Keep A Little Neon...As A Treat

A city is about the little details

The funniest thing happens in the summer. It’s usually around late-July or August when the city asks residents to conserve electricity and not run their air conditioners too much because they’re worried about overloading the grid and causing outages. Meanwhile, Times Square continues to burn out the retinas of visitors from all over who want to dine at the Olive Garden after spending too much on fast fashion they just as easily could buy online from the comfort of their homes. Sure, we should be using less power, that’s better for the environment. And yes, Times Square generates a lot of jobs and money, but there is something a little annoying about being asked to sweat through the high temps so Jim and Tina from St. Louis can go to the M&M's store. But we deal because that’s just how it goes. I also don’t complain because my little contradiction is I’m perfectly fine with wasting a little bit of power to keep neon bulbs burning. I love neon. I wish there was more of it, but I also get why there isn’t. What we do have left, I’d really like to keep—especially if it’s in Midtown. I love few things as much as being drenched in neon glow as I’m walking along 6th Ave. past Bryant Park or down some side street in the 40s or 50s. I especially love seeing the words “Rainbow Room” in Art Deco red as I’m making my way to or from the subway. It’s one of the great thrills in all of New York City that never gets old.

But the NBC Studios sign along the avenue is likely getting a LED remake. On Tuesday, Christopher Bonanos wrote at Curbed about how building owner Tishman Speyer had applied to the Landmarks Preservation Commission to get rid of the old sign and replace it with cheaper, energy-efficient lights. Not long after the piece was published, the vote passed. If I had to guess, the sign will be dismantled quickly and quietly so there isn’t enough time to mount any sort of protest. I’d also guess that the real estate guys probably think that the millions of people who pass by the sign won’t stop and notice that the bulbs have changed and that nobody is going to have time to stop and say, “The neon tubes have vanished!” That’s probably true for the most part. I get that I’m in the small minority of people who really care that much about things like neon lighting and that it seems like there are much bigger things to complain about, like how the subways hardly work or the rent is too damn high. But I’d argue that the little things in a city like New York are just as important as the big ones.

Making a conservative guess, I’d say I get about a hundred publicity e-mails, most of which are unsolicited. I get press releases for everything from organic boner pills and TikTok stars branching out from yelling about how great unpasteurized milk is into a singing career. I also get quite a few about things going on in and around New York City, from restaurant openings to new off-off-off-off-Broadway shows. I open maybe three a day, so this is a small sample, but one thing most of the e-mails about things happening in NYC I get have in common is that they almost always have the word “experience” in them. People want the New York City experience, either when they visit or delivered to their door in some other state or country. My guess is that people who wait on line for 45 minutes to try Katz’s or a slice of pizza think that’s an authentic experience and the way it’s always been, not some annoying impact of TikTok culture making everything into a thing. New York line culture is hardly a new phenomenon; it’s just everywhere now. It’s natural for people to develop ideas of what places are like from whatever culture they take in, and just like out-of-towners probably think locals have enough time on their lunch break to wait for a slice of pizza from a certain place because it’s supposedly better than the million other slices, I believe little details like neon lights are fixed into the idea of what New York City is supposed to be. It’s part of the larger experience people want.

Sure, a sign is not the same as an entire structure. We’re not talking about the demolition of the original Penn Station here, and I’m sure even locals who don’t pay attention to the news will miss that the bulbs they might pass under once or twice daily have been swapped out. But I do believe a specific experience is being taken away, and the way one little thing after another disappears from the city’s landscape has a death by 1,000 cuts feel. All these changes that are being done in the name of progress, saving energy, and—the most important thing as far as the building owners are concerned—cutting costs only cheapens the experience of the city. And sooner or later, once every little thing that doesn’t smack of modern has been sanded down, painted over, or bulldozed, I believe people will start wondering what the point of even visiting is. The city is already mostly impossible for most people who want to live there, but I think tourists are going to eventually lose interest as more of the true New York City experiences change or vanish from the streets and sidewalks. Yesterday it was the Empire State Building, today it’s a neon sign—I’m not looking forward to what tomorrow will bring.