90 second BEAT
street art made for walking
Jan 2015 Beat
Cities of the future have resilient infrastructure, resource-efficient buildings, and sophisticated mobility, but do they have classic neon?
Old neon signs are often regarded as tacky eyesores in the landscape, mostly overlooked or repelled. What if they were instead thought of as an attractive design feature, like a showy flowering tree, that reinforces the walking experience and serves as distinctive landmarks along the trip to the market or the park across town? Or as street art that not only adds storefront character and invites people in but also reveals the story of a venerable urban neighborhood?
What if photodocumenting classic neon in San Francisco was a way to preserve the grandeur and humor of a cultural legacy that found its heyday in the ‘60‘s and bubbled in the 70‘s when tastes changed and neighborhoods were reformed?
San Francisco Neon, an alluring photo book by artists Al Barna and Randall Homan, not only celebrates survivors and lost icons of a rapidly transforming tech hub, it celebrates walking. It’s an eloquent reminder of a legacy that was uniquely devised to attract pedestrian attention. Scaled for a walking audience, neon signs in San Francisco were designed to be experienced sidewalk level, in contrast to those in LA, which were usually viewed from a car. Neon tends to be subtler in San Francisco, flashier and more entertaining in LA.
As we vitalize cities for greater social cohesion and pedestrian culture with top-down planning and architecture, let's not ignore grassroots-scale efforts, such as preservation of distinguished icons that have withstood the test of time -- a less expensive investment toward developing opportunities to slow down, lounge, and take time to observe.
The big picture of a great city has as much to do with preserving culture as creating culture.
San Francisco Examiner article
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