
This image is the 2000th neon shot that I have posted to Flickr. I started shooting neon in January of 2007, and it has quickly become one of my favorite subjects. This image illustrates one of my motivations for shooting neon: it is disappearing, and when it’s gone, it’s lost forever.
This sign is in Redwood City, in the oldtown district. The Sport Club is gone, the windows boarded up and the sign left to weather. If the next tenant doesn’t care enough about the sign to put the money and effort into restoring it, it will most likely be torn down and sent to the landfill. That doesn’t always happen; for example, in Albany the new owners of the Hotsy Totsy Club restored the old neon sign. They could not take it down, because the city no longer allows signs to be installed that overhang the sidewalk (which it does) or that are higher than the building (which it is). So what did they do? They put up scaffolding and restored it in place.
Maybe the Sport Club will be as lucky, and maybe not. At any rate, I know there are at least some photographs of the sign to preserve this bit of history.