugs, the Entrance sign to the Bakersfield Inn Annex, and the Far East Cafe sign.
Next to the newly acquired Silverfox Bar sign, which still works except for a couple of tubes that were broken on transport, Lori Wear of the Kern County Museum explained the situation when it comes to collecting and restoring the signs.
“Sometimes we get signs that look like this, other times it’s more like the O.B. Newsome where it’s been sitting on top of a roof for 30 years,” said Wear. “So you just never know what kind of condition they are going to be in.”
In an effort to raise money to restore the signs, donations were collected and are requested from the Kern County Museum.
With the advent of light-emitting diodes and cheaper forms of lighting, according to Carter, neon has taken a more specialized and artistic role when it comes to lighting.
“Light-emitting diodes do a lot of different things and they are capable of a lot of different things. I think in applications like interiors, small spaces, where you don’t need the brightness . there are a lot of places where it can replace the neon,” said Carter.
“People try to shove it as a comparison and it needs to have its own identity because it has wonderful applications.”
But despite its versatility as lighting source, Carter said, “They need to try to not make it a neon replacement because it really doesn’t replace neon because neon is brighter. The light is all around the neon, so you have not just the directional light of the LEDs, you have the full light of the neon. So it creates a different type of light.”
“I think it needs to be one of those gypsies, mystery, do in a window in front of people, things,” said Carter.